Seelan Palay's Blog

Al Jazeera: No welfare for Sri Lanka's Tamils

2009-07-09T14:45:00.001+08:00

Singapore not swayed by India gay sex ruling: minister

2009-07-07T12:03:00.005+08:00

Seelan: My dear Indian National friends, before you continue wishing that Lee Kuan Yew runs your country, please understand that his idea of 'progress' can only come along with the severe repression and control that he exercises over almost every aspect of society, politics, and especially your freedom. Here's a quote:

“I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn’t be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters – who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”
- Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, Straits Times, 20 April 1987

Singapore not swayed by India gay sex ruling: minister

Source: AFP

An Indian court's decision to repeal a ban on gay sex will not lead Singapore to overturn a similar colonial-era law, the city-state's law minister has been quoted as saying.

Legislation banning "carnal intercourse against the law of nature" is a remnant of British colonial rule in both countries.

Last week, the Delhi High Court ruled that the 1860 statute banning consensual gay sex violated basic individual rights guaranteed by the constitution.

But Singapore Law Minister K. Shanmugam said his country was unlikely to move towards decriminalisation of gay sex, as most of the public did not support such a move.

"If the majority of our population is against homosexuality, then it's not for the government to say we are going to force something against the wishes of the people," the Today newspaper quoted Shanmugam as saying.

He said however that Singapore's courts were free to interpret the law as the Indian court had done.

"We won't change the law, but how that is interpreted is up to the courts," the Straits Times quoted the minister as saying.

"It is not our position to tell the courts what to do."

Singapore's ban on gay sex punishes offenders with up to two years in jail, although it has rarely been enforced.

In October 2007, Singapore legalised oral and anal sex between heterosexual couples, but lawmakers retained the ban on gay sex, rejecting a petition by gay rights activists to abolish the law.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said at the time that Singapore remains a conservative society and that abolishing the law could "send the wrong signal", prompting gay activists to push for legalisation of same-sex marriage.

One Nation Under Lee currently not available in Youtube

2009-07-03T13:24:00.005+08:00

The message, 'This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions.' will turn up for you now if you try to view One Nation Under Lee on youtube.

You can still visit http://one-nation-under-lee.org/ for other ways in which you can watch and download the film.

'I curse the day I was born a Singaporean'

2009-06-30T00:01:00.000+08:00

Letter by Olinda Brazil originally published at Malaysiakini.com

It is very amusing to see how Malaysians (probably of the minority races) have spasms of ecstasy when referring to Lee Kuan Yew (LKY) in Malaysian forums. From across the border in Malaysia, Singapore seems like Wonderland and LKY like a benevolent god.

As a Chinese Singaporean, born of Malaysian parents who took up citizenship here in Singapore, I can understand why they feel this way. The grouses are familiar: NEP, corruption and ineptitude in governance.

Let me provide an insight on how it is like to be a Singaporean. I must first stress that new immigrants or Permanent Residents (PRs) from Malaysia (like my parents) will not experience any disadvantages. It is the children of these people (like me) or new PRs' children (who will be Singaporean) who will feel the disadvantages most sorely, and curse the fact they were born in Singapore:

On the relative development of both countries - Singpore developed well largely due to early good advice given to LKY, its strategic position, the lack of natural disasters and its easily-governable size. Malaysia lags behind in spite of its natural resources because of its larger size, poorer planning/ execution, more difficult decision-making and corruption.

However, Singapore has problems at present because its development model is outdated. As LKY still insists on the methods recommended tens of years ago, trouble is looming. There is no impetus to change because there is no one who dares to disagree. The media prints only propaganda, the courts will always find the government blameless as the government runs 70% of the economy.

The opposition has been persecuted to the point where only those with nothing to lose will dare to oppose, and the common people are scared to death of arbitrary arrest.

Yes, corruption is more widespread in Malaysia. But in Singapore, it also exists - though restricted to the top political elite and in a legalised form. In Malaysia, many get a share of the cake but in Singapore, only a select few get a share of the cake.

Many scoff at the position of the Malay rulers. But are they aware of the many dubious acts of LKY and his cronies - his ‘cooperation’ with the wartime Japanese, then the Communists and then the British (he betrayed the latter two in the end)?

And the actions taken by him and his courts to destroy the opposition, moves which are reported in a twisted manner by his press? A shining example of good character?

Yes, up till recently, Singapore was performing excellently. But at the same time, the ordinary people had the fruits of their labour taken away. We seem rich but yet are in debt. The government apartments are now exorbitantly priced. Cars are a necessity (given the poor performance of the profit-oriented public transport companies) but are also exorbitantly priced.

Much of our money is locked in the Provident Fund and it is becoming impossible to get it back while we are still alive. Yes, all races are treated equally - and they are sucked dry equally. This is the pivotal point in times when things became bad. By the way, the money in the Provident Fund (as well as in the reserves) is used for investment - for which there is almost no transparency and accountability.

Huge losses have been incurred in the current crisis yet the ruling party still baulks at spending a million or two on the poor. Oh, and we spend twice as much on defence as Malaysia despite being at least 400 times smaller.

Instead of addressing the root of the problems, LKY's son (yes, his son - by the way did Dr Mahathir install his son as prime minister?) decided to take action on only one aspect of the problem, in a negative manner. Instead of lowering costs for citizens, and therefore maintaining wage levels, he decided to import foreigners to lower cost.

It is effective - foreigners earn much more per hour than they do back home. They are stuck with the same employer for the duration of their visa, hence they are obedient. If they are sacked, they have to go home. And home means facing unpaid debts which they incurred in getting to Singapore. So which foreign worker will dare to resist exploitation?

This means the ‘choosy’ Singaporeans get to twiddle thumbs at home. And would the Singaporean ministers care? They are paid $S$2 million basic per year, a performance bonus of up to eight months, and get a pension when they reach retirement age. Good clean governance, huh? Oh yes, the judges are paid the same too so not surprisingly they always find for the government.

Malaysians are LKY's top choice. It gratifies him to poach bright minority students which his old pal Dr Mahathir had educated. They get good jobs (there is supposedly a quota to be filled), will not get sacked (as it means they go back to Dr M) and are favoured by corporations, as they do not have national service obligations.

None want to be citizens - at the end of the day, they will retire to the Malaysia (which they hate so much) to enjoy the Singapore dollar’s strength. God have mercy on the children they leave behind!

Currently one person in three is a foreigner in Singapore. The press chooses to obfuscate matters by lumping citizens and PRs together in their reporting (as 'resident population') so the huge number of foreigners in Singapore is understated.

To all Malaysians who love LKY, you have to be ruled by him, not as a PR turned citizen, but as a born and bred Singaporean, to understand that he is not what you think.Y ou curse Dr Mahathir because you know LKY will treat you like lords. You are correct but very shortsighted and shallow.

Dr Mahathir may be much less than perfect, but only ignorant fools will say LKY is better than him. Singapore residents receive two broadsheet pages daily on how bad things are in Malaysia, but no Singaporean commentator will blast LKY and compare him to Dr Mahathir.

Why? Because it is stupid to compare - we have not been ruled by Dr Mahathir or Umno so how are we able to compare? Using anecdotal evidence supplied by privileged fellow countrymen is poor practice.

Police investigates filmmaker over screening

2009-06-25T10:56:00.012+08:00

Fellow artist Martyn See writes on my investigation:

The police has commenced formal investigations against artist Seelan Palay for the screening of his film One Nation Under Lee. He is allegedly being investigated under section 21 of the Films Act which states that —(1) Any person who —(a) has in his possession;(b) exhibits or distributes; or(c) reproduces,any film without a valid certificate, approving the exhibition of the film, shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable on conviction.

Needless to say, the above law makes criminals out of just everyone who has ever screen an unlicensed video in Singapore, even if held in the comfort of his or her own home.

During the private premiere of the film held at the Peninsula-Excelsior Hotel last year, censorship officers entered the screening room and seized a DVD of the film (see videos here and here). The censors has yet to rate the film, although a submission has recently been made (see here).

Below is a transcript of the police interview, held on Monday 21st June at the Cantonment Police Complex, which I recieved via email from Seelan.

Police investigation regarding my film One Nation Under Lee

Introductory question (Q): What do you know about the facts of the case? (Posed to me as "Tell me about yourself" by the officer but strangely printed as "What do you know about the facts of the case?" in the version I was to sign at the end.)
Answer (A): I am an artist.

Q1. Can you remember where you were on 17 May 2008 at about 2pm?
A1. I cannot recall.

Q2. I am now informing you that the investigation into this offence is of the incident that happened at Excelsior Hotel on 17 May 2008. Do you recall this incident?
A2. I do not recall it as an offence.

Q3. Can you explain why you were at the Excelsior Hotel on 17 may 2008?
A3. I remember that I was at the Excelsior Hotel on that date to attend a private event.

Q4. Are you aware of a film that was screened on this date at Tulip Room at Excelsior Hotel?
A4. Yes.

Q5. Were you in the Tulip Room when this film was screened?
A5. Yes.

Q6. What was this film all about?
A6. That is a private matter.

Q7. Who is the one who is in charge of this event?
A7. It was a private event so that is none of anyone's concern.

Q8. Do you know who brought the film to the Tulip Room on 17 May 2008?
A8. That is a private matter.

Q9. Do you know who prepared this film?
A9. That is a private matter.

Q10. How long was this film screened?
A10. I cannot recall.

Q11. Can you remember what happened after the film was screened?
A11. Some uninvited guests entered the room.

Q12. Do you know who these uninvited guests were?
A12. I cannot recall.

Q13. Can you explain what happened after the film ended?
A13. The uninvited guests asked for the DVD of the film. The DVD was given to them.

Q14. How many copies were there in the room?
A14. I do not know.

Q15. Who handed over the DVD to the uninvited guests?
A15. I cannot recall.

Q16. What is your role in this private event?
A16. That is a private matter.

Q17. Who was operating the systems when the film was screened?
A17. That is a private matter.

Q18. Were you at Jalan Gelenggang on 16 May, one night before the incident?
A18. I cannot recall.

Q19. I'm going to show you a document, can you tell me if you have seen this document before? (Officer then shows me a letter from MDA apparently sent the night before the event with a warning not to screen the film. Films Act sections were quoted in the letter.)
A19. I cannot recall.

Q20. The officers who served this letter at No.2A Jalan Gelenggang claim that you were the one who received the letter. What have you got to say about this?
A20. Did they identify themselves as police officers? If they claim it was me, did they ask for my name or IC?

Q21. Did you remove the DVD from the player and hand it over to Madam ---? (Name undisclosed for the purposes of this email)
A21. That is a private matter.

Q22. Do you have anything else to add?
A22. The uninvited guests should be investigated for barging in to and disrupting a private event.

END.

by Seelan Palay

Standing up for the people on bended knees (Criticism of Workers Party)

2009-06-23T11:30:00.002+08:00

Written by Ng E-Jay
23 June 2009

In his no-holes-barred masterpiece Requiem for an unbending Singaporean, former President C.V. Devan Nair recounted how, after J.B. Jeyaretnam had won the 1981 Anson by-election, the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew said that he would make him “crawl on his bended knees, and beg for mercy“.

But the former Worker’s Party leader was made of far sterner stuff, and in Devan Nair’s own words, “he never did crawl on bended knees, or ever begged for mercy, and it is to Lee Kuan Yew’s eternal shame that Jeyaretnam will leave the political scene with his head held high, enjoying a martyrdom conferred on him by Lee.”

Today, it still remains to be seen whether the Worker’s Party is able to live up to J.B. Jeyaretnam’s principles and embody the same kind of moral rectitude and courage so consistently displayed by its former stalwart.

Not much progress after ending GE 2006 on a high note

The Worker’s Party fielded 20 candidates in the 2006 General Elections and obtained an average of 38.43% of the valid votes cast in all the constituencies they contested.

The Worker’s Party’s successful attempt at renewal and their ability to field a fresh slate of younger candidates at the 2006 General Elections led many to believe that they had finally come of age.

However, despite ending GE 2006 on a high note, the Worker’s Party has thus far been unable to capitalize on the new-found momentum and rising wave of anti-establishment sentiment.

Not long after the 2006 elections, two WP candidates, Mr Chia Ti Lik and Mr Goh Meng Seng, resigned from the party due to internal party differences.

Recently this year in March, at least four other WP members also resigned from the party, including Mr Abdul Salim Harun and Ms Lee Wai Leng, both of whom had stood in Ang Mo Kio GRC against PM Lee Hsien Loong’s team in GE 2006.

The Worker’s Party has to find a way of stepping up its recruitment to make up for the loss of these young, promising party cadres.

