The recent study by Kumar Ramakrishna on the life and times of CC Too - undoubtedly Malaysia's most efficient and notorious propagandist and psy-war expert - has shed light on a subject that has hitherto been badly neglected by contemporary Malaysian historians and political scientists alike.(1)

Kumar's short but in-depth analysis of one of the men who led the country's psy-war operations against the communists during the Emergency has managed to fill in many of the blank spaces that have been left unattended, and the author should be praised for his efforts.

Thanks to Kumar, we now have a clearer picture of what was really going on behind the scenes during those tense and difficult years in the 1950s and 1960s, when Malaya (as it was called then) seemed to be on the front line in the Cold War between the Eastern and Western blocs.

Kumar's portrait of CC Too (Too Chee Chew) is an honest and unflattering one.(2) The man in question is described as an overbearing, arrogant, pompous and brutish egomaniac who was nonetheless a genius in his field.

Kumar reveals Too's early flirtation with communism, the reasons for his eventual 'turn' towards the British colonial authorities and how he rose up the slippery ladder of success and promotion until he eventually became the head of the psychological warfare unit of the state's security apparatus in post-colonial Malaya.

The study also provides the reader with a brief overview of how the state security apparatus was put into place by the British Military Authority (BMA) in the years that followed World War II. Those of us who thought that instruments like the Internal Security Act (ISA) and others were introduced just before the British left should think again.

Police state

In fact that British military authorities were already laying the foundations for a modern state security system, complete with its surveillance, interrogation and counter-insurgency branches in place during the late 1940s and early 1950s: The Emergency Information Service (EIS) was set up in 1951 with Hugh Carleton Greene (brother of the novelist Graham Greene) as its head (3).

(Hugh's brother, Graham Greene (photo), later wrote a number of short stories about foreign agents in Asia, and much of it was inspired by what was happening in Malaya then). Not long after that the Psychological Warfare Interrogations Centre (PWIC) was set up (in 1953) at the behest of the then-head of operations in Malaya, General Gerald Templer (4).)

Thus to say that Malaysia has of late turned into a police state would be a historically inaccurate remark. The fact is that the instruments and practices of a police state were already well in place in British Malaya long before it became independent.

The British military and colonial officers who were put in charge of running the country after WWII (like the Commander of British forces and Director of Operations in Malaya, Lieutenant-General Harold Briggs (5) were themselves hardened soldiers who had served in several military campaigns and were no great fans of popular democracy.

So efficient were the state security services then that they managed to attract the best minds in the country - and CC Too was certainly one of them.

Sophisticated approach

But while it cannot be denied that the British colonial and military personnel who were in command of the country in the 1950s were of a decidedly martial demeanour, it has to be noted that the style of governing that they employed varied considerably.

There were those like Briggs and Templer who favoured the 'shoot first, ask questions later' approach when dealing with the communists in the jungle. Thanks to these men, the countryside of Malaysia is still littered with the forgotten graves of innocent civilians who were summarily executed for being suspected communist agents or sympathisers. (And like most war criminals, Briggs and Templer were allowed to get away scot-free).

However, Briggs and Templer did not get their way all the time and there were others who preferred a more subtle and sophisticated approach to tackling the problem of the communist insurgency. Here the men in charge of the psy-war division were seen to have their way in the end.

Men like Hugh Carleton Greene and CC Too insisted that if the war in the countryside was to be won the answer lay not in the random search- and-destroy missions against Chinese villages and rural folk. Such tactics, they insisted, merely alienated the Chinese peasantry and further intensified their sense of distrust against the state and the government forces.

The solution, they argued, lay in the skillful use of propaganda and information. Kumar notes that Hugh Greene had laid down the basic rules in the use of propaganda and information in counter-insurgency and psychological warfare:

- The government's news reporting had to be based on facts and the truth. He argued that the public would only read the mainstream press and believe in whatever it told them if it was seen to be factual, objective and unbiased.

- No amount of propaganda would work if the public did not believe in the facts and figures that were given to them, and if even one item of news was inaccurate or slanted in any way, then the entire mainstream media would be discredited and nobody would read or listen to it any more.

- The news reports had to respect the intelligence of the reader.

Greene understood that the easiest option for the reader/listener was not to read the papers or to turn off the radio. In the end, it was the audience that decided what it wanted to listen to and they had the final say.

To insult the intelligence of the audience with trivial  stories or biased reporting was the best way to alienate them and to drive them to other alternative sources of information, which meant the communists at the time. Greene therefore counseled his operatives to be delicate and sensitive to the sensibilities of the audience all the time.

At the heart of the matter was the question of credibility. Men like Hugh Greene and CC Too understood that governments could only retain control of the situation as long as they possessed credibility.

This meant that the government itself had to be believable and that whatever government spokesperson or politicians said had to sound credible as well. True, honest and fair reporting was the way to victory and the best way to win the battle for hearts and minds.

News had to be straight and factual, nor personalised or openly biased in any way. Once the government had earned the respect and trust of the people, half the battle was won and it would be able to get its message across to the audience. Failure to gain credibility on the other hand meant the loss of the war itself.

