Shamsiah Fakeh

Shamsiah Fakeh (1924 – 20 October 2008) was a Malaysian nationalist and feminist. She was the leader of Angkatan Wanita Sedar (AWAS), Malaysia's first nationalist women organisation and a prominent Malay leader of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).

Following a stroke in 1999, Shamsiah had generally been in poor health and was bedridden by 2007. She died on 20 October 2008 at the residence of her son, Jamaluddin Ibrahim (father of Jamaliah Jamaluddin), due to respiratory failure and was buried at the Sungai Besi Muslim cemetery at 5.30pm of the same day.

Her memoirs were first published in 2004 by Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) but was immediately suppressed by the authorities and withdrawn from circulation. A new edition as well as a Chinese language translation was published in 2007 by the Strategic Information and Research Development Centre (SIRD) which saw UKM reintroduce their edition into the market.

Shamsiah and her family applied to the Malaysian government for permission to return to the country from 1985 onwards. Following the terms of the 1989 peace agreement signed between the CPM and the Government of Malaysia in Haadyai, Thailand, permission was finally granted on 23 July 1994 and Shamsiah returned along with her husband, their three sons and their four grandchildren. Upon their arrival, the family was met by Special Branch officers who took them to a resort and for about 10 days, they were debriefed and briefed on the local customs and political scenario in Malaysia. One of the conditions for the family's return was a bar on participation in politics and for the first few years upon their return, Shamsiah was not even allowed to participate in academic speaking engagements. Her Chinese daughters-in-law were initially barred entry into the country but were eventually granted permanent residency.

In 1981, the defected chairman of the CPM, Musa Ahmad, claimed that Shamsiah had committed infanticide by killing her third child while in the jungle to avoid capture.

Her fourth husband, Wahi Anuwar, was a fellow CPM member who was captured by British and imprisoned. Shamsiah was told that he had surrendered and thought he was dead. He was, in fact, imprisoned for 15 years and eventually died in 1980.

As a result of faction politics within the CPM and the chaos that resulted from the Cultural Revolution in China during the period, Shamsiah and her husband became increasingly estranged from the party's Secretary General, Chin Peng. Both Shamsiah and her husband were expelled from the party in 1972. As they were unable to return to Malaysia (established in 1963 with the federation of Malaya, Singapore, British North Borneo, and Sarawak), they settled in the town of Xiangtan, Hunan and were assigned to work in a steel factory. She also served as a Malay language consultant with Radio Beijing and the Beijing Foreign Languages Institute.

The couple remained in China and served as broadcasters with Radio Peking's Malay language service airing propaganda broadcasts via shortwave to Malaya. In 1965, they were assigned by the party to Indonesia to set up a legation office of the Malayan National Liberation League. Their stint was, however, short lived as they were arrested later that year due to the anti-communist purges in Indonesia in the aftermath of the 30 September Movement. They remained imprisoned until 1967 when they obtained their freedom through the mediation of the embassy of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and obtained passage via Vietnam back to China.

Her final marriage was to another CPM member, Ibrahim Mohamad, in 1956. They remained married until his death in 2006.

With the banning of the PKMM, API and AWAS in 1948 prior to the declaration of the Malayan Emergency followed by the mass arrests of left leaning Malay nationalists, Shamsiah retreated to the jungles and joined the predominantly Malay 10th Regiment of the Malayan People's Liberation Army of the CPM operating from Lubok Kawah near Temerloh, Pahang. When the 10th Regiment was forced to retreat together with the 11th and 12th Regiment to the Thai-Malaya border in 1953 after a series of military defeats beginning with the Battle of Padang Piul in 1949, Shamsiah joined the retreat and continued to fight as a guerilla until she was sent to the China for further education together with her husband, Ibrahim Mohamad, in 1956.

She was also briefly married to Ahmad Boestamam, the leader of PKMM's youth wing, Angkatan Pemuda Insaf (Awakened Youth Organisation; API). In her memoirs, she claimed that her marriage with Boestamam broke down due to her disagreement with the latter's decision to pay a fine to avoid a jail sentence for publishing a book deemed seditious by government in 1947. Notably the marriage was never mentioned in any of Boestamam's memoirs and writings.

As a fiery orator, Shamsiah was scouted by both the United Malays National Organisation and the Malay Nationalist Party (Malay: Partai Kebangsaan Melayu Malaya, PKMM), the main Malay political parties in the post-war period. She eventually chose to join PKMM because she believed it was more dedicated to the struggle for Malaya's independence whereas she considered UMNO a puppet of the British. In 1946, she was asked to lead PKMM's women's wing, Angkatan Wanita Sedar (Cohort of Awakened Women; AWAS).