There is an urgent need for WP to address the way it retains talents within its ranks. If the WP is truly serious about continuing the party rejuvenation and growth started after its poor showing in the 2001 elections, it must make its existing members feel appreciated and give them every motivation to remain with and contribute to the party. Human capital is its only enduring resource.

An Approved Opposition?

The Worker’s Party has also been unable to shed its image of being overly moderate and being unwilling to be hard-hitting where necessary.

To be fair, the WP has been consistently making their voices heard in Parliament and criticizing Government policies where they feel criticism is due. Their Parliamentary speeches are also generally well thought-out given the time constraints imposed in Parliament.

However, the WP has made it known that they are willing to work within the system. Throughout the years, their track record has shown that they are not keen on challenging the fundamentals of our political system, despite the fact that:

elections not being free and fair, and are still under the sole purview of the Prime Minister’s Office,
there is little separation of powers between the judiciary, the legislature and the Executive, and
we do not have a free and independent media.

While I acknowledge the WP’s efforts in providing constructive criticism of Government policies, their implicit support of the system only serves to enable the PAP to entrench the system further.

Before WP’s 50th Anniversary dinner in 2007, Mr Low Thia Khiang gave the PAP a “passing grade” in governance, and even called certain opposition leaders “mad dogs”, a remark that was reported by the Straits Times.

During the Mas Selamat saga in 2008, Mr Low Thia Khiang also refused to answer PM Lee’s question on whether he thought DPM Wong Kan Seng should resign. PM Lee sacarstically remarked: “No answer. So I guess that settles the point“.

These examples, including Organizing Secretary’s Yaw Shin Leong’s public confession that he had voted for the PAP in the last election, only serve to reinforce the perception that WP is an “approved opposition“.

Sylvia Lim: “The laws are fair and just”

The Worker’s Party’s tendency to lend credibility and support to PAP’s system of government was clearly on display at the 2007 International Bar Association (IBA) Annual Conference in Singapore.

During the conference, WP chairperson Sylvia Lim was making a point about checks on executive power when she observed that as much as she desired political reforms, these have to be pushed within the boundaries of the law. She also said that election outcomes must be respected.

After claiming that Singapore’s laws are fair and just, Sylvia Lim went on to say that Singapore does not need any external help in the rule of law, and that “we Singaporeans are quite capable of deciding what kind of country we want … I don’t think we need anyone outside to canvass our agenda for us.”

Earlier, Sylvia Lim had prefaced her speech by saying she wished to “draw a balance” between the rule-of-law positions held by Deputy Prime Minister S. Jayakumar and Singapore Democratic Party politicians, who had questioned Singapore’s rule of law. (Straits Times, “We don’t need outside interference, says Sylvia Lim“, 20 Oct 2007.)

In a country where basic civil rights such as the freedom of speech and assembly are regularly denied, it is astounding how Sylvia Lim could have come up with such a blatantly one-sided assessment of the situation that conveniently forgets all the bad things that the ruling PAP has done to civil rights activists and democracy advocates in Singapore.

Sylvia Lim’s remarks drew a strong rebuttal from the Singapore Democratic Party, which posted a message on its website stating:

The truth is that Singaporeans, while wanting to decide what kind of country we want for ourselves, have been unable to do so because our rights, including our right to free and fair elections have been crushed by the PAP.

It is therefore disappointing that as an opposition leader, Ms Lim feels that the election system is acceptable and that the outcome must be respected. We may not be able to do anything to change the election outcome but we do not have to respect it.

We need to fight to win back these rights and we need to change our political system. In short, we need reform.

It is true that the PAP says it doesn’t want foreign interference. It is also a lie. What do you call the National Wages Council having American, German and Japanese business representatives sitting on its board deciding the wage levels of Singaporean workers?

Help for Singaporeans so that they can be empowered to speak up against the suffocating grip of the PAP is not interference. Interference is when a foreign government supports one party over another as the British did with Mr Lee Kuan Yew and his wing in the PAP.

For the record, the SDP welcomes support for efforts to democratise Singapore. Beyond that we reject attempts to influence the policies of any political party by outsiders.

It is disappointing that the Chairman of the Workers’ Party cannot see this distinction but instead parrots what the PAP so disingenuously advocates.

Appeasing the PAP so that we can be an acceptable opposition is not to “draw a balance” as Ms Lim claims. It is rather an unfortunate tactic that will be conveniently exploited by the PAP.

The SDP said it before and we say it again: Singapore’s Opposition cannot stand up for the people on bended knees.

A party that chooses to remain aloof

The Worker’s Party has thus far chosen to remain aloof, seldom cooperating publicly with other opposition parties except during an election period when everyone wants to avoid 3 cornered fights.

For example, the WP has consistently avoided participating in seminars and forums organized by the SDP, such as the forum on electoral reform held on 20 Jan 2008 and the Opposition Unity forum held earlier this year. They also did not participate in the Budget forum organized by the Reform Party on 28 Feb 2009.

So what is WP’s strategy?

All this discussion begs the question: So what exactly is WP’s political strategy?

The Worker’s Party appears content at playing the role of a “moderate” opposition party that appeals to the middle ground — people who are neither very pro-PAP nor very pro-opposition, but open to ideas from both sides of the fence.

The WP might believe that the largest share of votes can be captured from this segment of the voting population, hence they have chosen to concentrate all their efforts on winning hearts and minds here.

They may also believe that by playing the role of a moderate opposition that only challenges Government policies but never questions the health or integrity of the political system, they would be allowed a space under PAP’s umbrella.

In other words, they believe that political change can only come about by working within the framework designed by the PAP. They may also believe that the majority of voters want opposition parties to follow this path.

The WP strategy of “standing up for the people on bended knees” might be nothing more than very shrewd political calculation on their part.

The Worker’s Party knows that it does not appeal to “fringe” voters who want a vociferous opposition, but it also knows that when it comes to voting, the majority of fringe voters will still cast their vote for whichever opposition party stands in their constituency, including the WP.

The WP can thus let vociferous opposition parties like the SDP canvass support from the fringe segments of the voting population, whilst sitting back and collecting the benefits during the elections. It is a win-win situation for the WP: it can enjoy the result of work done by others, but avoid antagonizing the PAP.

The WP knows that after the period of renewal and rejuvenation, it is the opposition party that has the most numbers on its side, and can field a credible slate of candidates during elections. It might therefore think that there is no necessity to cooperate with other opposition parties in between elections, because during election time, others will have to come knocking on its door.

However, the day will eventually come when the people of Singapore want a more robust challenge to the PAP and want mainstream opposition parties to start playing a greater role in building a better political and economic system for all Singaporeans.

If the Worker’s Party remains content at playing its current role of being a non-confrontational party that avoids challenging the system even though the system is blatantly flawed, it will one day start to lose mind-share to more progressive and outspoken parties like the SDP.

If Mr Low Thia Khiang and the Worker’s Party wish to build an enduring legacy for themselves, that is something they should think about seriously.

SATYAMEVA JAYATE (Elangovan's latest play)

2009-06-19T11:25:00.005+08:00

Seelan: The latest work of Singapore's most controversial playwright, Elangovan, will be showing on 1st and 2nd August 2009. Please attend and enjoy this interesting upcoming production.

SATYAMEVA JAYATE (TRUTH ALONE TRIUMPHS)
presented by AGNI KOOTTHU (THEATRE OF FIRE)
written & directed by Elangovan
performed (in English) by Ahamed Ali Khan (Gandhi) & Hemang Yadav (Godse)

Sat 1 & Sun 2 Aug 2009, 8 pm, $20, The Substation Theatre (Tickets available at The Substation Box-0ffice - Tel: 63377800)

"We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light." ~ Plato

SYNOPSIS

Mahatma Gandhi, the messiah of peace is the pioneer and perfector of Satyagraha - the resistance of tyranny through mass civil disobedience.

On 30 Jan 1948, at 5.10 pm, Gandhi leaves his room at the Birla House. He walks briskly to the prayer ground. Gandhi greets the waiting crowd. Nathuram Godse folds his hands and says 'Namaste'. Pushing aside one of the girls walking with Gandhi, he shoots him at pointblank range. Three bullets hit Gandhi. Godse surrenders to the police. He is hanged till dead at Ambala Prison on 15 November 1949.

Godse's defence was not allowed to be publicized by the Indian government for more than 50 years. According to Justice Gopal Das Khosla, one of Godse's judges, who did play a role in convicting him: "the audience was visibly and audibly moved. There was a deep silence when he ceased speaking. Many women were in tears and men were coughing and searching for their handkerchiefs. I have, however, no doubt that had the audience on that day been constituted into a jury and entrusted with the task of deciding Godse's appeal, they would have brought in a verdict of 'not guilty' by an overwhelming majority."

Both Gandhi and Godse believed in TRUTH. But they took different roads to truth. Is Godse really the mad Hindu fanatic as portrayed by the establishment that sentenced him to death?

Both Gandhi and Godse meet in "Trishanku's heaven". [Trishanku's heaven is a mythological world created by sage Viswamitra for mortal king Trishanku who wanted to go to heaven. The immortals refused to accept Trishanku and he was marooned between earth and heaven for eternity.]

They debate about their preferred modes of 'speaking truth to power' - Ahimsa (Non-violence) and Himsa (Violence). Godse's memoryscapes contest the official truths of the Gandhian era to reclaim history.

Godse's gun that he had used to kill Gandhi is on the table with one bullet left. Both are forced to play Russian-roulette as only then they will be liberated from the stalemate position in Trishanku's heaven. Their cross-examinations of each other exhume the nature of tyranny in our lives, and examine the relevance of peace and love to survive as human beings in this violent world.

But a bullet is fired to seal the glaring discrepancies in the mythifications.

EXCERPT

GODSE: The Muslim squads in Pakistan were well supplied with daggers, swords, spears and even fire-arms. They had bands of stabbers and their auxiliaries, who covered the assailant, ambushed the victims and disposed the bodies. The bands were subsidized by the Muslim League. The assassins were paid cash for the number of Hindus and Sikhs bagged. Women were raped in the presence of their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons. After being raped they were distributed among the Muslims to be kept as concubines or were forcibly married. A large number were carried into the tribal territory, and became untraceable. Children were snatched from the hands of their parents, tossed on spears and swords, and sometimes thrown alive into the fire. Women's breasts, noses and arms were lopped off. Sticks and pieces of iron were thrust into their private parts. The bellies of pregnant women were ripped open and the fetus was thrown out. All these happened at a time when, in India, you undertook your last fast to get better treatment for the Muslims in India.

GANDHI: 15 August 1947. Independence day. The Sikhs in Amritsar slaughtered the male Muslims. The Muslim women were stripped, raped and then paraded naked through the city to the Golden Temple, where their throats were cut. A British officer of the Punjab Boundary Force found four Muslim babies roasted like piglets on spits in a village raided by Sikhs. On both sides, a man's sexual organ became a target. In India, Sikhs and Hindus checked the trains going to Pakistan and slaughtered every circumcised male. In Pakistan, the Muslims blocked every train going to India and slaughtered every uncircumcised male. RSS groups kidnapped a Muslim woman wearing a Burqa. They soaked her in petrol and set her ablaze outside the gate of Nehru's York Road residence. The vultures were so bloated by their feasts that they could not fly. The stray dogs were so choosy that they ate only the livers of the corpses. But the Harijans, Hindu untouchables were spared. In the Pakistan refugee camps, the Sikhs and Hindus complained to their Muslim guards that they were forced to live in filth as there were no untouchable to clean the latrines. In Karachi, the sanitation system collapsed. So the Muslims allowed the untouchables to wear green and white armbands similar to those of the Muslim National Guard for protection from killing squads. [Laughs] It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

Mahathir critisizes Lee Kuan Yew's visit to Malaysia

2009-06-16T10:54:00.006+08:00

THE MODERN MIDDLE KINGDOM
By Mahathir Mohamed

1. Ancient China considered itself the centre of the world and called itself the Middle Kingdom. And well it should. It was far more advanced in every way than Europe of the Dark Ages. Maybe China is thinking of making a comeback.

2. But we already have a new Middle Kingdom now. During Lee Kuan Yew's triumphant visit to Malaysia he made it known to the Malaysian supplicants that Singapore regards the lands within 6000 miles radius of Singapore as its hinterland. This includes Beijing and Tokyo and of course Malaysia.

3. Of course this self-deluding perception places Singapore at the centre of a vast region. It is therefore the latter day Middle Kingdom. The rest are peripheral and are there to serve the interest of this somewhat tiny Middle Kingdom.

