The former leader of a south London Maoist cult who stands accused of sexual abuse and imprisoning his daughter today told a court of his hatred for Britain.
Aravindan Balakrishnan — known as “Comrade Bala” — said he arrived in the UK from Singapore in the Sixties convinced he was entering “a fascist state”. The 75-year-old — grey-haired, bespectacled and hard of hearing — was giving evidence at Southwark crown court.
He said he had been brought up during the Emergency — the post-Second World War conflict in Singapore and Malaya between British colonial forces and communist insurgents.
He witnessed “cruelty, killing and torture” by the British of “the same people who had helped them against the Japanese” in the war, he added.
The court has heard how after setting up a commune in Brixton in the Seventies, Balakrishnan “exalted” in his power over women members and bent them to his will. His daughter testified that he controlled her life and she was unable to escape until she was 30.
Today he recounted his life story to the jury. Balakrishnan said he had been born in Kerala, in what was then British India, but moved to Singapore when he was nine. At university there, he headed the Socialist Club as “you were not allowed to call yourself a communist in Singapore at that time”.
He added: “I came from a background of the Emergency in Singapore. The cruelty was unbelievable, especially to people who had helped [the British] against the Japanese,” he said.
“There was cruelty, killing, torture, arresting and deporting whole families back to China. That’s not something anyone would have liked.”
In 1963 he came to London on a British passport and took part in the first student sit-in at LSE: “I believed that Britain was a fascist state then.”
Balakrishnan insisted the commune was set up to care for the sister of his wife Chandra, who suffered severe epilepsy and was disabled. Doctors had given her three months to live but “she is still alive now because I spent a long time developing her mind,” he said.
“The foundation of the collective was very much influenced by her condition ... and the collective was built around helping her.”
Balakrishnan, of Enfield, denies rape, indecent assault and assault causing actual bodily harm to two women between 1979 to 1992.
He also denies cruelty to his daughter when she was a child under 16 between 1983 and 1999, and false imprisonment from 1999 to 2013. The case continues.
