This was revealed in the UK’s appellate court yesterday, where the families of the 24 victims continued their bid to get the British government to conduct a full inquiry into the shootings of the rubber plantation workers over 60 years ago.
In yesterday’s testimony, it was disclosed that the first such intervention took place in 1970, when a Scotland Yard investigation triggered by the confessions of British soldiers was prematurely terminated following a change in government the same year.
The police officer in charge of the investigation then claimed that a “political change of view” following the Conservative party victory in UK’s general election in 1970 had caused the probe to be blocked.
The London Metropolitan police officer, who was not named in The Guardian’s report, said that the Batang Kali issue was “politically flavoured from the outset”.
In the report, UK’s Ministry of Defence was quoted as saying: “If no reaction is forthcoming, the matter will probably now remain buried in the public mind … and quietly forgotten.”
It was unclear, however, whether the police officer was citing a ministry communiqué or if the quote was delivered by one of its officials present.
The intervention was also not limited to the UK, as later testimony showed that an attempt by Malaysian police in the 1990s to start a new investigation after new evidence on the Batang Kali incident was found, had been similarly prevented.
But the court hearing in London did not detail how the Malaysian effort was successfully stopped.
The British prime minister from 1970 to 1974 was the Conservatives’ Edward Heath, while John Major, from the same political party, led the UK from 1990 to 1997.
It was previously reported that both probes were dropped because of a purported lack of adequate evidence.
But Michael Fordham QC, the lawyer for the surviving relatives of the victims, told the court that Scotland Yard files contained records that the shooting was carried out in front of the Batang Kali villagers.
“There was available evidence both from the Metropolitan police file and from the Malaysian police investigation, and a combination of both, and witness statements,” he told the court yesterday.
By deciding not to hold an inquiry, the British government had gone against “customary international law” and breached Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights Convention, which enshrines the right to life, Fordham argued.
The three-man panel — Lord Justices Maurice Kay, Fulford, and Rimer — are hearing an appeal by the elderly relatives of the victims, who failed last year to get the High Court there to overturn the British government’s decision against holding an inquiry into the massacre.
At the High Court, the victims’ families had sought judicial review of the November 2011 decision against a public inquiry of the cover-up and compensation.
Last September, the High Court ruled that it was “now impossible to reach any definitive conclusion as to how the deaths of the inhabitants came about”, as certain accounts of the Batang Kali incident were not part of a conclusive inquiry.
The Batang Kali massacre took place on December 12, 1948 during British military operations against communist terrorists after the end of World War II.
It was alleged that the Seventh Platoon of the G Company, 2nd Scots Guards, had surrounded a rubber estate at Sungai Rimoh and shot 24 villagers before setting fire to the village.
On April 2010, the last witness of the Batang Kali massacre, Tham Yong, 78, died. ---The Malay Mail
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