4. Kuan Yew also explained that the fear Singapore Chinese would control Iskandar whatever is not justified. Malays can also work there. It is good to know that Malays can also work in their own country. I wonder as what? Maybe someone should make a study of the Malays of Singapore just to know what it is like to be a Malay minority in their own country.

5. As for the 3 sen per 1000 gallons of raw water supplied to Singapore Lee says it was absurd for the former Prime Minister of hinterland Malaysia to ask to increase it to RM8 per 1000 gallons. I don't know where he got this. Some Malaysian officers did suggest this figure but we were ready to bargain and maybe settle for RM3. And why not? Johore sells raw water to Melaka for 30 sen, 1000% higher than to Singapore. And Melaka is, I believe, a part of Malaysia! Some Malaysians may see the irony of this.

6. The great 5th Prime Minister has decided that since the people of Johore did not want to sell sand to Singapore, Malaysia would not build any bridge, straight or crooked, or negotiate and settle the other issues like the Central Provident Fund, the Railway land. Maybe the 5th Prime Minister thinks he is punishing Singapore. Actually he is giving Singapore what its wants including the 3 sen per 1000 gallons water until 2060. Think of how many grains of nasi lemak we can buy with 3 sen in 2060. Imagine what 1000 gallons will earn for Singapore at that time. Can't think of a more astute PM for Malaysia.

7. All those who met the great man from the little country were lectured on how Malaysia should be run. We should not have anymore problems now. We have been told the direction to take. MCA must help UMNO to win because Singapore does not want an Islamic Party like PAS to win. We must ensure this. Sorry PAS. Working with the DAP, the offspring of PAP has not endeared you to Mr Lee.

8. I have a lot more to say about this little Emperor but I will reserve it for later.

Also read:

Former New Straits Times Chief on his visit (In Malay)

Lee Kuan Yew: Race, Culture, Genes

Malaysia visit roundup from Malaysia Insider

8 days is only 8 days - why LKY may have gone up North?

Why is everyone excited about LKY?

No country for old men

World's most liveable cities: Vancouver No.1, Singapore No.54

2009-06-12T15:36:00.007+08:00

Seelan: Please note that Singapore did not even make it in the top 20. This is especially for some of you out there who think that Singapore is the best place on Earth even though you've never even seen a quarter of the rest of the planet.

World's most liveable cities
Brisbane Times

Australian cities occupy five of the top 20 places in a British survey ranking the liveability of 140 of the world's major centres.

Melbourne ranked third in the world, behind Vancouver in Canada and the Austrian city of Vienna in the Economist Intelligence Unit's 2009 Liveability survey.

It assessed 140 cities based on stability, health care, education, infrastructure and culture and environment, giving each one a rating out of 100.

Perth was equal fifth with Calgary in Canada, with Sydney sharing ninth place with Zurich in Switzerland and Brisbane in 16th place.

As well as Vancouver and Calgary, Canadian cities also featured strongly in the top 20, with Toronto (4th) and Montreal (17th).

The New Zealand cities of Auckland and Wellington finished 12th and 23rd respectively.

US centres were well down the list. Pittsburgh ranked highest, in 29th place.

The highest-ranked Asian city was Osaka in Japan (13th). The next highest was Hong Kong (equal 39th with Madrid, Spain) followed by Singapore (54th) and Seoul, South Korea (58th).

The worst city to live on earth is Harare, the strife-torn capital of Zimbabwe.

"The performance of Asian cities reflects the diverse levels of development throughout the region," EIU spokesman Jon Copestake said.

"Australian cities represent many of the best aspects of liveability, while instability in countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh means that cities in South Asia fare much worse."

The Economist Intelligence Unit is a branch of The Economist Group, which publishes The Economist, a weekly news magazine, in London.

Male commuter punches 68-yr-old housewife and no one comes to help

2009-06-08T12:05:00.006+08:00

Jun 08, 2009, The New Paper

A MARKETING trip ended in tears for an elderly woman when a male bus commuter allegedly punched her in the face for not moving out of his way.

His friend also hurled obscenities at her.

Madam A Nyanamani, 68, a housewife, claimed the driver of SBS Transit 198 ignored her pleas for help and allowed both men to alight while she was crying.

Moreover, none of the other commuters on the packed bus lifted a finger to help her, she alleged.

The incident, which happened on Wednesday morning , left Madam Nyanamani shaken and slightly bruised around her left eye.

She had been on her way home to her four-room HDB flat in Jurong East, where she lives with her husband and her son's family, after her usual trip to the market.

Carrying two bags of groceries, she had to stand on the lower deck of the double-decker bus as it was crowded.

But a male passenger, who was seated, objected to her standing in front of him and his friend. Both men appeared to be in their 30s, she said.

She claimed: 'He said 'no, no you cannot stand there, get out.' She was then standing near the rear of the bus.

Madam Nyanamani said she was puzzled as she wasn't obstructing the men by standing in front of their seat.

When she asked why, the man allegedly stood up and punched her in the face, right under her left eye.

Stunned, the elderly woman, who had a cataract operation on her left eye about five years ago, said her vision blurred at that point.

Indignant, Madam Nyanamani asked: 'Why did you punch me?' She said the man's friend replied: 'Why must you stand there?'

Vulgarities

The friend then shouted vulgarities at her.

Afraid that she would get hit again, she held up her hands to shield her face.

Thinking that she was going to retaliate by hitting them, the two men threatened to call the police, she claimed.Madam Nyanamani then said she would do the same.

The three of them then went to the front of the bus to talk to the driver.

Even though Madam Nyanamani tried to tell the bus driver what happened, she claimed he ignored her.

She said: 'He didn't want to look at my face, even while the two men continued to hurl vulgarities at me in front of him.'

At the next stop, he allowed both men to alight. Madam Nyanamani got off at the stop after that and rang her son for help.

Her son, Mr Selvan Kanna, 36, an engineer, lodged a complaint with SBS and made a report at a police station in Jurong East.

Madam Nyanamani sought outpatient treatment at a polyclinic. She said: 'I'm scared now to take buses.'

Bus driver disciplined

THE bus captain who let the two men alight after Madam Nyanamani was punched has been disciplined.

Ms Tammy Tan, SBS Transit vice-president of corporate communications, told The New Paper: 'Our bus captain should have taken a more pro-active approach and rendered assistance. For failing to do so, he will be disciplined.'

She said the bus captain had first become aware of a dispute between Madam Nyanamani and another man when he heard voices raised.

However, she noted: 'He had no idea what the commotion was about nor was he aware that she had been assaulted.'

The bus captain then contacted the operations control centre to report the incident and seek guidance.

By this time, both parties had moved to the front of the bus and were in a 'heated exchange where vulgarities were used'.

Ms Tan said: 'We wish to apologise to Madam Nyanamani for his service lapse.'

Casino builders strike over pay (Singapore)

2009-06-06T13:03:00.002+08:00

Singaporeans are reduced to finding out news such as this from BBC.

Government reverses ban on Tiananmen performance

2009-06-04T11:07:00.000+08:00

Singapore Democrats

The Government had initially banned an art project that was to mark the 20th anniversary of the massacre of students and protesters at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. The decision was, however, reversed later in the day.

The organisers were informed of the ban today because the event, to be held at The Substation this Thursday, was deemed "inappropriate". The reason given is because it is located in a government-owned building.

The reversal, the Singapore Democrats understand, was because the Government did not want the bad publicity that the ban would attract as it was part of a worldwide project.

Entitled “Tank Man Tango”, the project is scheduled to be held in places like Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Taichung (Taiwan), Seoul, Weimar, Leipzig, London, Bristol, Washington DC, and Mexico City.

On 4 Jun 89, the Chinese government sent in tanks to clear Tiananmen Square which had been taken over by thousands of mainly student protesters calling for political and economic reforms. It is estimated that as many as 3,000 demonstrators were killed by the army.

The iconic image that came from the infamous episode was a man who stood in front of a column of tanks, clutching only a plastic bag, to temporarily prevent the armour from entering the Square. Hence, the title “Tank Man Tango” which, according to the organisers, is a “stylised recreation” of the steps of the Tank Man. Watch video here.

It is understood that the PAP Government remains unhappy about the decision to allow the event to go ahead but feels that it would not be worth the international criticism if the ban stayed.

Activists had already vowed to hold the event at Speakers' Corner if the performance at The Substantion was prohibited. Activist Mr Seelan Palay had written to the National Parks Board to stage the event.

Perhaps, the PAP calculated that the ban would have created a bigger stir and attracted more people than it otherwise would. Did it learn its lesson from banning and seizing videos like Singapore Rebel and One Nation Under Lee?

It probably figured that the ban would not stop the event from going ahead at the Speakers' Corner – with a bigger audience – and the PAP would still end up an international laughing stock. Conclusion: Not worth it.

In any event, Singaporeans should make their way to The Substation on 4 Jun 09 to see for themselves what the fuss is all about:

Tank Man Tango: June 4, 1989 anniversary commemoration at The Substation

As a way of commemorating this anniversary, The Substation is participating in a worldwide public art project to be performed in the cities of Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Taichung (Taiwan), Seoul, Singapore, Weimar, Leipzig, London, Bristol, Washington DC, and Mexico City.

On June 4, 2009, from 6.30 to 9pm in The Substation theatre, come join us to learn and perform the Tank Man Tango together as an artwork and a vigil; or come for conversation, and share memories and perspectives. The Tank Man Tango is a simple, stylised recreation of the steps of the Tank Man as he defied the tanks. The video can be found on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MziREAZ_WqA&feature=channel_page

Then on June 5, join us at The Substation Gallery between 12 noon and 9pm: we will be erecting replicas of the Goddess of Democracy statue from a D-I-Y kit, filling the gallery space with them.

Everyone is invited.

Documentation from both days will be uploaded onto the memorial website: www.forget2forget.net

The Singapore that we aspire to build

2009-06-02T11:09:00.000+08:00

Jufrie Mahmood, Singapore Democrats

My youngest son, Khairul Azrie, is in Secondary 3. Like his brother Khairul Anwar he too represents his school in basketball. It is a known fact that most Malay boys their age either play soccer or sepak takraw.

When time permits my wife and I would make it a point to watch them play in the numerous inter school and inter district tournaments, especially if the games are played at the Aljunied Basketball Centre, which is a stone’s throw away from where we live. And we are proud to say that when they are on the court they play their hearts out, making meaningful contributions to their teams.

My sons’ choice of sport has given them an exposure that is somewhat different from what we normally see. The friends that they go around with are almost entirely non-Malay. Come Hari Raya their friends would converge on our house to savour the ketupat and rendang prepared by my wife. The dessert has always been the traditional kueh normally served during Hari Raya. To many of them the food was so finger-licking good that they would tease my wife to let them come for makan more often than just once a year.

What my children are going through reminds me of my childhood days at the government quarters in Haig Road where I grew up. It was a multiracial setting in every sense of the word where everyone was oblivious of their racial background. We were completely colour blind. Whether you are Chinese, Malay, Indian or Eurasian it made no difference at all. We had Ali as well as Ah Lee, the Kanagasabai children and the Pereiras.

Even the hawkers in their tricycles and pushcarts were multiracial. The ‘chi chong fan’ lady and uncle Karupayah, the kacang putih man would take turns making their rounds. Soon after came Ah Heng, with his ice kacang ball, to be followed by Wak Karto plying his mee rebus and tahu goreng. Not to be left out was Mama Maideen with his famous mee.

All of them could speak bahasa Melayu, our so-called Bahasa Kebangsaan. Once a week we were treated to a movie at the open field in Kulim Place where the GSWO (Government Servants Welfare Organisation) club house was also situated. Those were the wonderful days, gone forever.

Though the environment we find ourselves in today is vastly different from the one that I grew up in I am nonetheless happy to see my children coping well with their circle of friends. Last weekend however, when we were just about to finish our dinner Azrie suddenly asked me whether it is true that as a Malay he would not be allowed to join his friends should they opt to serve in the air force. What about the army or navy? He further said, without being asked, that he learned this from his friends in school.

On hearing what his brother said, Khairul Anwar chipped in and said that he too had heard about this. His teacher had told the students in a class discussion that since he is a Malay he would not be called upon to serve his nation in the services mentioned above because "Singapore is surrounded by Malay countries."

"What’s wrong with that, papa? Are they not countries friendly to us?" They are also our major trading partners and members of the ASEAN family, he continued.

I took a deep breath, told him and his two siblings (my eldest child, a girl, studies at Temasek Polytechnic) to finish their dinner, help their mama to clear the table and move to the living room.

I had planned to discuss this issue with my children sometime in the future when they are more mature. I did not want to disrupt their growing up years. But when this very subject of racial discrimination was brought up by my children themselves I had no choice but to bring forward the process of politically educating them.