In the end, the facts of history itself prove that the psy-war experts who were working in the background were right. While the gruelling war in the countryside continued, it was the operatives of the Malayan intelligence services who managed to win over the support of ordinary people in order to ensure that the Malayan Communist Party's (MCP) lines of communication and support were cut.

When the Merdeka amnesty was announced by Tunku Abdul Rahman in 1957, hundreds of communist guerrillas deserted their units and surrendered. By the end of 1958, Chin Peng, head of the MCP, was forced to disband the party's armed units and this effectively brought an end to the Emergency itself.

Mere mouthpieces

Reading Kumar Ramakrishna's study of CC Too forces one to make comparisons between the Malaya of the past and Malaysia today. In particular one cannot help but compare the use of the media by the state in the 1950s and 1960s with the use of the media in Malaysia during the 1980s and 1990s.

While the Emergency was at its height, the Malayan (and later Malaysian) authorities nonetheless saw the need for an independent and free press. None of the major political parties were given the chance to take over the local newspapers or to exercise direct control of the local mainstream media.

Up to the 1970s, newspapers like Utusan Melayu, Sin Chew Jit Poh and others were seen as independent organs that had their own agendas, which were sometimes at variance with that of the government.

However all this came to an untimely end by the 1970s when the major ruling parties began to buy up stakes in the major newspapers of the country in order to have a direct conduit to the people as a whole.
 
The net effect of these takeovers, however, is that they created the impression that the press was no longer free and independent, and that newspapers (and later television channels) were the mere mouthpieces of the state and of particular political parties and politicians.

From the 1980s onwards we have witnessed the blatant use (and some would say abuse) of the mainstream press by certain political parties and politicians in the country, for obviously political reasons.

The mainstream Malay vernacular and English press was utilised to the hilt during the first constitutional crisis of 1983, the first Umno split in 1987, the second constitutional crisis of 1991, the internal Umno putsch in 1993 (when Anwar Ibrahim's faction ousted the then- deputy prime minister, Ghafar Baba), the economic crisis of 1997 and the second major split within Umno in 1998.

Needless to day, the papers have also been used extensively in all the major elections since the 1970s, and the Malaysian public has seen just how 'objective and unbiased' it can be during these occasions.

During this time, the cardinal rules of psy-war that were laid down by men like Hugh Greene and CC Too seem to have gone out of the window altogether. (Too had retired by 1983.)

Ridiculous stories

For the past few decades, we have witnessed the emergence and development of an increasingly politicised and partisan Malaysian mainstream media, where newspapers and television channels are openly used to promote and popularise the image of particular politicians and political parties in the
country.

The newspapers seem more inclined to report what is happening in the kitchens of Malaysian politicians than what is happening in the streets of the cities or the villages in the countryside. Speeches by political leaders are reproduced verbatim, without even the slightest attempt at
critical analysis or enquiry. Investigative reporting has given way to fawning hagiography instead.

Instead of critical reportage, the public has been fed a stream of flimsy cover-ups. (Beginning with the BMF scandal in the 1980s to the ridiculous stories surrounding the assault on ex-DPM Anwar Ibrahim while he was in detention in 1998). What is worse, practically all the major political actors of the country have been guilty of this - including those latter-day 'reformists' who claim that they wished to
reform the system (6).

The Malaysian press today seems to be divided into two main categories: the mainstream papers that have become the mouthpieces of the major political parties, and the tabloid gutter press that grows increasingly obsessed with fads and fashion, the lifestyle of its celebrity stars and the private lives of others.

Though no systematic survey has been carried out to ascertain the level of credibility that it has among the public, the figures themselves speak volumes. In the wake of the 1998 political crisis, sales of the local dailies have plummeted to hitherto unheard-of levels. Meanwhile, the sales of opposition parties' newspapers, books by local Malay political commentators and NGO publications have soared. So has the number of readers for the so-called alternative web media.

War lost

What does all this point to? It doesn't take a genius to note that something has gone seriously wrong with the mainstream media in the country, and it doesn't take a genius to spell out the long-term effects if this situation is allowed to continue unchecked.

While the powers that be in the country today may lament the fact that the people no longer read the papers, watch the TV (unless it's for rap music or Bollywood films) or listen to the radio, they should spend some time asking themselves why the people have turned away.

Here the fundamental principles of psy-war as laid out by Hugh Greene and CC Too come to mind. Whether they like to admit it or not, the owners and managers of the mainstream media (and by this we mean the political parties that have indirect control on the papers and television channels) have to recognise that the media no longer works as a medium of communication any more, for the simple reason that it has lost that one vital ingredient that takes so long to cultivate, and yet is so easy to lose - credibility.

And if the media war has been lost, who have they got to blame, save themselves?

Endnotes:

(1) For a fuller account of the life and work of CC Too, see: Kumar Ramakrishna, `The Making of a Malayan Propagandist: The Communists, the British and CC Too'. Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JMRAS), Vol LXXIII, Part 1, June 2000. pp. 67-90.

