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The Briggs Plan (Malay: Rancangan Briggs) was a military plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs shortly after his appointment in 1950 as Director of Operations during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960). The plan aimed to defeat the Malayan National Liberation Army by cutting them off from their sources of support amongst the rural population.[1] To achieve this a large programme of forced resettlement of Malayan peasantry was undertaken, under which about 500,000 people (roughly 10% of Malaya's population) were forcibly transferred from their land and moved to concentration camps euphemistically referred to as "new villages".[2]
During the Emergency, there were over 400 of these settlements. Furthermore, 10,000 Malaysian Chinese suspected of being communist sympathisers were deported to the People's Republic of China in 1949.[3] The Orang Asli were also targeted for forced relocation by the Briggs Plan because the British believed that they were supporting the communists.[4] Many of the practices necessary for the Briggs Plan are now prohibited under Article 17 of Additional Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions which forbids civilian deportations and internment of civilian populations beyond actual civilian security and military necessity in non-international conflicts.[5][6]
- ^ Hale, Christopher (2013). Massacre in Malaya: Exposing Britain's My Lai. Brimscombe Port: The History Press. p. 326. ISBN 978-0-7524-8701-4.
- ^ Newsinger, John (2015). British Counterinsurgency. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-230-29824-8.
- ^ Newsinger, John (2013). The Blood Never Dried: A People's History of the British Empire. London: Bookmarks Publications. p. 218. ISBN 978-1-909026-29-2.
- ^ D. Leary, John (1995). Violence and the Dream People: The Orang Asli in the Emergency 1948–1960. Athens: Ohio University Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 0-89680-186-1.
- ^ "Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts (Protocol II), 8 June 1977.: Commentary of 1987. Article 17 - Prohibition of forced movement of civilians". International Humanitarian Law Datebases.
- ^ Siver, Christi (2009). "The Other Forgotten War: Understanding Atrocities during the Malayan Emergency Malayan Emergency". Retrieved 25 January 2020.