The Hakkas of Sarawak: Sacrificial Gifts in Cold War Era Malaysia

Description

This book tells the story of the Hakka Chinese in Sarawak, Malaysia, who were targeted as communists or communist sympathizers because of their Chinese ethnicity the 1960s and 1970s. Thousands of these rural Hakkas were relocated into “new villages” surrounded by barbed wire or detained at correction centres, where incarcerated people were understood to be “sacrificial gifts” to the war on communism and to the rule of Malaysia’s judicial-administrative regime. The Hakkas of Sarawak looks at how these incarcerated people struggled for survival and dealt with their defeat over the course of a generation. Using methodologies of narrative theory and exchange theory, Kee Howe Yong provides a powerful account of the ongoing legacies of Cold War oppression and its impact on the lives of people who were victimized by these policies. Cover Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 Overseas Chinese 2 The Greater Malaysia Plan 3 The Sri Aman Treaty 4 Any Other Day at the Bus Station 5 What’s There to Tell? 6 Virtuous Subjects 7 Sites of Impermanence 8 Facing the Artefact Notes Bibliography Index