(2) Too Chee Chew (better known as CC Too) was born on March 31, 1920 in Kuala Lumpur. His family were originally from Hainan province, South China and his father was a staunch nationalist who supported the nationalist movement back in the mainland. Too's grandfather Too Nam was a close associate of the Chinese nationalist leader Dr Sun Yat Sen.

During his early childhood Too was sent to Chinese vernacular schools in Kuala Lumpur. But his family decided to allow him to complete his education in the British colonial educational stream and Too was sent to Victoria Institution (VI) and later Raffles College in Singapore.

During his schooldays Too proved to be an exceptionally gifted student and he was attracted to the activities of the predominantly- Chinese communist movement in Malaya. Ramakrishna (2000) claims that Too was secretly involved in the activities of the Malayan Peoples Anti-Japanese Union (MPAJU) during the early 1940s and that he even met with the leader of the MCP, Chin Peng, personally (pg 73).

But by the end of World War II, Too was no longer persuaded by the communist's ideological struggle and he decided to work with the British colonial authorities instead. Too joined the Emergency Information Service (EIS) in February 1951 and was given the task of producing anti-communist propaganda for the British colonial authorities.

When General Templer set up the Psychological Warfare Interrogation Centre (PWIC) in March 1953, Too transferred his activities there as well. When Malaya gained its independence in 1957, Too was awarded the Johan Mangku Negara (Defender of the Realm) award by Tunku Abdul Rahman himself.

Too was then given the task of heading the Psychological Warfare Section of the government of the Malayan Federation - a post he held for 27 years until he finally retired in January 1983.

(3) The Emergency Information Service (EIS) was set up in March 1951 and its first head was Hugh Carleton Greene. The EIS was then based at Bluff Road, Kuala Lumpur, and its main aim was to provide anti-communist propaganda that would be distributed by the radio and mainstream media services in the country.

The colonial authorities felt at the time that the Malayan Radio and Film Unit was not doing enough in the effort to contain the spread of MCP activities and influence among the public, and that there was a need for a more subtle approach to the conflict that employed the use of psychological warfare.

Greene laid down the basic rules of psychological warfare and propaganda in Malaya, which were then learnt and practised by his disciple and co-worker, CC Too. Greene argued that for the anti-communist propaganda to be effective it needed to be factual, relevant and not provocative.

Rather than attack the communists outright, Greene preferred to win them over with promises of safe conduct and fair treatment.  Ramakrishna notes that: 'The EIS had three main objectives: to raise public confidence in the government and increase the flow of information from the public to the police; to attack the morale of the members of the MRLA and Min Yuen; and to drive a wedge between the leaders and followers of the MCP so as to encourage defection among them.' (See Ramakrishna, 2000. pp. 76-77).

(4) The Psychological Warfare Interrogation Centre (PWIC) was set up by General Templer on March 18, 1953 and it was first based at the Central Police Headquarters in Kuala Lumpur. The head of the PWIC was ADC Peterson, who was appointed Director-General of Information Services and personally chosen by Templer himself.

Peterson's task was to conduct studies into how and why the Chinese were supporting the communists in Malaya and to identify ways and means to stop this flow of support to the MCP.

Peterson managed to streamline the activities of the various information and counter-insurgency operations in the country, and eventually centralised all of these activities under the PWIC. But Peterson was also known to harbour the belief that such work should be carried out by Western intelligence officers and that local operatives should play only a supporting role in the task.

This led to a clash between him and the Malayan Chinese propaganda expert, CC Too, who eventually resigned in protest. (Too was subsequently re-employed in 1955 and he remained active until 1983).  (See Ramakrishna, 2000. pp. 79-80).

(5) Lieutenant-General Harold Briggs had previously served as the Commander of the British 5th Division in Burma and he had been the GOC there after the Japanese surrender. He was sent to Malaya by London to take over military and counter-insurgency operations in the country.

Briggs drew up a master plan designed to pacify the countryside by wiping out the lines of communication and bases of support for the MCP and its guerillas. The plan called for the forced resettlement of Chinese villagers into policed camps and detention centres. Those who were thought
to be sympathetic to the MCP were then deported back to China.

The plan drew considerable criticism from the Chinese community for the way that it reinforced the impression that most Chinese were communist supporters. It also led to the re-drawing of racial boundaries between the Malays and the Chinese, and in the long run it contributed to the polarisation among the races in the country. As a result of the implementation of Briggs's plan, the presence of the
Chinese in the rural areas was to diminish considerably.

(6) A case in point would be the use of the media by the followers and supporters of the ex-DPM Anwar Ibrahim during the 1993 leadership takeover bid in Umno. As the 1993 Umno general assembly approached, several of the mainstream national newspapers began to feature reports on alleged 
financial scandals and wrongdoings in the Mara agency that was then under the control of the son of his rival Ghafar baba, Tamrin Ghafar.

Most political observers at the time noted that these exposés were timely to say the least, and that their true motive was to discredit Ghafar Baba and his son prior to Anwar's attempt to gain the position of deputy president of Umno. In the end, Ghafar was forced to relinquish his seat and the position went to Anwar.