The body of a Malayan insurgent trussed to a stake, brought in by a British patrol, 1952

Photograph, Malayan Emergency (1948-1960), 1952.

The British and their allies sometimes removed the heads or other body parts of dead insurgents as a way of identifying guerrillas when it was not possible to bring their corpses in from the jungle. There were also cases of the bodies being exhibited in public as a way of frightening any Communist sympathisers in the local population.