I related to them some of the more pertinent points of disagreement serious-minded opposition personalities are having with the PAP Government. As for me I have said all my life that I had stood for multiracialism.

The PAP also claims to adhere to the concept of multiracialism. When Singapore was a part of Malaysia its leaders pushed for a "Malaysian Malaysia" so aggressively that the Malays got very irritated. They feared that the concept pushed by the PAP would deny them their special rights, as enshrined in the constitution. Its actions infuriated the Malaysians to such an extent the Tunku, Malaysia’s Prime Minister at that time, was left with no other choice but to expel Singapore from the federation.

Not long after attaining independence the PAP put into practice discriminatory policies which they were so dead against when Singapore was in Malaysia. And make no mistake about it, such policies cannot be justified no matter how the Government tries to rationalize them.

One explanation put forward by the PAP is that they did not want the Malays to face a dilemma should a war break out between Singapore and its neighbours. So, to "save" them from this so-called dilemma it is best that they did not be put in such a situation. To do this they must not be allowed to serve in the armed forces, especially in the air and naval forces.

I related to them an article entitled The Ghosts That Walk With Us written by the late Mr S Rajaratnam in which he concluded that the chances of Singapore going to war with its immediate neighbours were real. Under such circumstances the Malays in Singapore would not want to fight, thus justifying the discriminatory policies.

This perhaps explains the absence of Malays in the air force and the navy and their preponderance in the civil defence and to a lesser extent, the police force. How wrong can the PAP be? This is certainly not the way to build a united nation. Perhaps Singaporeans need to be reminded that during Indonesia’s konfrontasi when then President Sukarno sent his commandoes to infiltrate our country, our soldiers in the 1st and 2nd SIR Battalion, almost entirely Malay, proudly defended their country against the Indonesian intruders. Quite a number of them got killed in the process.

Unlike the colour-blind environment in which I grew up, every turn we make nowadays we are reminded of our racial origin. We can’t, for instance, move into any housing estate of our choice due to the racial quota and you inevitably are reminded of your racial origin.

We cannot enroll in SAP schools unless we take Chinese as a second language; we go to CDAC or SINDA they tell us to go to MENDAKI.

We cannot serve in many fields in the armed forces although many foreigners-turned-Singaporeans can. For that matter, as a contractor, we are not allowed into military compounds even to cut grass or do pest control work.

We are not allowed to wear something as basic as the tudung (head scarf) when our young women reach puberty in secondary school even though religious freedom is guaranteed in the Constitution.

We cannot have more than one full minister as the quota has always been only one and that too is almost always a ministry in charge of clearing garbage. If we choose to stand for elections we have to prove our racial origin and first be issued with a certificate even though our NRIC clearly identifies us by race.

The funniest thing about this requirement is that for repeat candidates you still have to do it at every election as though in the short span of time between GEs our race undergoes a change.

This is the kind of discrimination and humiliation that the ethnic minority groups in Singapore have to live with. On one occasion a member of the approving panel was an Arab and it took an Arab to tell a Malay that he was a Malay and therefore qualified him to stand in the GRC. There are, of course, many other instances that keep reminding Singaporeans of their racial origins.

But I continue to have faith that there are enough Singaporeans of all races who oppose such discriminatory policies. Sooner, if not later, such policies will be dismantled and Singapore will be a truly multiracial society, a society that we aspire to.

I have gone into politics to oppose PAP’s hegemony, and to strive to give Singaporeans an alternative voice. I do not subscribe to the thinking that the PAP has a monopoly of ideas that are good for the nation. I believe in the establishment of a multiracial, democratic Singapore in the true sense of the word. PAP’s discriminatory policies have no place in a truly democratic Singapore.

To the PAP, any group that poses a serious challenge to its rule is labeled either a communist, a communalist or a religious extremist. And it never fails to play the racial card whenever it suits its purpose. That was how they robbed the Workers' Party team in 1991, of which I was a member, in the Eunos GRC of victory by accusing me of mixing religion with politics. The "sin" was my usage of two very common Islamic expressions of "insya Allah" and "Alhamdullah" (God willing). That, in short, is how the PAP operates and with the media under its absolute control it gets away with everything.

Apart from racial discrimination, I told my children there is a long list of other issues and policies which my comrades in the SDP and I oppose and strive to change. I intend to register in their minds the unfair tactics employed by the PAP in order to stay in power. I told them I shall be going through with them the issues in small doses so as not to overload their minds.

We in the opposition staunchly believe that it is in Singapore’s long term interest to have at least an alternative group of dedicated Singaporeans which can challenge the PAP and be ready to take on a leadership role should the PAP falter further, lose control and quickly degenerate into an unworthy outfit. I do not believe in putting all our eggs into the PAP basket. It is suicidal.

This after dinner session marked the beginning of my children’s political education.

Jufrie Mahmood is a veteran oppositionist. He stood as a candidate in the 1988, 1991, and 1997 general elections.

Amnesty International’s 2008 report on Singapore

2009-05-29T18:22:00.003+08:00

Amnesty International, in the section on Singapore, part of its worldwide review for 2008, highlighted “heavy penalties and restrictive measures imposed on opposition activists, journalists and human rights defenders”. It also noted Singapore’s formal dissociation from the UN General Assembly’s resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the death penalty

Tex of report follows:

SINGAPORE
REPUBLIC OF SINGAPORE
Head of state: S. R. Nathan
Head of government: Lee Hsien Loong
Death penalty: retentionist
Population: 4.5 million
Life expectancy: 79.4 years
Under-5 mortality (m/f): 4/4 per 1,000
Adult literacy: 92.5 per cent

An easing of restrictions on freedom of assembly was overshadowed by heavy penalties and restrictive measures imposed on opposition activists, journalists and human rights defenders. Suspected Islamic militants remained detained without charge or trial under the Internal Security Act (ISA), amid concerns that some were at risk of torture and other ill-treatment during questioning. Foreign domestic workers continued to be excluded from legislation protecting the rights of foreign workers. Singapore rejected the UN General Assembly resolution calling for a moratorium on executions. At least five prisoners faced imminent execution, although the number of actual executions was unknown.

Repression of dissent

Defamation suits and restrictive measures continued against opposition activists, human rights defenders, foreign media and conscientious objectors. A climate of fear and self-censorship discouraged Singaporeans from fully participating in public affairs.

In September, the High Court ruled that the Far Eastern Economic Review magazine had defamed Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew in an article about opposition leader Chee Soon Juan in 2006. The publisher was ordered to pay damages.
The Wall Street Journal Asia faced legal action for reporting that the judiciary was not independent.
In September, blogger Gopalan Nair was sentenced to three months in jail after criticizing a judge’s handling of a case involving opposition leaders.
In October, Chee Soon Juan, who was already bankrupt, and activist Chee Siok Chin were ordered to pay S$610,000 (US$414,000) in defamation damages to government leaders. They were subsequently sentenced to prison for contempt of court after criticizing the conduct of their trial. As bankrupts they were barred from seeking parliamentary seats or leaving the country without permission.

Freedom of expression and assembly

The government eased restrictions on public assembly (in one designated location), but continued imposing restrictions on media and peaceful demonstrations.

The film One Nation Under Lee was banned. The film depicted the former Prime Minister subjugating various government institutions.
Eighteen campaigners faced charges for holding unauthorized protest marches against the rising cost of living.

Migrants’ rights

Singapore failed to provide basic protection for foreign domestic workers, such as a standard number of working hours and rest days, minimum wage and access to employment benefits. The Employment of Foreign Workers Act continued to exclude domestic workers.

Detention without trial

Some 23 suspected Islamist militants remained detained under the ISA. There were continued concerns about the risk of torture and other illtreatment following arrest. Five detainees were released on restriction orders.

Death penalty

At least five people convicted of murder faced imminent execution. The government did not provide comprehensive information about application of the death penalty, such as the number of executions and death sentences imposed and the nationality, age and background of those executed. In February 2008, Singapore initiated and signed a statement of disassociation objecting to a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on the use of the death penalty. In December, Singapore voted against a second UN General Assembly resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.

Freedom of religion

Twenty-six Jehovah’s Witnesses continued to be imprisoned for refusing compulsory military service. Five additional conscientious objectors were detained during the year.

Source: Amnesty International

Video: Remembering 22 Singapore victims of ISA

2009-05-22T12:49:00.004+08:00

Seelan: Thank you once again to everyone who came down, especially the young Singaporeans who reinforce my faith that this generation and the next can pave the way to true democracy. If anyone who attended wishes to get in touch to help out and stay informed of future events please email me at seelanpalay@gmail.com

Video by Ho Choon Hiong
New articles related to the Marxist Conspiracy:

Musings on the ‘Marxist Conspiracy’ detentions of 1987

Of political debates and the 22nd anniversary of Operation Spectrum

The Marxist Conspiracy of 1987 - revisiting a legal footnote

Photos of Remember 21st May event at Hong Lim Park

ISA Abolition Movement May 21st

Video / Photos : Remembering May 21st 1987

The Real Marxist Conspiracy...

Between ST and TOC, A World of Difference

“Operation Spectrum was political rape”

Hypocrisy Sucks!

Reports & photos of May 21st demonstration

2009-05-22T00:57:00.003+08:00

Thank you to the 80 over people that came down and supported our demonstration at Speakers Corner today to commemorate the 22nd anniversary of 'Operation Spectrum'. Here are 3 reports with photos on the event:

Activists hold rally at Hong Lim Park to call for justice for 1987 ISA detainees

Remembering the 22

Francis Seow: A day of ignominy

A very short video clip of everyone singing:

A video report will be available tomorrow.

Lee's Betrayal of PAP and Singapore : Devan Nair

2009-05-20T13:36:00.002+08:00

Source: Martyn See

21st May 2009 marks the 22nd anniversary of a security sweep codenamed Operation Spectrum, which saw the arrests and detention of 22 young professionals in Singapore under the Internal Security Act.

The "Marxist Conspiracy" arrests, as it is commonly known, also involved the detentions of lawyers Francis Seow and Patrick Seong in 1988 as they sought to represent some of the detainees who were re-arrested that year.

Upon release, Seow contested in the 1988 General Elections under the Workers' Party ticket and lost narrowly to the PAP incumbents. The Government subsequently filed tax evasion charges against Seow, who was overseas at that time and has remained in US until today.

In 1994, he published 'To Catch A Tartar', which documented in considerable detail his 72 days' ordeal under ISA detention in Whitley Detention Centre.

The following is the foreword to the book, written by former President and founding PAP member Devan Nair, who himself lived in self-exile after openly criticising the Government over the 'Marxist Conspiracy' detentions. He passed away in Ontario, Canada in 2005.

By C.V Devan Nair
Foreword to To Catch A Tartar, Francis T. Seow
Published in 1994

Before reading Francis Seow's manuscript, I had decided that I would decline his request for a foreword. My political days are definitely over - and more reasons than either friends or foes imagine. Apart from a series of reflective essays (in preparation) on the making of an ideal (in which I too had been privileged to share), on its unmaking (which I watched in helpless pain from the sidelines), and on the dubious - to say the least - political and social aftermath of phenomenal economic success, I had, and still have, no intention of becoming involved in promoting the political views or program of any individual or group, whether within or without Singapore.

After reading through the manuscript, however, I realized that I would never again be able to look at my face in the mirror without flinching, if I said no to Francis, at least in regard to this particular piece of writing by him. For this was no political harangue by one of Singapore's leading opposition figures, excoriating the political or economic program of the powers-that-be, and pleading the virtues of his own political cause. On the contrary, central to this book is a grim account of how a citizen of Singapore was treated while under detention without trial under the republic's internal security laws.

As an ex-detainee myself, who had undergone in two separate spells a total of five years of political imprisonment in the fifties under the British colonial regime as an anticolonial freedom fighter, I recalled that I was never treated in the shockingly dehumanizing manner in which Francis was by the professedly democratic government of independent Singapore. Indeed, my fellow detainees and I had as legal counsel a brilliant lawyer and vocal freedom-fighter by the name of Lee Kuan Yew, who has publicly borne witness to the comfortable circumstances in which we lived under detention, and how he was able to visit us, without supervision, to discuss, among other things, strategies for bringing the colonial rule of our jailers to an end.

Francis's account of his seventy-two days of detention by Prime Minister Lee's government confronted me yet once again with acutely poignant questions: What has the nation come to? And what malefic hidden persona has emerged in Lee Kuan Yew of today? Surely, this cannot be the same man, whom I and several other starry-eyed anticolonial revolutionaries in the fifties and sixties had jubilantly accepted as our captain in the grim, heroic struggles of those early days to create what we expected would be a new Jerusalem? Alas, it took us thirty years to realize that we had been treading on air.

