Retired teacher claims to be sister of rescued Malaysian slave

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 26 — A Malaysian woman has claimed that one of three women who were rescued from slavery was her sister who had disappeared after joining a Maoist sect while studying in London, a report said today.

UK’s The Daily Telegraph reported that retired teacher Kamar Mautum believed her 69-year-old sister Aishah was one of the women who had allegedly been held captive as slaves by the leaders of a 1970s Communist collective for the past 30 years.

Kamar said Aishah had studied at one of Malaysia’s most elite schools, eventually winning a Commonwealth scholarship to study surveying in London.

Aishah reportedly moved to Britain in 1968 with her fiancé, named Omar Munir by The Telegraph, but was soon involved in extremist politics, eventually giving up everything to follow a Maoist doctrine. Kamar claimed Aishah disappeared soon after.

“I have felt so choked without her for years and years. She was so talented, she was the apple of my mother’s eye. (My mother) asked for her on her death bed,” Kamar told the British newspaper.

“This has been a dark age for her and for all of us. I will do anything to bring her home. I want to see her before either of us dies.”

According to Kamar, Aishah was brought up under strong Islamic values by her father, a school inspector and wealthy landowner, and grew up to headstrong and stubborn.

Aishah and her fiancé joined the organisation called Malaysian and Singaporean Students Forum (Mass) after arriving in London, during a time of increasing social unrest following the Vietnam War.

The political collective was renowned as one of the more extremist Maoist groups in London, and despite its small size was one of the leading bodies in many student protests with many of its supporters made of Malaysians fleeing home after a crackdown on radicals.

Its leaders were reported to be India-born Aravindan Balakrishnan and his Tanzanian-Indian wife Chandra Pattni, who has since been arrested last Thursday after their three suspected captives were freed in a police operation earlier this month.

According to The Telegraph, the Indian suspect was known to his followers as “Comrade Bala” and derisively in the left-wing circles as “Chairman Ara”, the short, plump and mustachioed Balakrishnan was said to be charismatic, bright, and respected by the extremists.

A Marxist history website said Balakrishnan, 73, was a high-ranking member of the Communist Party of England (Marxist-Leninist) but had been suspended in 1974 because of the “conspiratorial and splittist activities” of his “clique”.

The website also said Balakrishnan had been arrested in 1978 along with his wife during an attempt by police to shut down a Maoist centre in south London's Brixton area.

With its membership at one time numbering 45 in addition to 200 supporters, the group's popularity plummeted as Balakrishnan's ideology morphed more extreme as he became more manipulative and controlling.

Aishah eventually split with her fiance, throwing her engagement ring into the River Thames, Kamar related, after a row over her loyalty to Balakrishnan.

A one-time member of the group also told the newspaper that Aishah remained one of the few loyal supporters of Balakrishnan, and subsequently moved in permanently with the Marxist cell.

The three “slaves” included a 69-year-old Malaysian, a 57-year-old Irish woman, and a 30-year-old Briton — were freed on October 25 after one of them secretly contacted a charity.

The UK's Daily Mail disclosed today the name of the youngest captive as Rosie Davies, reporting her mother, Sian Davies, 44, had also lived at a property owned by Balakrishnan and his wife, where she fell to death in 1997 under mysterious circumstances.

Police said three surviving women, who are believed to have been living in a flat in Brixton, London, were brainwashed and had reported being beating, but did not appear to have been sexually abused.

They were occasionally allowed out of the house and detectives are working to understand the “invisible handcuffs” that were used to control them.

Local news website The Star Online reportedly said last Saturday that the Malaysian High Commission in London has contacted the British police and Freedom Charity, a UK-based charity group that initiated the rescue mission after being contacted by one of the captives, to get in touch with the Malaysian victim.