To be global, must we rethink our conservative outlook at home?
Monday • December 12, 2005
Terence Chong

Terence Chong

IF Singapore's policy-making style had to be summed up in a phrase, it would be selective globalisation: The conscious effort to encourage certain forms of globalisation and discourage others.

The Government, on one hand, encourages economic globalisation through the synchronisation of local financial regulations and policies with international standards and, on the other, it energetically protects an Asian "conservative" society from the ills of satellite dishes, pornographic magazines and other unwholesome global commodities.

This constant oscillation between being globally open and locally particular has given rise to the Singapore paradox.

The city-state enjoys its status as one of the most globalised countries in terms of migration, global finance and telecommunications. Yet it regularly garners criticism from international human rights institutions for its insistence on its own brand of politics, whereby certain civil liberties are curtailed in view of local multi-ethnic and multi-religious realities.

The practice of selective globalisation expresses the need to remain globally connected for the sake of nothing less than national survival and the desire to retain certain notions of tradition and conservatism that protect specific interests.

For the most part, the Government has succeeded in juggling the often conflicting demands of the local and the global. Nonetheless, three events this year suggest that this may have ramifications for its global city ambitions.

In June, the Government denied fridae.com, a gay portal, the entertainment licence to hold its annual Nation Party. fridae.com responded by moving its annual bash to Phuket. Ordinarily, this would not have been an issue but for the fact that the Government acknowledges there are homosexuals in the civil service, thus making the licence withdrawal look like a step backwards.

fridae.com's pullout may have mollified the majority of conservative Singaporeans, which was the objective, but it does little to show the international community that the city-state is culturally exciting.

In the words of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, if we are only contented with being the cleanest and safest city, then the "with-it" world will pass Singapore by.

There was also an unexpected poke in the eye. In his farewell speech on Oct 11, the out-bound United States Ambassador Frank Lavin mildly criticised the Singapore Government for its repression of political expression. He also recounted his embarrassment at being asked by local police if he wanted to press charges against the demonstrators protesting outside the US embassy over the Iraq war. These remarks were surprising in a post-Clinton era, and are significant in light of the Singapore Government's strong support for the Bush administration's "war on terror" campaign and the Iraq war.

Lastly, but no less surprising, was Warwick University's decision not to set up a campus in Singapore. After months of deliberation and feasibility studies, the British university, renowned for its research excellence, declined the Economic Development Board's invitation, citing its concern over both financial costs and the lack of academic freedom in Singapore.

This marks the first time a potential investor has publicly cited Singapore's famed out-of-bounds markers, its emphasis on non-confrontational academic analysis and the Government's intolerance for dissent, as reasons for not coming.

These three incidents suggest an important lesson: A nation-state and a global city require a different management ethos. Conventional arguments for cultural and ideological protectionism may sit well with the character of nation-states, but they are increasingly incongruent with the functions of global cities.

And since a global city becomes one only when others recognise it as such, all global cities require cultural legitimacy from the international community of transnational professionals, creative class and international opinion-shapers who have the power to confer it recognition.

The competition to distinguish one's self as a global city is, in reality, the competition to win legitimacy and recognition from this international community.

The fact that Singapore's survival as a nation-state depends on its status as a global city means the Government has little choice but to constantly shift gears between the national and the global when it comes to policy-making, thus compelling it to send mixed signals to this international community.

Casinos are allowed but satellite dishes are not; topless cabaret shows are permitted but civil disobedience is not; and the list goes on. These discrepancies are at the heart of the dilemma facing Singapore at the dawn of the 21st century.

Globalising at one's own pace and terms may be prudent for a small nation-state but how much of this prudence can an aspiring global city afford?

The writer is a Fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies.

Four protesters lost case because they mentioned NKF
Thursday • December 8, 2005
Derrick A Paulo
derrick@newstoday.com.sg

"

National Reserves. HDB (Housing Development Board). GIC (Government of Singapore Investment Corporation). CPF (Central Provident Fund). Be transparent now.

"Singaporeans spend on HDB; whole earnings on CPF; life savings — but cannot withdraw when they need. Accountability."

Those were words that four protesters displayed on their T-shirts and placards as they stood in a row for almost an hour outside the CPF building in August.

If that had been all, they might have just succeeded in asking the High Court to declare that the authorities acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally in breaking up the protest. But there was another word listed by the protesters: NKF (National Kidney Foundation). In that single abbreviation, Justice V K Rajah found reason enough to dismiss with costs the legal action initiated by Singapore Democratic Party central executive committee member Chee Siok Chin and another two of the protesters.

The judge released yesterday his 67-page judgment, in which he described their complaint as "legally unsustainable and wholly misconceived" as well as "frivolous, vexatious and/or an abuse of proceedings".

The thrust of the protesters' case, argued by lawyer M Ravi, is that the Constitutional right of freedom of speech, assembly and association (Article 14) allows fewer than five persons to protest peacefully.

