1953: Mat Indera, for the Bukit Kepong incident
Add comment January 30th, 2020 Headsman
Muhammad Indera — popularly known as Mat Indera — was executed on this date in 1953 in British-controlled Malaysia.
The imam turned Communist insurgent directed one of the signal bloodbaths of the Malayan Emergency — the tumultuous decade of political and guerrilla struggle against the British Empire for sovereignty.
Mat Indera’s contribution was the 1950 Bukit Kepong incident — an armed attack on a police station in that town that killed 19 policemen.
The 1981 movie Bukit Kepong dramatizes the events in question.
The British put a handsome price on the man’s head, and in 1952 someone took it.
His name and his deed are still controversial enough in Malaysia that a politician in 2011 found himself upon a sticky wicket for suggesting that Mat Indera was an anti-imperial hero.
On this day..
- 1945: Andrew Brown, Leading Aircraftsman - 2019
- 1937: Georgy Pyatakov, Anti-Soviet Parallel Trotskyist - 2018
- 1944: The Homfreyganj massacre of the Andaman Islands - 2017
- 1744: Skinnar Per Andersson, legislator - 2016
- 1801: Four entrapped Jacobins - 2015
- 1857: Jean-Louis Verger, doctrinaire - 2014
- 1913: John Williams, the Case of the Hooded Man - 2013
- 2011: Ahmed Ali Hussein, enemy cleric - 2012
- 1474: Not the Archer of Meudon - 2011
- 1996: William Flamer, Alito'd - 2010
- 1661: Oliver Cromwell, posthumously - 2009
- 1649: Charles I - 2008
Entry Filed under: 20th Century,Arts and Literature,Capital Punishment,Death Penalty,England,Execution,History,Malaysia,Murder,Occupation and Colonialism,Wartime Executions
Tags: 1950s, 1953, bukit kepong, january 30, mat indera
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