The original article written by Tsui Hon Kwong outlining the rational behind their opposition. Read on to find out more...
CU is conferring an honorary doctorate to Lee Kuan Yew on 7th December. We must oppose it. Why?
Singapore has become a successful police state in 35 years under Lee Kuan Yew. Hong Kong could be going down the same track. We must tell right from wrong. That's why.
Under the surface of a clean, prosperous city, with people well-housed, well-fed, children well-schooled, all dissidents have been scientifically silenced, the media tightly controlled, the judiciary reined in, civil society eliminated, the arts curtailed, political power monopolized, and culture of the free spirit stifled.
The true picture cannot be found in the sanitized version of history within Singapore. Just like the June 4th students' general ignorance of the Tiananmen public protest and brutal suppression only a decade or so before them, known as the April 5th incident, the real history that led to today's 'heavenly garden city' can only be found in scattered books and documents abroad, and in words of mouth from silenced individuals, in Singapore, and quite a few exiled abroad. Or in George Orwell's '1984'.
I happened to have experienced first hand part of this process, for having taken part in the student movement in University of Singapore in the 70's. We did very little, compared with student movements in more open societies (including Hong Kong then and now). We collected clothes from the public for the big flood in Bangladesh just after her war of independence. We opposed the hike in university fees. We held forums to look into the economic role of Japanese capital in South East Asia, at a time her premier Tanaka visited Singapore. We assisted retrenched workers of one American company to seek help from their (permitted) official union. Some of us went to Johor Bahru across the border to help some peasants whose land they tilled was scheduled to become a golf course, together with some student leaders from University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, including Anwar Ibrahim, who later became deputy premier and now jailed. The one and only demonstration we had was a tiny one against American bombing of Hanoi that killed the French ambassador.
Only these, and the whole state machinery repressed us with full force. The immigration department interviewed me on the pretext of immigration papers. It turned out to be an Internal Security Department officer who warned me against further involvement. Soon, my scholarship was cancelled, and they demanded that my father, a poor tailor, pay them back all my fees and living allowances in the previous 4 years.
We knew perfectly well it was dangerous to act in any way that could be interpreted as violent. The price is lengthy detention without trial under the Internal Security Act. Chia Tye Po was simply alleged, without a whimper of evidence, and he served 23 years. We never even hinted violence in any of our speeches or articles. But that was no problem for the government. They engineered a riot for us. After asking for quite some time, Tan Wah Piow, the student union president, was allowed into an office of the National Trade Union Congress together with a few retrenched workers. The negotiation was unsuccessful, and they left. Hardly had they stepped out of the place than trade union officials overturned furniture and broke glass panels in their own office. They were the only witnesses against Tan and the workers in a riot trial that lasted months. The student union president was jailed for 1 year. He wrote a book, later in exile, about the event and the farcical trial, called 'Let the People Judge'. Of course it is not available in Singapore.
We also knew that it was suicide to ever utter one revolutionary term, especially those of the communist version. Several times every year, some youths, having been grilled under months of detention without trial, would appear on TV, and admitted that they had been used by the communists, tried to overthrow the democratic government, and promised never to do it again. We were especially careful to limit ourselves to young, simple, naive terms of human rights and social justice, in all our speeches and articles, and for that matter, in all our internal discussions. But when the government wanted to name you anything, they always could. A few weeks before the election of the new student union council, during the trial of Tan Wah Piow's 'riot', 6 student leaders were deported, 5 back to Malaysia, and me Hong Kong. But they failed to catch me, and I went into hiding. I became a wanted novelty. One day before the student union election, pamphlets began to appear in campus, signed by me, calling upon the students to vote for this and that revolutionary candidate, so as to throw the running dogs of US imperialism into the rubbish heap of history. The greatest and most glorious spirit of the Chinese Cultural Revolution was evident. So at last there was proof that the union leaders were communists. The very candidates I supported caught the pamphleteer and handed him to the police. Did he subsequently confess on TV on how he was used by the communists? No, he disappeared into thin air. Later, Singapore students in England told us the photograph we published in the union paper showed a fellow student there under a military scholarship.
