Lee Meng

Irene Lee, whose husband, Detective Corporal Jimmy Loke, was assassinated by communist guerrillas in Penang in April 1951, decided to join the Malayan police force where she was promoted to Detective-Inspector, and was subsequently posted to Special Branch headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.^[4] Irene Lee's work as a detective led to the British colonial government acquiring information concerning the working of the Chinese communist party, which led eventually to Lee Meng's capture by the colonial forces.

Following a raid on a communist guerrilla camp in Selangor in early February 1952, documents from the abandoned camp revealed the identity of a Chinese woman serving as a courier member from Singapore into Johor which identified as Ah Shu or Ah Soo, a Chinese school teacher and the wife of Wong Fook Kwang (Tit Fung), the leader of the Communist-controlled Workers Protection Corps in Singapore.^[4] The woman's husband was responsible for the killings of pineapple and rubber merchant Lim Teck Kin and several others including a policeman, a factory supervisor and a manager at Hock Lee Bus Company in Singapore. Once the identity of Ah Shu was identified, Irene was sent by her department into Singapore in February 1952 to track the woman and follow a trail that would ultimately lead to Lee's arrest and her eventual banishment to mainland China.^[4]

Lee was captured by the British Malayan police force in Ipoh in July 1952, tried for having a hand grenade in her possession and sentenced to death for her responsibility in issuing orders for several murders.^[5][6][7] In February 1953, a petition was signed by 60 members of the Malayan Parliament to the Sultan of Perak to grant a pardon to Lee since her early petition to appeal the Privy Council had been dismissed by the Judicial Committee.^[8] Within the same year, the Hungarian People's Republic government offered to swap British national Edgar Sanders, who had been charged in Budapest for suspected espionage, for her. ^[1][3][7][9] The British Prime Minister at the time, Winston Churchill initially refused but following the order by the Sultan of Perak who agreed to pardon and persuaded the British authorities,^[7] along with the efforts of Lim Phaik Gan, a British-born Malayan woman lawyer and diplomat,^[10] her sentence was commuted and she was released to the People's Republic of China in 1964, after serving her term for 11 years in Taiping prison.^[11][12]

Following her banishment to China, Lee was reunited with her mother, with whom she stayed until her mother's death.^[13] In 1965, she married Chen Tien, a fellow exiled Malayan Communist insurgent and one of Chin Peng's most trusted aides.^[4] Both had intended to move to southern Thailand, but on 3 September 1990, Tien died of lung cancer, which made her indecisive whether she should move or stay.^[13] In August 2007, Lee visited Malaysia to meet one of her trial lawyers, Lim, to thank her for securing a commutation of her conviction.^[4] Lee died in exile in Guangzhou, China, on 2 June 2012 at the age of 86.^[4]