Britain rejects Batang Kali probe

KUALA LUMPUR: Britain has rejected a petition for an inquiry into the 1948 massacre of unarmed villagers by British troops in Batang Kali, the coordinator of an action committee said.

The committee last year demanded an official probe into the killings which occurred at the start of a crackdown against a communist insurgency when Malaysia, then known as Malaya, was under British rule. The “Batang Kali massacre” occurred in a village in Selangor on Dec 12, 1948, when 14 members of the Scots Guards killed 24 ethnic Chinese and torched their village.