The trial of Comrade Bala

The trial of Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, is on-going in London. Also known as Comrade Bala, he was a former Singaporean communist that is being accused of rape, indecent assault and even imprisoning his own daughter for 30 years. He is said to use the ideas of communist revolution to convince his victims that what they were doing was for the eventual removal of the evil fascist western domination.

Comarde Bala was stripped of Singapore citizenship in 1977 because of his Communist/Marxist/Maoist beliefs and activities. He is known to be close to fellow Singapore communists such as G Raman and Tan Wah Piow, who also sought refuge in London after being wanted by the authorities for his activities with the Malayan communists in the 1970s. 

Aravindan Balakrishnan, 75, known as Comrade Bala, founded his own radical sect known as the ‘Worker’s Institute’ in Brixton, south London in the late 1970s.

He is accused of forcing two of his followers to regularly perform degrading sex acts and subjecting them to vicious beatings.

The communist leader also kept his own daughter captive from her birth in 1983 until she managed to escape the cult in 2013 aged 30, it is claimed.

**************

Today, the woman told the jury how Balakrishnan had treated the women 'like animals' and that he had 'taken over her mind'.

But she said she never told Balakrishnan to stop the abuse because she thought the treatment meant she was 'being taken up a level in the revolution'.

'I felt I was being taken up a level in the revolution,' she told the jury. 'Although one didn't like it, it was almost like something that one had to go through. 

'His authority was so complete, you never thought about resisting and saying "I don't want to go in, I don't want this to happen". We were like animals, we were like animals being trained.

'You couldn't rebel. It was seen as part of your training, as part of being a revolutionary soldier.'

She added: 'I thought it was a special relationship that might get me off of some of the criticism.'

She also described how she was given a time slot to go into his bedroom where she would perform degrading sex acts upon him as he sat on the sofa.

*******************

Prosecutor Rosina Cottage QC said Comrade Bala told his daughter to tell him straight away if she ever dreamt about someone else.

But when she confessed her feelings towards the left-wing Labour politician, her father said she was 'getting flu because she was being unfaithful' and that Jackie was preparing to execute her.

'He said that she was getting flu because she was being unfaithful to him, the centre of the world.' 

In another incident, Balakrishnan beat his daughter, and no windows in the house were opened for three years after she had a sexual affair with a neighbour, it is alleged.

In August 2005 the commune moved to a property on the Angel estate in Brixton, south London, when she developed feelings for a neighbour, Marius Feneck, who she called her 'angel', the court heard.

Ms Cottage told the court: 'She developed a consuming passion for him. She wrote him a poem calling him her angel. She started to find opportunities to try to talk to him.'

She sent him photos she had secretly taken of herself and then wrote to him, inviting him to come to her house, jurors heard.

He sneaked in by climbing through her window and the pair had secret trysts, the court was told.

But on one occasion, when he took his cousin over to hers for group sex, they were discovered because his mobile phone rang.

Balakrishnan rushed in and beat his daughter, threatened to 'burn her on the spot' and have her committed to a mental hospital, it is claimed.

Ms Cottage said: 'It was as though she had betrayed a husband.'

She said: 'By the time she left, aged 30, she'd never been to school or other educational establishment, had never played outside as a child or gone out with friends as a teenager or an adult, she had never had a bank or other account, had no national insurance number, she had never had her own key.

'Apart from being registered at birth and with a GP at birth - which lapsed due to returned mail, she was not registered anywhere. Not known to anyone.

Read more of the trial: 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3317085/Daughter-Maoist-cult-leader-held-prisoner-30-years-escaped-2005-went-police-station-help-Bank-Holiday.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3323979/Nurse-suffered-years-sexual-physical-abuse-hands-Maoist-cult-leader-denies-staying-13-years-convenient.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3320681/Maoist-cult-leader-groomed-raped-follower-forcing-explicit-sex-diary-shared-acolytes.html

The underground network of the Eurocommunists

On 17 December 2014, a former Singaporean, Aravindan Balakrishnan, 74, was officially charged in London with 25 counts of offences including rape, false imprisonment, indecent assault and cruelty to child under 16.

Also known as Comrade Bala, Aravindan was a Marxist Maoist sect leader who has incarcerated 3 women - 30-year-old Briton, a 57-year-old Irishwoman and a 69-year-old Malaysian - over a span of time between January 1980 and October 2013.

The case made headlines when Comrade Bala and his wife were arrested in November last year, after one of the women rang a charity claiming she had been held against her will, sparking a police inquiry.

But who was Comrade Bala? Why was his citizenship revoked?

He is reported to be a Marxist Communist and had been leading a Maoist "cult". His Singapore citizenship - which was registered in 1960 - was revoked in 1977. By then, he was already living in London.

Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry had accused him of engaging in "activities which are prejudicial to the security" of the country, after he was named a radical "closely associated with Eurocommunists".

In particular, Comrade Bala was an associate of G Raman, a former ISA detainee and a key accused of the Eurocommunist wave of arrests in the 1970s. 

G Raman was detained on 10 Feb 77 under the ISA. The government alleged that he had plotted with a group of communists based in Europe to exert pressure through the Socialist International, on the Singapore government, to release hardcore communists detainees, who were still trying to overthrow the governments of Singapore and Malaysia. G Raman had also instigated local groups including and workers to resort to agitation as part of the plan to pressure the government to release the detainees.

Click here to see the full press statement of G Raman. 

In a letter dated 24 Dec 73, G Raman supposedly wrote to Ara or Comrade Bala, enclosing therewith Dr Poh Soo Kai's statement and asking Ara to give it maximum publicity. Comrade Bala was already based in London then.

However, G Raman's most frequent contact was actually a British Marxist by the name of Malcolm Caldwell. Records showed that G Raman kept in constant contact with Caldwell; G Raman informed Caldwell of the latest political happenings in Singapore, while Caldwell conducted publicity efforts in Europe against PAP rule and the ISA. 

However, the web of the Marxist network does not end here. Those who remembered will know that G Raman was supposed to be the lawyer of Tan Wah Piow when Tan was charged for rioting. In the end, G Raman did not represent Tan as Tan defended himself.

Tan Wah Piow later escaped NS saying that something untoward might happen to him and subsequently forged his passport to enter the UK where he remains till today.

The web thickens as we later know that Malcolm Caldwell was the person that helped Tan Wah Piow obtained his permanent stay in Britain. Caldwell got Tan a place at Bradford University. Tan will later graduate from Oxford University.

Caldwell was a well-known academic and he headed the School of Oriental and African Studies at the London University. In 1978, few years after he had helped Tan, Caldwell was mysteriously killed in Cambodia when he was there on the invitation of Communist Khmer Rouge.

Later, in 1987, Tan Wah Piow would be named as the mastermind of the Marxist Conspiracy and one of those arrested during that operation was Teo Soh Lung. Shortly after G Raman was dismissed by Tan, Teo Soh Lung joined G Raman as a junior lawyer; adding more complexity to this Marxist network.

The Marxist Sojourn of Comrade Bala

Shocking news gripped the United Kingdom when a 73-year-old man named Aravindan Balakrishnan (aka Comrade Bala) was arrested on suspicion of holding three women captive in a south London flat for 30 years. According to the UK press, the victims were brainwashed by the Marxist Comrade Bala, held against their wishes for years, and were often beaten by Balakrishnan and his wife. 

The three victims were Josephine Herivel (daughter of a renowned Bletchley Park codebreaker during the Second World War), Aishah Wahab (a Colombo plan scholar who came to Britain to study in 1968) and Sian Davies, who died in 1997 (a high-flying law student who studied at Cheltenham Ladies’ College). Having an academic discussion about Marxism is one thing but taking it to the extreme is disconcerting to say the least. Furthermore, the victims being western educated individuals rekindles the point that Communism is not reserved exclusively for the typical Chinese chauvinist but also Western intellectuals who are equally attracted to the ideology.  

In a weird turn of events, the perpetrator of this heinous crime is apparently a Singaporean so obsessed with Marxist ideology that he left for England to set up a commune in the 1960s. By the 1970s, he had worked his way up and became a member of the Communist party of England's central committee. However, he soon left the party in 1974 and set up a separatist group styled as a direct component of Maoist China, calling on the Red army to come to south London to liberate working people. 

Because of his Marxist ideology, the Singapore government deemed him to be pursuing "activities that are prejudicial to the security of Singapore" and stripped of his Singapore citizenship for his close ties with Eurocommunists in 1977 (see below for newspaper clippings). Was this a blessing in disguise for Singapore? No one can say for certain but history has its unique way of eventually unravelling the truth. 

Another interesting point observed was the time period (1960s) in which Balakrishnan left for England. If we recall it was in 1963 that Operation Coldstore was launched to counteract the spread of Communism in Malaya. Was Aravindan Balakrishnan one of those Communists who slipped past the security dragnet and escaped to the United Kingdom?

In the 1960s, the United Kingdom was viewed as a safe haven for Communists and notable local Communists like Lim Chin Siong went into self-exile in the UK after being released from detention. This trend of Communists/Marxists relocating to the UK stretched till the late 70s; the most notable of whom was Singapore Marxist Tan Wah Piow who fled to the UK with forged immigration renewal endorsement and sought political asylum.