Every few years, a batch of people who refuse to keep absolutely quiet would be arrested, and alleged to be communists, rioters, Marxists, anti-nationals, and even US puppets, with little evidence. Truth and justice is never important in a police state. Total control, through fear, through deception, is.
But there is general election every 5 years. There are still opposition parties. Why didn't the people choose another government? Actually this is the very question Lee Kuan Yew and his People's Action Party pose whenever there is criticism. Legitimacy is still important, however superficial.
This is the scientific part of this police state. The objective is absolute political power. But the best way to it is not suppression of all opposition, but only all VIABLE opposition.
It is a sophisticated system of control. Some dissent is sometimes heard in the papers, art performances, and most recently, a Speakers' Corner in a park. But there is always a complicated system of application, approval, and censorship, to keep the content, the readership, the audience size, and the influence within a narrow limit.
Every front line helper in an election, e.g. one who passes out handbills to pedestrians, must be registered with the police. So must every author and typist of the opposition party paper. Some lawyer friends of mine did just that. (They also incurred the wrath of Lee Kuan Yew by serving in a sub-committee of the Law Society that commented on some proposed press legislation in 1987.) They were detained without trial, questioned in summer clothes in air-conditioned rooms by interrogators in warm furs, threatened to become Chia Thye Poh the Second's, became 'Members of a Marxist conspiratory group' that infiltrated the opposition party, and confessed on TV. A month later, they held an international press conference, and retracted their confessions. They were again detained, went through the grilling again, and went on TV to retract their earlier retraction. How can any opposition be viable when everybody knows even their peripheral helpers who are non-party members are subject to such treatment?
The scientific police state doesn't have to persecute all opposition leaders. They only persecute the credible ones. Then those who are left can only get protest votes, not real support votes.
A string of opposition politicians had it, when the government felt they were credible.
Jeyaretnam, a member of parliament (MP) and chairman of the Workers' Party, was convicted of misusing finances of his own party in 1986. A judge fined him less than the limit that would force him to vacate his parliament seat. The judge was demoted. There was a re-trial by another judge, and Jeyaretnam was duly thrown out of parliament. He appealed right up to the Privy Council in London, then the court of final appeal, which found him not guilty. But the judgment of the local court held sway and he was never reinstated. Soon, parliament moved the court of final appeal back to Singapore.
The law says bankrupted people cannot be MPs. Hong Kong's Emily Lau is a case in point. Several prominent figures in the opposition, including Jeyaretnam, had defamation suits against them by government MPs and the latter always won. They had to sell their own houses one after another to pay for the damages and costs. The next election is coming, and Jeyaretnam is still raising money to avoid bankruptcy. One Tang Liang Hong, an established and successful lawyer, denied that he was a Chinese language chauvinist when ruling party candidates accused him of that in the 1996 election campaign. His denial amounted to calling his accusers liars, so the court says. That's defamation. His law firm and all his property are gone now. And he is in exile.
My student union president, Tan Wah Piow, was apparently credible, too. Having acquired a law degree in Oxford, after 10 years in exile, he expressed intention of going back to Singapore, come what may. The parliament passed a law to strip any person who has been out of Singapore for more than 10 years of his citizenship. This is a unique law in the whole wide world.
But then, whether the votes are protests or real support, there is still the danger that the people may choose an opposition parliamentarian. There are still lots of tricks to prevent that. There are only 9 days for the opposition to campaign, while government candidates' reputation is built up all the time in their capacity as ministers. You can't say they've done anything bad or wrong in the campaign, as defamation suits will surely follow. When the government is still unsure of a seat, they can pull 4 geographic areas together and call it a group constituency, and the winner takes all 4 seats.
Toying with electoral laws isn't unfamiliar to Hong Kong. The integrity of the judiciary has been compromised in the case of Hong Kong people's children's right of abode. Public order laws, press freedom, academic freedom, etc. are similar areas the police state of Singapore encroached upon one by one in its 35-year rule. When a Hong Kong university confers a doctorate degree to Lee Kuan Yew, the value of this society is changing for the worse. The basic premise of right and wrong is being compromised. We must halt Hong Kong's similar slide into authoritarianism.