Justice Rajah's decision, however, hinges on the sections in the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act that deal with causing harassment, alarm or distress. Under this law, anyone who uses abusive or insulting words with the intent to harass can be found guilty of an offence.

This is where the three letters N-K-F become so important.

According to the judge, by linking the CPF Board and other entities with the NKF — "the most striking feature of the protest" — the protesters had used insulting and abusive words against "persons responsible for the finances of those bodies".

He called their actions "tantamount to an insinuation of mismanagement and financial impropriety".

Recalling the context at the time of the protest, he said: "The governance and finances of the NKF were … caught in a swirl of negative and adverse publicity. Information and material that entered the public domain … became the source of widespread and grave public disquiet.

"A toxic brew of inexplicable accounting practices, corporate unaccountability, lack of financial disclosure and questionable management practices created an atmosphere suggesting financial impropriety."

It would be "reasonable" for police to find the words used insulting or abusive, providing ample grounds to ask the protesters to leave in lieu of being arrested.

Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

Last Saturday, 10 December 2005 was International Human Rights Day. How many Singaporeans were aware of it?

Perhaps the state should issue a decree to never ever recognise this day. Perhaps the state flag should have been flown at half mast to commemorate the day. The state hanged Nguyen Tuong Van of Melbourne on 2 December 2005. To say the words "human rights" in this state is in itself, sheer mockery. The state hanged him cold without the warmth of a final hug from his mother. Nguyen Tuong Van was executed like the others before him.

To quote Australian PM Howard, "Don't use them, don't touch them, don't carry them, don't traffic in them, and don't imagine for a moment -- for a moment --that you can risk carrying drugs anywhere in Asia without suffering the most severe consequences." This is possibly the most invaluable learning attribute of Nguyen's demise.

With Tabcorp Holdings Ltd., Australia's largest gaming group, having withdrawn from the casino race, one cannot help but to wonder if the move signals strained ties between the two nations.

Further more, 5 days post the execution, the Human Rights Watch on 7 December 2005 presented a 124 page report "Maid to Order: Ending Abuses against Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore". The title of the report is self-explanatory. Maids suffered physical and sexual violence, food deprivation, confinement and long working hours. Singapore, with a population of 4.351 million employs approximately 150,000 women, primarily from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, as domestic workers.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of the Human Rights Watch said "In a country well-known for strictly enforcing laws to promote order and efficiency, the failure to provide adequate and equal protection to an entire class of workers is an anomaly. By implementing comprehensive reforms, Singapore could become a standard-setter in the region for migrant domestic workers."

Singapore failed human rights when She hanged Nguyen. Singapore failed human rights when abuses are inflicted upon Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore. To print Singapore's score card on Human Rights, it is more practical to load only red inked cartridges into the printer.

From these two incidents, what has Singapore learnt? Has She gained or has She lost?

It is convenient for Singaporeans to lament the obliteration of Human Rights in Singapore. After all, the state does not advocate it. While fingers are pointed at the government for their archaic unforgiving policies, people when accusing others, may have overlooked the fact that they themselves have to be practitioners of human rights in order to pursue it.

The drug addicts and traffickers needed no encouragement from the government to pursue drugs. Employers who were not train to abuse domestic workers went ahead anyway. Is this how we want human rights to be practiced?

The people need to be educated. A greater awareness has to be propagated. Responsibility and human rights, it is a package deal. Else the laws are merely a constitution for nobody and unfeelingly enforced on everyone when guilty. To deserve Human Rights, Singaporeans need to understand that human rights are not just rights that are freely given. Human rights have to be worked towards.

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful commited citizens can change the world - indeed it is the only thing that ever does" - Margaret Meade

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Wynn Resorts Ltd., headed by Las Vegas gaming impresario Steve Wynn, has dropped its bid to build Singapore's first casino, a government official said, leaving five groups in the race for the estimated $3.1 billion project.

Five groups, including three of the biggest names in the casino industry -- U.S. companies Harrah's Entertainment Inc., MGM Mirage, and Las Vegas Sands Corp. -- had submitted disclosure documents to Singapore's government by Friday's deadline, the Singapore Tourism Board said in a statement.

"We remain confident that we will continue to have very strong proposals to choose from," Margaret Teo, the board's director for integrated resorts, said in a statement late on Friday confirming that Wynn Resorts had pulled out of the bidding for the first of two planned casino-resorts.

Singapore invited 12 casino firms and developers to bid for the right to build an "iconic" resort on a par with the Sydney Opera House or Bilbao's Guggenheim Museum, to put the city-state on the map.

The wealthy city-state, which lifted a ban on casinos this year despite strong public opposition, is hoping the two casinos will lure more tourists and boost economic growth.