Mr. Seow's book is an eye-opener; that is, for those whose eyes still required to be opened. Mine too, for that matter. Nobody is blinder than the captain's inveterate hero-worshipper. And none probably as wilfuly, self-righteously closed to unfolding reality as I was. Indeed, until fairly recently, I had believed that the People's Action Party (PAP) government, by which I had once sworn, had all along been tolerably civilized and humane in its treatment of political prisoners. Yet another scale had to fall from my eyes, the latest in a series of scales which had already fallen earlier, and which I will deal with in my own book.

The economic transformation wrought by the PAP government is there for all the world to see. The towering skyline of the island city state, the great vistas of new high-rise apartments which had replaced the sordid sprawling slums and malarial swamps of only three decades ago, the magnificent international airport at Changi about which all visitors rave, the world latest and, perhaps, the best mass rapid transit system, the clean and green garden city - all and more - quite rightly evoke the envy and admiration of foreign visitors, especially those from developing countries with much less to boast of by way of efficient development-orientated governments.

Lee Kuan Yew with Toh Chin Chye [centre] and Goh Keng Swee

I would be the last person to denigrate the material achievements of Singapore, for the good reason that I was also a member of the ruling team responsible for them. Like other members of the PAP old guard, I saw the creation of a solid socioeconomic base as a vitally necessary springboard for the realisation of human ends and values. At least for me, and for the others in the anticolonial movement like me, the human agenda was primary. In short, the urgent, organized, disciplined drive for economic growth and technological progress was powered by noneconomic aspirations and ideals.

We looked at the sad fate of other multiracial and multireligious developing countries and recognized that life's highest rewards and fulfilments were beyond the reach of societies riven by sterile, senseless class and ethnic strife, and cursed by a corrupt polity, inefficient production, material poverty, and hungry bellies. Modern technology and management systems would be necessary means to advance the human agenda. Alas, we failed to forsee that human ends would come to be subverted for the greater glory of the material means, and our new Jerusalem would come to harbour a metallic soul with clanking heartbeats, behind a glittering technological facade.

History bears abundant witness that idealists generally come to grief. They awaken high human aspirations and hopes and ignite the liberating fires of revolution. The pains and humiliations of foreign subjection and exploitation are scorched, and, for a brief, blazing period, men transcend themselves in the inspiring vision of a great common future. The revolution triumphs - but idealists become expendable thereafter. One by one, sooner or later, they are eased out. And the revolution is inherited by cold, calculating power brokers at the head of a phalanx of philistines.

Lee Kuan Yew in 1957

Lee Kuan Yew's earlier speeches echo the great themes of freedom fighters everywhere. As the several irrefragable quotes Seow offers in his book testify, Lee too had once waxed eloquent about liberty, freedom, harmony, justice, and the dignity of man. But reading Lee Kuan Yew today, or listening to him, one realizes how brazenly he has abandoned the positions which had so convincingly persuaded an earlier, revolutionary generation of Singaporeans, both old-guard colleagues and the population at large, to confirm him in the captainship of party and nation. We had taken him at his powerfully eloquent word. If Lee had then given the mildest hint of the apostate he was to become, he would have received short shrift from the revolutionary following who had put their trust in him.

Those who order, systematise, and govern in the aftermath of revolutions often become votaries at covert and pernicious altars. Ineluctably, the Olympian gods are displaced and a Titan holds sway, with lamentable results. The march of the human spirit is first arrested, then retarded.

A march along St. Andrew's Road outside City Hall, circa 1964

What we launched as the independent republic of Singapore succeeded, as the world knows, all too well, only to discover that in the eyes of Lee Kuan Yew, means had become ends in themselves. First principles were stood on their heads. Economic growth and social progress did not serve human beings. On the contrary, the primary function of citizens was to fuel economic growth - a weird reversal of values. The reign of Moloch had begun. Not an unfamiliar phenomenon to those who browse in the pages of history. My old-guard colleagues and I might have been wiser men and women if we had read our history with greater comprehension than we do now. Alas, one cannot alter the past.

The inevitable drift to totalitarianism begins with the typically symptomatic thesis of the progenitors: "Society as No. 1, and the individual, as part of society, as No. 2." The words are Lee Kuan Yew's, speaking to journalists in Canberra, ACT, on November 16, 1988. He was dutifully echoed by Goh Chok Tong, the First Deputy Prime Minister, (now Prime Minister), when he announced this as one of the pillars of the government's new goal of "a national ideology" for Singapore. Portentous words, given the current morbidities of the republic, which include the account given by Francis Seow in the following pages of his seventy-two days of detention and interrogation by the guardians of "national security," the Internal Security Department. Seow learned at first hand what happens to the individual as No. 2, when subjected to society as No. 1 in the shape of his jailers and interrogators in the Whitley Detention Centre.

"The individual, as part of society," is a marginal improvement on Mr Lee's egregious penchant for referring to fellow-citizens as "digits" of the development process. You are either a productive "digit" or an inefficient one. And "digits", like robots, if they are to be functionally useful, have to be programmed. So one need not be surprised that Singapore's political programmers should now be working on a "national ideology," in addition to the social and genetic engineering already in the works. Shades of Huxley's Brave New World!

History bears irrefutable witness to the self-evident truth that no harmony is possible between the individual and society where either seeks aggrandisement at the expense of the other. The mutual need for each other, for mutual completion and fulfilment, is frustrated if one seeks to devour the other. Invariably, the end result is material and spiritual impoverishment, stagnation and death, for both individual and society. The equation is infallible, whether the nation concerned is eastern or western, although Lee Kuan Yew pretends that Confucious would have sanctioned the outrages he has perpetrated in Singapore. Which, as those who decline to traduce history for political ends will appreciate, would be an unwarranted insult to the memory of the venerable figure, whose proverbial wisdom laid primary emphasis on character-building enhancement of the human spirit and of social mores - not their mutilation.

The tree is known by its fruits. The supremacy of the state over the individual which those inclined to totalitarianism always propound has invariably meant, in practice, the immolation of the individual at the altar of an impersonal, faceless, and conscienceless deity, sanctified by the grandiose term: "the organized community." But the voices which issue from the iron throat are recognisably those of the political elite in power. They spell out the implacable social "imperatives" which override the rights of the individual. And in the name of these imperious mandates, the social juggernaut driven by political roughnecks grinds the hapless individual under its wheels. Francis Seow was one such victim. Another was Chia Thye Poh, whose lengthy incarceration has been compared to the experience of Nelson Mandela. It would be invidious to mention others by name, for either their spirits have been broken, or they remain subject to tongue-tying restrictions.

Devan Nair in a march with the trade union in 1961

Seow survived the ordeal. Because he is a free man outside Singapore, he becomes the first ex-detainee to place on record the ordeal of arrest and detention without trial in Singapore. In doing so, he has rendered a signal service to all Singaporeans, as indeed to all sane and humane men and women everywhere. But they must know that he will have to pay a heavy price for his pains in the shape of repeated or fresh calumnies and of rearrest should he choose to return to Singapore. Indeed, this will be in addition to the price he has already paid for raising his voice against Moloch. It is a rare kind of courage which would take on so perverse and formidable an adversary.

I am personally able to confirm the brutal fact that exile, for whatever reason, uprooted from one's entire milieu of life, culture, and career, from friends and relatives, is, to put it bluntly - unremitting spiritual agony. Nonetheless, an ordeal certainly preferable to the individual as No. 2 suffering systematic asphyxiation by society as No. 1. And writing this foreword, I am cruelly aware that I am, in effect, finally and irretrievably burning my boats with my country and a people whom I love and served over the greater part of a lifetime. But what would you? Exile, pensionless to boot, at least ensures the survival of the integrity of the person.

The story, as Francis Seow tells, is a grisly symptom of a high-seated (rather than deep-seated) political malaise afflicting Singapore. History will indict Singapore's eminence grise, now Senior Minister and Secretary-General of the ruling party, Lee Kuan Yew, as the source and bearer of what, despite transient and misleading appearances to the contrary must, without radical political surgery, turn out to be a terminal condition.

Lee Kuan Yew in a street march in 1959

I may be wrong in believing that the point of no return has already been passed, for currently it does appear that a population rendered politically comatose over the years will be unable to bestir itself sufficiently - apart from surreptitiously immobilizing subway trains by stuffing well-chewed chewing gum into their doors - to cancel the blank cheque it has given to the Singapore government.

However, I am also aware that we live in times when reality keeps exploding in the faces of experts. It has more than once exploded in mine, not to speak of Francis Seow's. There is no guarantee that one day it will not explode in Lee's own face, or in the face of those who will inherit his creed and style of power. Gorbachev, Ceausescu, and Honecker are only the more visible among the many who, undercurrents which suddenly surfaced, ensuing in utterly unforseen, convulsive change in the sprawling Soviet empire and eastern Europe, leaving all the world's normally voluble geopolitical pundits and pontiffs flummoxed.

Some believe that the necessary inspiration for surgical intervention to rescue Singapore from terminal risk might arise from within the republic's own undoubtedly intelligent establishment. A good number of professionals and civil servants do know, and will private acknowledge - looking over the shoulder, of course - what has gone grievously wrong with the once promising Singapore experiment. In the strictest privacy, they readily admit that, if there is any country in Southeast Asia which, by virtue of economic success and probably the best educated population in Asia after Japan, can afford a more relaxed style of government, tolerant of free __expression and dissent - that country is Singapore. They appreciate that the people of Singapore are certainly intelligent enough to discern where their best interest lie, and run the risk of falling prey to rabble-rousing politicians with easy panaceas and quick fixes.

Devan Nair at the press conference announcing Separation in 1965

Indeed, they vividly recall that an earlier, less educated generation of Singaporeans had, after listening to open public arguments and debates, repeatedly rebuffed at the polls slogan-shouting demagogues who clearly did not know the social and economic priorities of a small, island nation with absolutely no natural resources to boast of, dependent on neighbouring Malaysia even for its water, and entirely dependent on the stability of export markets for comfortable living. Finally, they know that the source of the overweening authoritarianism - so entirely contra-indicated by one of the most vibrant and successful economies of Asia - issues from the increasingly obsessive fixations and bizarre values of one man - Lee Kuan Yew.

But it remains to be seen whether knowledge goes with moral courage and the will to action. I confess that, with every passing year, I have come to fear that the point of no return has already reached and passed. For Singapore's grey eminence lords it over the republic from the top of a tower of undeniable previous achievement. He had been the superb captain of a superb team which had led a highly responsive and intelligent population out of a savage and sterile political wilderness into outstanding success and internationally recognized nationhood.

Today every member of that superb team has been eased out of power and influence in the name of political self-renewal, while Lee himself has ensured that he presides, as Secretary-General of the ruling party, not as he once did, over equals who had elected him, but over a government cabinet and a judiciary made up entirely of his appointees or nominees. In relation to old guard leaders, Lee had been no more than primus inter pares. He had perforce to deal with equals, and they were fully capable of speaking their minds. Once, in the early days of the PAP, in sheer exasperation, I myself had responded to him with a four-letter word and thought no more about it.

Devan Nair in a pro-Nair demonstration in 1965

Today, Lee no longer deals with his equals, but with his chosen appointees, who did not earn power the hard way, but had it conferred on them. They are highly qualified men, no doubt, but nobody expects them to possess the gumption to talk back to the increasingly self-righteous know-it-all that Lee has become. Further, the bread of those who conform is handsomely buttered. Keep your head down and you could enjoy one of the highest living standards in Asia. Raise it and you could lose a job, a home, and be harassed by the Internal Security Department, or by both, as happened to Francis Seow.

Nonetheless, one must hope, even against hope, that the daunting challenge is not evaded by intellectually honest and spiritually courageous members of the Singapore establishment. The inevitable alternative is clearly the abortion of what began as the Singapore miracle. An abortion and a treachery. For not many societies return whole from the graveyard of elementary human rights and decencies.

Admittedly, Lee is right in talking of the remarkable economic transformation we wrought in Singapore, an achievement at once collective and individual. The people of Singapore well deserve the material success for which they worked so hard. But, all the same, they have reaped a baleful harvest. Lee bakes a bitter bread. The relish of greater material well-being gives way to the acrid taste of ill-being along other equally vital, if less tangible dimensions, beyond the gauge of GNP, the only measuring rod Lee knows. As his career progressed, he revealed, in increasing measure, enormous blind spots.

