Malaysia ’s political leaders were on Wednesday grappling over the appropriate response to the revelation that the cremated remains of Chin Peng, the China-backed communist leader who led a bloody insurgency in the country, had been secretly returned to the country. A group of Malaysians a day earlier said they had quietly brought back the guerilla leader’s ashes from Thailand and scattered them at a hill and in waters near his birthplace in the state of Perak on September 16 – six years to the day of his death at age 88 after spending more than half a century in exile. The announcement appeared to catch officials in Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s government off guard, as the official policy has been that Chin Peng’s remains are barred from being interred in the country. Former prime minister Najib Razak defended this policy in 2013, citing the “black history” of the insurgency led by Chin’s Malayan Communist Party (MCP). Will race-based policies affect Malaysia’s plan to share prosperity? Officials sought to distance themselves from the development but did not take a hardline stance. Deputy Prime Minister Wan Azizah Wan Ismail said no one had made a request for Chin Peng’s remains to enter the country, but added that the matter was sensitive because of the “sacrifice of our [military] heroes” during the guerilla war from 1948 to 1960. Defence Minister Mohamad Sabu, asked to offer his views by opposition lawmakers in parliament, said he would reserve comment until after an investigation by the home ministry. Earlier, other lawmakers engaged in a war of words after government MP M. Karupaiya, an armed forces veteran, said his private view was that there was “no problem” with the return of Chin Peng’s ashes to his country of birth. That comment sparked a flurry of criticism from opposition MPs before the House speaker ticked off the lawmakers for using parliament to debate history. Annuar Musa – a heavyweight from the opposition United Malays National Organisation (Umno) party – struck a conciliatory tone, saying it was acceptable to “respect the wishes” of the deceased’s next of kin as long as they were not illegal. Chin Peng and others are the same once they die. Our problems are with people who are still alive Annuar Musa, Umno “Chin Peng and others are the same once they die. Our problems are with people who are still alive,” said Annuar, whose party – once led by Najib – was responsible for barring Chin Peng from entering Malaysia when he was alive, and later barred his remains from entering the country. Others opposition politicians, however, had contrary views. “What is the purpose? The country is against the communist system and thousands of communist fighters caused the death of our [armed] forces and civilians,” said Tuan Ibrahim Tuan Man, deputy president of Islamist party PAS. “If it is to commemorate the communist struggle, I think a big mistake had been made. This move did not take into consideration the feelings of former service personnel and police,” he was quoted as saying by the Malaysiakini portal. Mahathir and Anwar: a timeline of Malaysian succession Several armed forces veteran and police associations have condemned the group that brought back Chin Peng’s ashes. The development once again showed just how divisive a figure Chin Peng is in Malaysia, some six decades after he fled the country in 1960 for communist China – believed to be the MCP’s main backers – as a joint effort by British forces and the local armed forces neutralised his insurgency. Born Ong Boon Hua to Fujianese immigrants in Perak, the guerilla leader is believed to have joined the MCP at age 15. He took on the nom de guerre Chin Peng, and was part of the communists’ British-backed resistance against the Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II. He later took control of the party and, in a bid for self determination under communist terms, ordered an insurrection against the British colonial administration, and later the Malay nationalist-led administration of independent Malaysia. The insurgency claimed the lives of an estimated 2,478 civilians and more than a thousand police and military personnel. Support for the MCP, and the party’s influence – predominantly among Malaysia’s ethnic Chinese minority – waned in the 1970s after the late Malaysian prime minister Abdul Razak visited China and implored Mao Zedong to stop aiding the MCP. Chin Peng later settled in Thailand, and he and some 1,200 guerillas formally laid down their arms in 1989, ending one of the world’s longest insurgencies. Malaysian academics said they believed the latest development surrounding Chin Peng was unlikely to snowball into something bigger, especially because his remains had already been spread. “I do not think it is a sensitive issue at this point of time, particularly [because] his ashes have been scattered over the sea and the mountains,” said political scientist Khong Kim Hoong of HELP University. However, the scholars said it was unlikely Chin Peng’s memory would be rehabilitated – particularly among Malaysia’s majority-Malay population. Can Mahathir and Anwar get Pakatan Harapan back on track? One academic who declined to be named said the Malays “have a special kind of hatred for Chin Peng and his ilk”. “Remember the CPM led an insurgency that not only challenged British rule but also potentially Malay dominance in this country,” the researcher said. Chin Peng has a similarly ignominious reputation in neighbouring Singapore , where the late founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and top leaders of his People’s Action Party grappled in the 1950s and 1960s with putting down socialist opponents they claimed were secretly communists backed by the MCP. Like Malaysia, Singapore barred entry to Chin Peng for decades until 2004, when he visited the country to speak at a seminar, and later for meetings with Lee and his successor Goh Chok Tong .