Min Yuen

The Min Yuen (Chinese: 民運; pinyin: Mínyùn; Malay: Gerakan Rakyat) was the civilian branch of the Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA), the armed wing of the Malayan Communist Party (MCP), in resisting the British colonial occupation of Malaya during the Malayan Emergency, The Min Yuen was mainly charged with supplying communist revolutionaries with food, information, and medical supplies.^[1]

Since the beginning of the Emergency, the British Government recognized the Min Yuen to be especially problematic to their counter-insurgency operations. As the Min Yuen was made up of ordinary civilians, its members were indistinguishable from the rest of the population, making it impossible for security forces to instantly recognize and arrest them. Hence, the British Government found it imperative to isolate the Min Yuen as far as possible from the communist guerrillas based in the jungle. This was achieved under the Briggs Plan when 400,000 civilians were forced into a network of internment camps called "new villages" which sought to segregate the communist revolutionaries from their civilian supporters.