Lee Kuan Yew in spring-cleaning exercise in 1959

"Transformation" is quite the wrong word word for qualitative aberrations which have occurred in the noneconomic areas of life in Singapore. On reading Seow's manuscript, the word which leaps to mind is "transmogrification" or the grotesque metamorphosis that has overtaken the perception and treatment of the individual in the republic.

My thoughts go back to my own arrest by the British colonial authorities in Singapore in the fifties. I have already indicated that my experience as a political prisoner under a British colonial administration had nothing in common with what Seow went through. I can come to only one conclusion. The colonial Special Branch were saints compared to Lee Kuan Yew's Internal Security outfit. The end result of our struggle for political freedom and independence turns out to be not a progression in terms of respect for human dignity, but a surreptitious regression into barbarity.

Few can appreciate how painful a contemplation from the sidelines Seow's account is for those like me who had spent a good part of our active lives helping to launch modern Singapore. Contrary to Lee's pretensions, Singapore is not only his baby. It's our baby as well. But under Lee's exclusive charge, the miracle child suffocates today beneath a pile of heavy swaddling. Small wonder therefore that a disturbing number of Singaporeans have chosen to emigrate from Lee's utopia to less strait-jacketed places like Australia, New Zealand and Canada, According to government figures, the exodus reached 4,000 families in 1989, around 16,000 people. The London Economist observed:

His (Lee's) statistically-inclined government may well reflect that, proportionally, the exodus from Singapore, which faces no threat from China, was not far below the flight from Hong Kong last year.

Lee himself appears to be the only person who does not seem to have got the message. In his National Day Rally speech in 1989, he affected incredulity - even turning lachrymose - that so many Singaporeans should opt out of his paradise. Nobody present could summon the gumption to tell him that to discover the reason why, all that he need do was look into the mirror.

For Lee's entire approach to government pointedly ignores some crucial ingredients of nation-building. Full employment, well-fed digestive tracks, clean streets, and decent homes are not the be-all and end-all of good government. They are only a necessary beginning - an essential foundation from which to aspire to greater human ends. Like people elsewhere, Singaporeans also have keen nonmaterial appetites, the satisfaction of which will not brook permanent denial. For these are fundamental urges which return after every banishment.

Devan Nair in General Elections 1976

A new and better educated generation, increasingly open to the great winds of change blowing all over the world, is bound to intensify the search for an invigorating image of desire and hope, a liberating political formula, a more satisfying life scheme and scene than are available under the present pervasive system of coercion and control. Also, in this day and age, ideas and hopes increasingly scorn border check-points and censorship laws.

A society burdened by a multitude of prohibitions must come to suffer that stifling of innovation and creativity which comes of excessive regulation. Singaporeans today have to memorise an exhaustive list of prohibitions. But they are without a comparable list of what they are free to do.

Certainly citizens of a civilized community need to cultivate that sense of order and discipline which has served Singapore's economic success so admirably thus far. But where a sense of social responsibility goes unnourished by an equally vivid sense of individual rights, and of participation and involvement in the entire political and legislative process, there the human spirit is bound to shrivel under the deadening touch of authoritarianism. Indeed, what has become increasingly evident to Singaporeans is Big Brother's total lack of trust and confidence in the good sense and judgment of his citizens. Hence the hectoring speeches by ministers, and worse, the ubiquitous voice of the oracle telling everybody else, including government ministers who perform under his watchful eyes, what is good for them.

The obvious danger is that if ever Singapore is faced with a serious economic downturn, as is entirely possible given the republic's overwhelming dependence on increasingly volatile export markets, the current disturbing brain drain may be expected to gush into massive exodus. And that would be a sad end for what began as the most promising experiment in socioeconomic growth in Southeast Asia.

Lee Kuan Yew in 1955

Lest it be considered that I have revised my views about the conditions of my own detention, after having parted company with Lee Kuan Yew, I will quote here from the statement I made on behalf of the People's Action Party of Singapore at the meeting of the Bureau of the Socialist International held in London on 28-29 May 1976, with the approval of Prime Minister Lee. I said:

In 1950 I joined the Anti-British League, an underground auxiliary of the Malayan Communist Party. I spent, in two separate spells, a total of five years in British prisons. I am not in the least bitter. Indeed, I look back back nostalgically to my years of incarceration, for they were years of intensive reading and self-education. On the whole, my fellow detainees and I were well-treated. One of the few complaints we had was that the British allowed us radio sets which were doctored to receive only Radio Singapore. We wanted to listen in to Peking and Moscow as well.

We were in touch, through easily bribable camp warders, with the communist underground in Singapore. We were instructed to go on a hunger strike and to protest against against "ill-treatment and torture." When some of us pointed out that there was no ill-treatment and torture, our chief fellow detainee told us that "it was a revolutionary duty to expose the imperialists, through whatever means were available." Our anticolonial zeal being greater than our commitment to truth, we swallowed whatever qualms we had and embarked on a six-day hunger strike. It had the required effect, not upon the British - who were quite unmoved - but as far underground communist propaganda in Singapore was concerned, for our hunger strike was extolled as an example of our heroism and of the vileness of the imperialists...

I was reminded of the episode when I read the Dutch Labour party paper about the torture of detainees...

I also happen to know a good deal about both prisons and detention camps in Singapore. For, soon after Lee Kuan Yew formed the first PAP Government in May 1959, I persuaded him to set up a Prisons Inquiry Commission, for I had not liked what I had seen of the demeaning conditions of imprisonment imposed by the British authorities: not on political detainees, but on convicted prisoners. For example, on the approach of a British prison officer, every convict had to kneel down on the floor, with his head down. That aroused my ire, and it still does, when I think of it.

I was appointed Chairman of the Prisons Inquiry Commission, which included two British academics from the University of Malaya in Singapore - the late Dr Jean Robertson and Professor T.H. Elliott. The recommendations my commission made, to humanise prison conditions, still form the nominal basis for the administration of prisoners and detention centres in Singapore. The International Red Cross has had access to our prisoners, detainees, and places of detention. You will appreciate that the Red Cross is not allowed in several other countries, and I can confidently challenge any country in the world to boast a more efficient prison system than the one we have in Singapore.

Crowd gathering on South Bridge Road awaiting a press conference by Devan Nair and Lim Chin Siong after their release from detention in 1959.

This explains why I read with wry amusement the absurd allegations of ill-treatment, torture, and inhuman conditions in our prisons and detention centres, made by the communist united front group in Singapore, and faithfully repeated in the Dutch Labour Party paper.

Today I am obliged to eat a good number of the words I uttered in London in 1976. A humbling obligation, and therefore good for the soul. I have no difficulty, of course, reaffirming that my fellow detainees and I were well treated in British colonial centres of detention. That was a fact of direct personal experience. Not so, apparently, the conditions political detainees were subjected to in the seventies. I had then accepted, all too gullibly, that these were humane and civilised purely on the word of the powers-that-be. I was not the only credulous Singaporean to do so.

Lee Kuan Yew greeting Lim Chin Siong

There is no better teacher than painful personal experience. I know today that in this matter, as in several others, my trust and confidence were grievously misplaced. I am certain now that if any of these detainees had brought themselves to write of their experience as Seow has done, their accounts would not have been greatly dissimilar. If anything, going by what Seow learned from other detainees whom he had represented as legal counsel, some of them went through much worse ordeals. I can also appreciate today that detainees do not speak up during guided tours of detention centres for Red Cross representatives.

Seow's account of the horrendous process of interrogation he underwent, the freezing coldness of the soundproof interrogation room, an air-conditioner blower duct on the ceiling which directed a continuous and powerful cascade of cold air down at the spot where, barefooted, he was made to stand, the sudden paroxysms blasts of cold air sent him into, the total darkness save for the powerful spotlights trained on him, the obscenities, shouts, and threats he had to endure, all left me stupefied.

Sleep deprivation, for instance, is a fiendishly effective means employed by Singapore interrogators to thoroughly disorient the detainee, so that he may be suitably readied for abject "confessions" which would later be copiously presented by the government-controlled media as a "statutory declaration." One cannot think of any other country in the civilized world where "statutory declarations" exacted under duress from political prisoners are published and unabashedly palmed off on the public as gospel truths.

I found acutely disturbing the following paragraphs in the book at page 121 et seq.:

As I walked through the doors of the interrogation room, a freezing coldness immediately wrapped itself around me ...

I had lost all sense of time. I had been standing there under the pitiless glare of the spotlights. I felt the urge to go to the toilet. I told them. Two Gurkha guards appeared and escorted me to the toilet. Having stood motionless at one spot for so long I had great difficulty walking. I found myself rooted to the ground - a term more descriptive of the reality of the situation than a mere figure of speech. My limbs were stiff all over. I was unsteady. The two Gurkha guards on either side of me supported me under my arms. I staggered out of the interrogation room, half carried by them, along the dark corridors up two flights of stairs to the ground level of Block C, along a corridor, to a toilet located in an empty cell in Block D. I blinked at the unexpected harsh light of day. I was quite shocked. The urge to go the toilet forgotten for a moment. I asked one of the two Gurkhas for the time of day, ...I was astounded. It was 11.30 in the morning. I then realized that I had been standing in the interrogation room for about sixteen hours warding off questions thrown unremittingly at me. It seem incredible to me that I could have stood at one spot, almost motionless, for that length of time. I recalled with shame that, when my detainee-clients had previously complained to me that they had been deprived of sleep and forced to stand for as long as 72 hours at a stretch, without sleep, I had great difficulty in believing them. I thought they were exaggerating; but now I was, incredibly, undergoing a somewhat similar experience!...

I noticed, too, dried sunburnt blisters peeling from the skin of both arms. I could not at first comprehend how I could have acquired them until I realized that I had been burnt by the powerful rays of those spotlights, which had also dried up the moisture in my eyes. Cold rashes had broken out all over my atrophied limbs under my clothes. Unlike many people who are sensitive to sunburn, I am susceptible to cold rashes. It was always troublesome for me whenever I had perforce to travel abroad during winter. In this instant case, as if signaled by a faithful built-in thermometer, the rashes broke out in chilling confirmation of the coldness of the room. My interrogators had swaddled themselves up in warm winter clothes and left it, time and again, whenever they could no longer withstand the wintry cold.

As a prisoner of the British, my fellow detainees and I had simply refused to be interrogated. We told our captors that we would only speak as free men. We were left alone after that. We experienced no soundproof room, no brutal interrogation and sleep deprivation for hours on end, no air-conditioner blower duct directing a powerful and continuous cascade of cold air at the spot where the barefoot detainee stood on "a floor like a slab of ice," no spotlights, no threats and obscenities shouted in our ears, no absolutely solitary confinement throughout the period of detention, indeed none of the things which Mr Seow had to undergo at the hands of the rulers of free, independent, and professedly civilized Singapore.

After the statutory period of 21 days' solitary confinement, my fellow detainees and I were allowed to live together in camp conditions, whether in Changi or, even better, on salubrious St. John's Island. Our lawyer, Lee Kuan Yew, was freely allowed to visit and talk to us, without Special Branch supervision, and to plan with us the downfall of the British colonial power. So free were we as political detainees to pursue our own interests and studies that we light-heartedly referred to our places of detention as "St. John's" University and "Changi" University.

Lee Kuan Yew addressing marchers in 1959

Mr Lee knows all this. It surely cannot be termed progress in freedom and humanity to arrest and treat his own political prisoners so brutally, and with far less reason than the British had to detain me and my revolutionary comrades. After all, we had made no secret of the fact that we were committed to the violent overthrow of the British colonial power. But Seow and others like him certainly did not aim to overthrow the elected government of Singapore by unconstitutional means. Even if they did, Lee and his government would still stand convicted of the kind of inhumanity of which "the perfidious British colonialists" (as we referred to them in those days) were not guilty.

The government's assertion that it does not ill-treat detainees strains credulity. Seow's readers will find extraordinary (to put it mildly) Brigadier General Lee's (Lee Kuan Yew's son and Singapore Deputy Prime Minister) statement in an interview with the BBC World Service:

The Government does not ill-treat detainees. It does however apply psychological pressure to detainees to get to the truth of the matter ... the truth would not be known unless psychological pressure was used during interrogation.

Systematic sleep deprivation, continuous interrogation over sixteen hours by strident, foul-mouthed intelligence officers, while standing barefoot in flimsy clothing on a cold cement floor in a freezing room under the skin-blistering and eye de-moisturing glare of spotlights, unlimited solitary confinement, are at once physical and psychological ordeals.

