Britain 'covered up massacre of Malaysians', court to hear The Government's refusal to hold a formal investigation into the massacre will be challenged during a two-day judicial review hearing due to begin at the High Court today. "I hope this government gives us fairness," Lim Ah Yin, 76, whose father was among the victims, told a press conference yesterday. She heard the shots that killed him. Even as I recall the memory I still feel angry how these people were killed. There was no reason. John Halford, one of the families' UK-based lawyers, said the victims "weren't in any sense combatants, weren't offering any kind of threat to the British troops who killed them." He added: "That in itself is serious enough, but what then followed was a cover-up that has basically lasted the following 60 years to this day, where the British Government has denied that anything untoward happened at all." The massacre, involving a platoon of Scots Guards, occurred on Dec 12, 1948, while troops were seeking to suppress the Communist insurgency, the Malayan Emergency. Soldiers shot 24 people before setting light to the village in Batang Kali. The official account says that the victims were attempting to escape when they were shot. At one point the Government opened an inquiry into the killings but authorities dropped it in 1970 due to what authorities said was a lack of evidence. A spokeswoman for the Foreign Office said the length of time that had elapsed meant that an investigation would be ineffective. "Accounts of what happened conflict and virtually all the witnesses are dead," she said. In these circumstances it is very unlikely that a public inquiry could come up with recommendations which would help to prevent any recurrence.