KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 20 – Several former generals from the Thai military paid their last respects to old foe and communist leader Chin Peng in a gesture that Malaysia could not bring itself to do.

Present during the Buddhist funeral rites for the deceased former secretary-general of the now-defunct Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) were retired generals Pisarn Wattanawongkiri, Kitti Rattanachaya, and Akanit Muansawad.

According to Rattanachaya, the author of the book “The Communist Party of Malaya, Malaysia and Thailand”, Chin Peng had not been a villain as portrayed, but a freedom fighter who had fought for Malaysia’s independence.

He urged Malaysia to put aside its politics and honour the dead man’s final request to be buried in the land of his birth.

“It is proper to allow his ashes to be returned to Malaysia. Forgive and forget, let bygones be bygones. Once someone dies, everything is finished,” Kitti was quoted as saying by news portal Malaysiakini.

Muansawad, who had faced off with Chin Peng’s guerrilla fighters and was one of the first men to offer an olive branch to the latter, also said the animosity should have ended when the guns stopped firing.

“I was a captain then and in one year, I lost 50 soldiers - 30 died and 20 were wounded. I got malaria 13 times from going in and out of the jungle.

“I forgave because I couldn’t see any other way to solve the problem,” Akanit said in the report.

Mourners paste a newspaper featuring pictures of former Malayan Communist Party leader Chin Peng on a board during his funeral at a temple in Bangkok September 20, 2013. — Reuters pic

But Malaysia has been uncompromising on the issue, refusing to send a representative to the ceremony today and also shutting its borders to the remains of the former communist leader.

“We do not pay respects to people who are responsible for the deaths of thousands of people,” Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak said yesterday when reiterating the government’s decision to deny Chin Peng’s last wish to be buried in his hometown of Sitiawan.

Najib said allowing Chin Peng’s ashes into Malaysia on humanitarian grounds is not a sufficiently compelling reason, considering what he described as a “great emotional outpouring” against it by those who lost loved ones to the communists.

Chin Peng died early last Monday morning at a hospital Bangkok, Thailand, where he had been living in exile in the years prior to his death.

He will be cremated on Monday, following his funeral rites that began this afternoon.