Using government sources for researching civil unrest : the case of the 'security arrests' in Malaysia, 1965

Author / Creator

Rodriguez, Arturo Zoffman, author

Available as

Online

Summary

Civil unrest involves large numbers of anonymous protesters, who rarely produce first-hand accounts of their activities. Historians of civil unrest thus frequently rely on government documents. Thi...

Civil unrest involves large numbers of anonymous protesters, who rarely produce first-hand accounts of their activities. Historians of civil unrest thus frequently rely on government documents. This case study explores the theme of civil unrest and the methodological challenges it raises through Commonwealth and Malaysian government sources on nationalist and leftist dissidence. These documents were produced in the midst of the Konfrontasi (Confrontation) that pitted the Malaysian pro-British, anti-communist regime of Tunku Abdul Rahman with the anti-imperialist government of Sukarno in Indonesia. In the midst of the Confrontation, the Malaysian authorities arrested a number of opposition politicians accused of collaboration with the Sukarno regime. These putative connections were disclosed in the white paper 'A Plot Exposed'. This and other related sources were forwarded to the Commonwealth and to the British government. These arrests elicited street protests, which in turn prompted new repressive measures. In their reports, the Malaysian government and its Commonwealth allies sought to justify the crackdown on dissidence. They also tended to blame strife on foreign-sponsored conspiracies. The voices of protesters seldom filtered into these documents. When they did, they were often distorted by the authorities and mediated by coercion, as in the self-incrimination of the detainees. However, critical examination of the sources, cross-examination, and contextualisation will allow us to derive valuable information about the social dynamics behind civil unrest, the motivations of the different actors involved, and the subjectivity of protesters.

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