New village

Most were surrounded by barbed wire and watchtowers to stop people from escaping, with guards being ordered to kill anyone who attempted to leave outside of curfew hours.

To this end, a massive program of forced resettlement of rural workers was undertaken, under which about 500,000 people (roughly 10% of Malaya's population) were eventually transferred from their homes and housed in guarded camps termed "new villages".

[3] Although most of the victims of the forced relocation and new villages were ethnically Chinese, the aboriginal Orang Asli were also a target due to their homelands being in the regions frequented by the MNLA.

[citation needed] Upon completion of the resettlement program, the British initiated a starvation campaign, rationing food supplies within the camps and torching rural farmlands to starve out the Communists guerrillas.

Historian John D. Leary in his study of the Orang Asli during the Emergency argued that the forced resettlement used to create the new villages brought "misery, disease and death" to many Malaysians.