New villages, 新村 xīn cūn; especially when one is referring to Chinese new villages 华人新村 huá rén xīn cūn in Malaysia; well, they are not really as new as their names imply. Chinese new villages are settlements created by the British in the mid-50s during the last days of the British rule. Devised by British General Sir Harold, it was a military plan under the Briggs Plan to segregate the Chinese villagers from the Chinese Communist insurgents during the Malayan Emergency. It was a massive program where about 500,000 Malayan Chineses peasants were forcefully removed from their homes and housed in a round the clock guarded camps called new villages in an attempt to stem the flow of materials including food, information, and recruits from peasant to guerrillas. Just recently, I came across a mini exhibition on these supposedly new villages...
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