Mr Seow quotes to potent effect a comment by Jerome A. Cohen, a prominent legal representative of Asia Watch, while on a visit to Singapore at the time. Mr Cohen

... found deeply disturbing both the use of psychological torture and what he called a pervasive Singaporean, if not Asian view that "if you haven't hit somebody, it isn't torture." Psychological disorientation is evil whether it happens in South Africa, the Soviet Union, China, Singapore or the United States. Yet here they seem almost proud of their psychological tactics - breaking down the defenses of people in captivity. They need to be more sensitive to the definition of what constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.

One can understand why the Singapore government hurriedly withdrew its initial offer (made inadvertently by junior ministers when Big Brother happened to be out of town) to appoint a judicial Commission of Inquiry to examine public allegations of ill-treatment by nine ex-detainees in April 1988. They were rearrested instead, and it came as no surprise that some of them duly signed, while in renewed custody, "statutory declarations" withdrawing their earlier allegations, and asserting that they had not been ill-treated. Much more convenient, certainly, for Lee and his government, than a judicial Commission of Inquiry, which would publicly examine and pronounce on charges made from the witness stand by free men and women, subject to no constraints but those of conscience and of cross-examination by defence and prosecution alike.

The circumstances of Seow's arrest and the subsequent ordeal of interrogation and detention provide occasion not only for grave disquiet over the brutal mistreatment of detainees. (they certainly put paid to any continued pretense of Lee Kuan Yew's part that he walks in the company of civilised statesman.) It raises another question - perhaps the most crucial one - in my own mind. I may explain, even if the effort proves, as it certainly will, an unflattering commentary on some of my own past judgments of persons and events.

I had once publicly supported the need for the Internal Security Act when the democratically elected PAP Government was engaged in the life and death struggle against a murderous communist united front movement, committed to the violent overthrow of constitutional government. In subsequent years, I had continued to believe that the Act was justified given the volatile geopolitical milieu in which Singapore had to survive. Never had it occurred to me that the PAP government was capable of the gross abuse of the draconian powers conferred by the Act. And never was I more wholly wrong, and my conscience so grievously misplaced.

What an unconsciously long time some people take to learn that power really does corrupt, especially its exercise when placed outside the purview of an impartial third party - like an independent judiciary. No statesman was ever more resoundingly correct than Thomas Jefferson when he warned:

In questions of power, let no more be heard of confidence in man but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.

Alas, because he was not stopped in time, Lee Kuan Yew has proceeded to alter the laws to bind down the judiciary and the media instead.

President Devan Nair in the National Day Parade in 1982

The crucial question is this. What internal or external dangers threaten Singapore so gravely today to justify the need of a law like the Internal Security Act. allowing, as it does, indefinite detention without trial? None that anyone acquainted with the current political and economic situation in Southeast Asia can think of. None at all that cannot be more effectively dealt with by sensible democratic political process, under the ordinary laws of the land.

There is no longer a communist insurrectionary movement in Malaysia committed to the violent overthrow of lawfully constituted governments in Singapore and Malaysia. There is no communist united front movement left in Singapore. By all accounts, communist potential in the area has been decisively scotched by economic, political, and geographical developments. the Communist Party of Malaysia, a sad and bedraggled relic of a once truly formidable movement, which it took all the military and political skills of the British and subsequent Malaysian governments to defeat, finally laid down their arms on December 2, 1989, after signing peace agreements with the Malaysian and Thai governments, and thus brought to a formal close 41 years of armed conflict.

When this was announced, the first Prime Minister of Malaysia, the late Tungku Abdul Rahman, promptly and publicly recalled the pledge he had given in the free Malaysian parliament to the effect that the internal security laws providing for the arrest and detention without trial of suspected subversives were directed solely at the communist insurrectionary movement, and would be repealed once the insurrection was overcome. He therefore called for the outright abolition of the Internal Security Act since the communist threat to constitutional government had ceased to exist. Not so Lee Kuan Yew whom the London Sunday Telegraph reported as saying: "I don't see myself repealing it." Do Confucian conformity and stability require powers of detention without trial?

In Singapore, by the early seventies, we had decisively debunked and defused a once powerful communist united front movement, which is no longer in evidence. I should know, because I was right out in the front line of that battle, among the foot soldiers, in constant danger of life and limb, leading the free trade unions - now, under Lee's surrogates, no longer free. The economic, social, and administrative successes we registered clearly do not provide fertile soil for violent insurgency of any kind. With the notable exception of Singapore, everywhere else economic success, even of much less magnitude than we can boast of, has invariably been accompanied by more relaxed political climates and styles. Not so under Lee.

Success has been followed by an even further tightening of the screws. Indeed, even the insurrectionary communists of the fifties and sixties, with their unconstitutional resort to armed violence, civil riots, and strikes, were dealt with under laws and custodial treatment more benign and civilised than were constitutional law-abiding dissenters like Seow, and other social workers and professionals arrested and detained in Singapore in recent times. Neither were they obliged to produce abject statutory declarations "confessing" their numerous "misdeeds." Much can be said of the defects and shortcomings of previous British colonial regimes in Singapore. But these did not include the systematic and ruthless crushing of the human spirit at which Lee's Internal Security boys excel. One can appreciate now why he proudly refers to them as "professionals."

Devan Nair with Goh Chok Tong in 1985

Only recently, yet another striking departure from decent civilized practice occurred. Detention without trial is no longer subject to judicial review in Singapore. The government on January 25, 1989, amended the Internal Security Act to place its powers of detention without trial beyond challenge in the courts, with retrospective effect into the bargain. And nobody will ever know what takes place behind the walls in the soundproof, freezing rooms of the Whitley Detention Centre, from which issue "statutory declarations" by political prisoners abjectly admitting to a variety of anti-government offences.

Thus, by means the venerable Confucious would never have condoned, Lee hopes to enforce in his ideal city state the Confucian conformity and respect for authority he so much admires. In these circumstances, it will be a rash Singaporean who, knowing the grave risks he is likely to incur, will dare even to murmur dissent. But alarm bells are already ringing in the night. As already observed, internationally mobile Singaporeans are leaving "the Singapore Miracle" in disturbing numbers to seek their fortunes in more congenial pastures, where they can breathe more freely.

+++

Devan Nair in 1975

The road to perdition gets rougher and spikier as one goes down it. Relentlessly downhill has forged the predatory road with a vengeance, especially in the last few years. Consider the spate of repressive legislation enacted in a brief three to four years.

Parliament is converted into "a political mine-field," as a pained and shocked Dr Toh Chin Chye, the founder chairman of the People's Action Party, observed in 1987. A mine-field which blew opposition leader J.B. Jeyeratnam out of the legislative chamber and made certain that he would have not be able to contest another election for at least five years. An even worse fate has befallen Francis Seow.

Parliamentary select committees, by hallowed Westminster convention serious and sedate forums to consider public or professional reservations about government bills tabled in Parliament, are transformed into criminal courtrooms where a fiercely prosecuting, browbeating prime minister puts startled witnesses in the witness box for gruelling cross-examination. This was what happened to Francis Seow, the then president of the Law Society, and to members of the Society's governing council. Subsequent legislation ensured that Seow no longer remained president, and that the Law Society would never again be able to comment publicly on bills before the legislature, on the ground that they were beyond the limited professional competence of the Society. The curious theory was trotted out that politics is only for politicians, not for professional bodies, even though their members are citizens with legitimate concerns about matters of public interest.

Draconian laws were passed to bring to heel foreign journals and newspapers which were critical of what they considered bizarre going-ons in the republic. The Asian Wall Street Journal and the Far East Economic Review were accused of "meddling in domestic politics," and their free circulation was drastically curtailed. They were told that they were not reporting Singapore to Singaporeans "fairly," as if that were the role of the free international media.

Lee forgets that in the colonial past, his British predecessors were not knocked off by free reporting on Singapore by the foreign media, even though they had to deal with an obstreperous population and its equally restive politicians who included, for instance, rambunctious types like Lee Kuan Yew and Devan Nair. In particular, he forgets that his own international reputation as a staunch anticolonial freedom fighter owed a great deal to the free and open manner in which the foreign media covered him and his party's activities.

One could go on ad infinitum about the road Lee Kuan Yew has chosen to travel. My immediate purpose, however, is to as paint vividly as possible, with a few basic strokes, the political context in which Francis Seow's book should be read. I hope I have managed to do this with at least a minimum of adequacy. For there have been other detainees in Singapore whose predicament was, if anything, worse than Seow's was.

Lim Chin Siong with Chia Thye Poh

There is, for example, Chia Thye Poh. First arrested on October 29, 1966 under the ISA, Chia was banished on May 16, 1989 to the off-shore pleasure island of Sentosa. One cannot improve on what Christopher Lockwood of the London Sunday Telegraph noted:

Exile on Sentosa is a diabolically-crafted alternative. Who can take a prisoner of conscience seriously on a holiday island? With Chia out of jail, he (Chia) fears, world disapproval of his detention will simply evaporate.

But Nelson Mandela was unconditionally freed by President F.W. de Klerk of South Africa - free to begin shaking the evil apartheid system down to its foundations. Chia Thye Poh is incapable of shaking anything. So why this extraordinary vindictiveness?

I recalled Lee Kuan Yew once quoting, in euphoric mood, Churchill's resonant words:

"In war, resolution. In defeat, defiance. In victory, magnanimity."

Lee and his comrades-in-arms were resolute in all the political battles we fought in the early years against the colonialists, and the crooks. But Lee has never yet known defeat. So far he has met only victories, in all of which he has shown himself incredibly vicious. Unlike Churchill, who, incidentally, could not boast anything comparable to Lee's two firsts and a star for distinction in Cambridge, Lee misses human greatness by several million light years.

As was inevitable for one who, in arrogant contempt for soulcraft as a vital ingredient of successful statecraft, recklessly opted for an errant orbit, traced in benighted times past by the trajectory of Moloch.

Lee's major justification for his policies is the example of Singapore's remarkable economic success. But what will haunt generations to come in Singapore and the Southeast Asian region generally are his even more monumental failures. Well did the Bard observe:

The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interr'd with their bones.

Ultimately, his most unpardonable failure is the crass betrayal of the ideal which launched the People's Action Party into political orbit - that of an equal, multiracial, democratic society which would banish from its midst, for ever and a day, invidious notions of ethnic or religious majorities or minorities. In Singapore there would be no majorities and minorities. There would only be Singaporeans. This was the flaming aspiration on which Lee rode to power on the crest of revolutionary fervour. Today he has defiled the social atmosphere of Singapore with the sordid evil of ethno-centrism, which he had vowed to eradicate, in my company and in that of countless other comrades in the common struggle against colonialism, communalism, and communism. But this is not the place to expatiate on this particular piece of treachery. I will deal with it in my own book.

Lee is gifted with a brilliant brain and an eloquent tongue. But the capricious gods omitted to equip him with the saving grace of that essential wisdom which makes for true greatness. And Singapore thereby missed the infinitely more potent miracle of the political and spiritual success it might so easily have provided, as a practical, living demonstration to the other unhappy, struggling, heterogenous nations in Southeast Asia, not merely of singular economic achievement, but also of the eminent viability of a free, open, sane, and equal multiracial democracy, worthy at once of economic, political, and moral emulation.

As things are, one can only wonder how much longer successful economic performance and a loutish political style can sleep together in the same bed. While one dreams of electronic paradises to come, the other enacts, in political nightmares, vengeful vendettas against foes real or imaginary, mostly the latter. Alas, both must perished in fatal embrace, on the same bed.

- C.V. Devan Nair (1923 - 2005)

Remember May 21st

2009-05-17T22:00:00.001+08:00

On May 21st 1987, 22 young social workers, lawyers, businessmen, theatre practitioners and other professionals were detained without trial under the internal security law and accused of "being members of a dangerous Marxist conspiracy bent on subverting the PAP ruled government by force, and replacing it with a Marxist state." A second wave of arrests took place on June 20th the same year.

The detainees were forced to make false confessions by the way of mental and physical torture. They were subjected to harsh and intensive interrogations, deprived of sleep and rest, some for as long as 70 hours in freezing cold rooms. All of them were stripped of their personal clothings, including spectacles, footwear and underwear and were made to change into prisoners' uniforms.

Most of them were made to stand during interrogation for over 20 hours and under full blasts of air conditioning turned to the lowest temperature. Under those conditions, one of them was repeatedly doused with cold water. Most were hit in the face while others were assaulted on other parts of the body. Threats of indefinite detention without trial were also made to them should they continue to deny the intentions that they have been accused to harbour.

They were then compelled to appear on TV with their confessions and were told that their release would be dependent on their performance on TV.

On 21st May 2009, which marks the 22nd anniversary of 'Operation Spectrum', a group of concerned Singaporeans will be demonstrating against the treatment of the detainees who were detained without trial under the ISA. You are invited to come to Speakers Corner and remember this day with us.

