KUALA LUMPUR: Malaysia's most well-known former communist guerilla, who lived in exile for five decades after leading a bloody insurgency against British rule, is in a coma at a Thai hospital, a person close to his family said yesterday.
Relatives of 86-year-old Chin Peng had been visiting him in Bangkok, Thailand, since he was hospitalised last month, the person said. They feared "he is on his deathbed".
Chin Peng, whose real name is Ong Boon Hua, had lost a legal struggle in recent years to be allowed back into Malaysia.
Government leaders insisted his return would upset many who lost their loved ones during the communist insurgency.
Some 10,000 people were believed to have been killed during the period known as the Emergency.
Chin Peng first gained attention during World War 2, when he and other guerillas fought against the Japanese occupiers.
After independence, Chin Peng continued to fight the Malaysian government. But with the dragnet closing in on his jungle hideouts and his Marxist-Leninist campaign losing steam, he fled to China in 1960.
From there, he went to southern Thailand with hundreds of fighters loyal to him.
Malaysia signed a peace treaty in 1989 with the insurgents, but Chin Peng was not allowed to come back.
He began a court battle in 2005 to force the government to allow him back into Malaysia.
The country's top court eventually ruled that he could not return unless he first produced birth and citizen certificates, which his lawyers said were lost after being seized by British authorities in the 1940s.
If Chin Peng dies, his family hoped the government would let them bring his body back for a funeral in his hometown, where his parents were also buried, the person close to his relatives said.
In 2008, the Brussels-based International Association of Democratic Lawyers urged Malaysia to allow Chin Peng to return home, saying he was being denied the right on "very technical grounds".
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