6.30pm, 21st May 2009
Speakers Corner, Hong Lim Park

For more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spectrum

JBJ's 2008 video interview with FEER

2009-05-14T11:38:00.005+08:00

J B Jeyaretnam speaks with Hugo Restall of the Far Eastern Economic Review about his differences with the Worker's Party, the problems with the Singapore system, civil disobedience, and his hope for the Reform Party.

Also read: Archiving J B Jeyaretnam's papers for posterity

Bloodbath in Sri Lanka

2009-05-13T11:03:00.005+08:00

CNN poll: Should The International Community Intervene In Sri Lanka?

AVAAZ petition: Help Stop the Sri Lankan Bloodbath

Article: UN slams Sri Lanka for weekend 'bloodbath'

Meet the Amazing Amazon Warriors of Singapore

2009-05-11T10:51:00.006+08:00

By Parameswara, Guest Columnist
Also featured on wayangparty.com

I am skipping the roundup for last week to share an event which may be the start of a new era for Singaporeans. By now most of you would have been aware of the drama of AWARE. Please bear with me and read on. I will not be asking you to “shut up, sit down and listen.” That would be rude, undignified and desperate and I am polite, gracious and certainly not desperate. After all, I know some of you are listening to me - at least for now.

A couple of weeks ago a group of hijackers - in the name of God - took control of AWARE. After the takeover, Lady Madonna appeared to claim that she was the mastermind of the hijack. A pastor, Derrick Ho, then lead what coffee shop talk termed as “a Christian jihad” to rally support from members of his church and other churches for the new team.

Unaware of what awaits them in AWARE, they forged ahead with their crusade. Little did they know of the amazing Amazon warriors within! In a matter of weeks, these warriors in a neat strategic move, increased AWARE’s membership from three hundred to three thousand! At an EGM, they courageously overthrew the Crown Princess and her team.

Shakespeare said “Some are born great, some achieve greatness and some have greatness thrust upon them.” For these amazing warriors they certainly achieved greatness. I salute you all - Ms Dana Lam, Constance Singam, Brema Mathia, Margeret Thomas and, last but never least, Mr. Siew Kum Hong who - possibly motivated by a sense of justice - took on the legal role for free!

Perhaps GOD had a hand in this victory too. Perhaps GOD is just. The hijackers in their strike broke two of God’s commandments. The first commandment of God says: Thou shall not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain, which they did. The eighth commandment says: Thou shall not steal. Steal or hijack, is there a difference?

So join me friends in saluting these amazing Amazon warriors of Singapore. You can’t find me on page 69 or page 73 of anywhere but you can find me here at this blog. So post your ‘salutes’ here and share this moment.

To these warriors, I have a message too. You have earned the respects of many of the 4 million Singaporean; some of whom have come to look upon you all as guardians of civil society. Many now know of the work that had been done - for gays, for women, and for migrant workers.

By default, you warriors have adopted many Singaporeans as your ward and most likely many of these Singaporeans will turn to AWARE in future. You warriors have achieved in these years what many NMPs had not over the years, and possibly created a “parliament” outside the parliament.

Focus your attention on these Singaporeans now, look into their concerns; work to narrow the gap of the income inequality that exists, strive for a minimum wage for Singaporeans to survive, lobby to lower the cost of living through tax cuts or suspension of taxes, cut costs of living by lowering charges of basic amenities like water, electricity, maintenance; and equally important increase welfare for our aged, for these aged had contributed to Singapore too in their time but are now sidelined.

Yes the $330 allowance per month indicates that. How can anyone survive on this amount, even if it means eating at hawker centers 3 times a day? Don’t ever forget, you are here today because of them. A final item, return the people’s CPF money.

Last 3 Hindraf leaders released

2009-05-10T15:33:00.003+08:00

10 May, New Straits Times

TAIPING: The three remaining Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) leaders were released from the Kamunting detention centre in here yesterday, after 514 days of incarceration under the Internal Security Act and about a month after their two fellow leaders were released.

Hindraf legal adviser P. Uthayakumar, who was the last to leave the centre at 2.55pm, said police wanted him to agree to a conditional release but he covered his ears, refusing to hear the conditions or to sign any document.

"Even if it means putting me back here, so be it... I'll come back here.

"But I will not agree to any conditions because I have not done anything wrong.

"I fought for the interest of the people through legal and peaceful means at all times," he said a few metres away from the gates of the detention centre.
Uthayakumar thanked his fiancee S. Indradevi, lawyers and supporters but said he would not thank the government as his detention was unlawful.

He also complained that the prison officials were rough with him, pointing to injuries on the left foot.

Uthayakumar said he would continue to fight for Hindraf but would have to consult supporters on whether to hold public gatherings.

Earlier, seven men, believed to be ISA detainees from Indonesia and the Philippines, were brought out from the detention centre in an immigration van at about 12.40pm, followed by three other local ISA detainees in a van at 1.20pm.

Two other Hindraf leaders, Kota Alam Shah assemblyman M. Manoharan and K. Vasantha Kumar, were also freed at 2.30pm, and were driven out in separate cars.

Upon his arrival in Klang, more than a hundred supporters of Manoharan, including his wife S. Pushpaneela, who waited outside the gates of the Klang district police station to welcome him, went home disappointed as he was whisked away via a rear exit.

Manoharan, who was scheduled to arrive at the police station at 3pm arrived only at 5.35pm escorted by two police cars.

The car went immediately into the police station compound and the gate was closed and was heavily guarded by more than 10 policemen to prevent supporters from entering the compound.

Pushpaneela arrived at 6pm followed by state executive councillors Ronnie Liu, Dr Xavier Jayakumar, Teresa Kok and Klang member of parliament Charles Santiago.

At 6.45pm the supporters, including reporters and photographers who have been waiting since 3pm, were informed that Manoharan had already left half-an-hour earlier and was on his way to his home in Bandar Kinrara, Puchong.

Liu, who was the first state executive councillor to arrive was disappointed that Manoharan was not allowed to meet his supporters.

"This is not right. Manoharan is an elected representative and he should be allowed to at least meet his supporters for a short while," he said outside the police station.

Vasantha Kumar's mother R. Manomani said her son's release was the best Mothers Day present.

She had waited outside the Kamunting Centre gate since 8am yesterday before, Vasantha Kumar, 36, was released.

"I am very happy today because my son is released and I am shedding tears of joy."

Manomani from Sungai Petani, Kedah, said she was informed of her son's release by her daughter-in-law, K. Vickneswary, on Friday night.

"I thank all Malaysians who fought for our release.

"It is by their effort that I'm a free man today," said Vasantha Kumar upon his arrival at his home in Taman Cheras Permai, Kuala Lumpur, at 6.25pm yesterday.

He was earlier taken to the Kajang police headquarters for documentation purposes.

At his house, he was greeted by some 40 people, including relatives, who chanted "Vasantha Kumar Valga" (Long live Vasantha Kumar).

The family then arranged a "cleansing" ceremony for him, by pouring a bucket of water filled with flower petals to ward off bad luck.

A while later, Vasantha Kumar spoke to the press through his wife, K. Vickneswary, 36, because one of the 15 conditions for his release from Kamunting prohibits him from making press statements.

"It is through all your (Malaysians') efforts that the government has released us. I will continue to provide a voice to the voiceless," the wife said on his behalf.

About 15 plainclothes policemen were also present.

The five Hindraf leaders, including V. Ganabatirau and R. Kenghadharan, who were released on April 5, were held since Dec 13, 2007 for being involved in protests which saw tens of thousands of Indians taking to the streets.

On Friday, Home Minister Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein announced the release of the 13 detainees.

This is the second batch of ISA detainees to be released since Datuk Seri Najib Razak became prime minister.

North Korean President Kim on 3-day working visit to Singapore

2009-05-07T13:02:00.004+08:00

Seelan: Seems like everyone from the Burmese generals to Robert Mugabe to the North Korean President all love visiting Singapore - maybe the Tourism Board should start marketing us as a dictator hub.. Uniquely Singapore!

North Korean President Kim on 3-day working visit to Singapore
06 May 2009, Channel News Asia

SINGAPORE: North Korean President Kim Yong Nam is on a working visit to Singapore from May 6 to 8.

According to a statement from Singapore's Foreign Affairs Ministry, this is his second visit to Singapore in his capacity as the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly.

Mr Kim last visited Singapore in August 2007.

While in Singapore, Mr Kim will call on President S R Nathan, who will host him to dinner. -CNA/vm

Also read: Singapore: The Switzerland in Asia (only dictators and mass murderers need apply)

Parameswara's Weekly Round-Up (19TH – 25TH April 09)

2009-05-04T11:30:00.010+08:00

This week’s turkey pick for me must surely be Tiger Airways. As most of us are Asians and may not be familiar with turkeys, we will go Asian and call it - chicken shit of the week.

As you all know, though some may not, Tiger Airways is supposed to be a budget airline. Budget airlines are supposed to be a 21st century transportation big thing to bring lesser mortals around; to give us a chance to travel and see the world or some small parts of it at the moment - regional travel within your reach, that kind of thing.

Sounds too good to be true right? Do these budget airlines really think of us? Well, maybe sometimes some do. Or do they think the lesser mortals are the easiest to scam? Maybe these higher mortals are right, so we better stick together and not get scammed - at least not so often. Next time you guys are traveling, make a note of these reports on Tiger Airways this week.

4 April in Mathaba - Call to Ban Tiger Airways from Australia, ANZAC Offense

Tiger Airways arguably qualifies as the world's worst "low-cost “airline, with the real costs due to cancellations without notification and other illegal practices with resulting high risks to travelers, making its title as a low-cost airline disputable, according to Australian travel affairs editor at this news network.
Australians are complaining in increasing numbers, and calls for an investigation and banning of the airline as well as highly punitive fines.
The web is awash with countless stories of bad customer service, rip offs, illegal and immoral practices by Tiger Airways, which have also called into question the very reputation of Singapore as a "clean" business location.
Tiger Airways’ illegal use of ANZAC Day for its commercial benefit.

Ben Sandilands writes - Tiger’s ANZAC Day rip-off exposed

Tiger Airways launched a blatant Anzac Day rip off this morning leaving itself open to prosecution under the Crimes Act and by the ACCC. It announced a special ANZAC Day sale "with more than 30,000 FREE seats" for travel between 1 June and 30 September.
The use of the term ANZAC is protected under Australian law from commercial exploitation except under very limited and specific conditions which include the prior approval of the Veterans Affairs department.
And under ACCC rules an advertised free seat or fare means $0.00, not $0 plus airport charges and GST of between $22.08 and $35.13 plus a "convenience fee" of $5.
The ACCC’s rule on domestic air fares and the law in relation to GST prohibit the breaking out of that tax and other sub components of a fare and compel the advertising of the full price of the goods or services being offered to the consumer.
The first flights on offer under this Anzac Day sale are not available until June; the whole purpose of this exercise seems to be to associate the commercial sale of seats for use in a general sales promotion with Anzac Day and has no proper association with the observances of this day, and this is of considerable concern.

PARA: Beware of the Tiger.

KAMPONG QUARREL

The kampong quarrel seems to be spreading to other kampongs. Notice the news it generated in all the mainstream print media and on the net. Looks like there are many hidden hands involved - on both sides and a tinge of Hollywood too; but it’s not something I want to get into here, perhaps over coffee.

Straits Times - Aware Saga Aware adviser quits - Office locks changed

Straits Times - Leadership change at Aware - New exco got death threats. We are harassed and we fear for our families, they say

Straits Times - Leadership change at Aware - Coup leader comes open

Straits Times - Leadership change at Aware - Petition against new Aware

Other headlines:

April 21 2009 - Saudi Prince looks to sell Singapore Raffles hotel

PARA: Wow! Times must be real bad

April 21, 2009 - 55 'ignorant' lawyers let off

PARA: I thought ignorance of the law is no excuse

April 21 2009 - Singapore banker booked in dowry case

PARA: No more money in the bank?

Cheers
PARAMESWARA

One Nation Under Lee screened at Taiwan's film festival

2009-05-03T22:31:00.000+08:00

Monday, 04 May 2009
Singapore Democrats

The film, One Nation Under Lee, by Seelan Palay was screened during a film festival in Taipei on 25 April 2009.

The Urban Nomad Film Festival is an annual film festival which brings resistance and counterculture films from over the world to Taiwan.

Followed by a panel discussion of the film, the screening was a success, with more than sixty people in attendance, many of whom raising questions and expressing concerns about the state of oppositional politics in Singapore.

Read more here.