Singapore's two gaming resorts are expected to cost as much as US$5 billion, including US$3.1 billion for the first one, Merrill Lynch has estimated. The government set a S$1.2 billion price tag for the land for its first casino.

Tabcorp Holdings Ltd., Australia's largest gaming group, has also withdrawn from the race. It said on Friday it had pulled out due to rising development costs.

Of three U.S. casino operators still in the running, two have teamed up with Singapore government-linked property companies.

The five groups include Harrah's together with Singapore's Keppel Land Ltd.; MGM Mirage with Singapore's CapitaLand Ltd.; and Las Vegas Sands Corp., which said last week that it was still in talks with possible partners.

Malaysian gaming firm Genting International, a unit of Genting Bhd., has teamed up with Star Cruises Ltd., while Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho's Melco International Development Ltd. joined with Australia's Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd., which is owned by media magnate Kerry Packer, a keen gambler.

Singapore's first casino development will be located on a downtown waterfront site. The winning bid is expected to be announced by the middle of next year.

To describe...

Burma [a country referred to as Myanmar] is ruled by one of the most brutal military dictatorships in the world; a dictatorship charged by the United Nations with a “crime against humanity” for its systematic abuses of human rights, and condemned internationally for refusing to transfer power to the legally elected Government of the country – the party led by Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. The Burma Campaign

SINGAPORE : Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo has expressed the hope that the Myanmar issue will not be too much of a distraction during the forthcoming ASEAN Summit and inaugural East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur.

Mr Yeo was responding to a question from Channel NewsAsia on the recent announcement that Aung San Syu Kyi's detention had been further extended by the Myanmar authorities.

Said Mr Yeo, "What's happening in Myanmar is very sad and a bit of an embarrassment to the ASEAN family. Some of the things which have happened there recently are still a mystery to us. But they are part of the family and we've got to support each other, so I hope the issue of Myanmar will not be too much of a distraction."

Myanmar's chairmanship of ASEAN took centre stage when the grouping's foreign ministers met in Laos in July for their annual meeting.

Myanmar's foreign minister announced in Vientiane that his country had decided to forego the grouping's chairmanship in 2006 after Malaysia.

It had indicated it would want to focus its attention on the ongoing national reconciliation and democratisation process, and 2006 would be a critical year for this process. - CNA /ct

‘Asians don’t hug’
Eric Ellis

Singapore

No one outside Singapore’s steel-trap judiciary knows for sure whether Darshan Singh hanged Nguyen Tuong Van, of Melbourne, in Changi on Friday 2 December. A week earlier, Darshan said he’d been sacked as chief hangman after a series of embarrassingly gruesome articles had appeared about him in the Australian press. But his masters insist he wasn’t sacked. The confusion was not what you’d expect in Singapore, a place that is in most things obsessively efficient. But we do know that 72-year-old Darshan has seen off about 850 criminals in his 40 years as hangman. He is something of a world champion at this particular discipline.

One detail about Darshan that especially worried Australians when it was reported down under, was that he had toasted his 500th victim with a bottle of Chivas Regal with jailhouse colleagues. He is clearly a man who takes pride in his job, and sees no reason for sentimentality or false modesty. ‘With me,’ he says, ‘the prisoners don’t struggle. I know the real way. If it’s a raw guy, they will struggle like chickens, like fish out of the water.’

Darshan may well be a monster, but he has been a loyal servant of Harry Lee Kuan Yew, Asia’s self-styled Philosopher-King, across whose autobiography Margaret Thatcher scrawled ‘He Was Never Wrong’. Many Australians would take issue with Lady Thatcher. They certainly do with Lee. For months before the execution of Nguyen, debate raged in Australia about the rights and wrongs of capital punishment. But in Singapore’s state-controlled bubble, the hanging barely registered a blip. Nguyen was one of the 30–40 criminals Singapore admits to killing every year.

No one is suggesting Nguyen wasn’t guilty. In December 2002 the then 22-year-old, born in a Thai refugee camp to a Vietnamese mother fleeing communism, was caught in Changi airport on his way from Cambodia to Australia with 396g, or 14oz, of pure heroin. It was his first trip abroad. He said he was only trying to clear the gangland debts of his twin brother, a heroin addict. The Singapore police said that the heroin, which Nguyen carried strapped to his body, was enough for 26,000 hits, though Australians estimated it was only enough for 6,000 hits. Whatever the case, he had more than 15g of heroin, which is the level at which the death sentence is mandatory in Singapore.

It was all very shocking to those not familiar with Singapore. It’s such a nice, clean, sterile place. When Australians realised that Singapore challenged Iran for the world record in per capita executions, there were calls for boycotts of Singapore Airlines and of Optus, which is Australia’s second-biggest telecom provider and is owned by the Singapore government. Australians were not sufficiently outraged, however, actually to change their mobile subscription from Optus to the lumbering Australian-owned Telstra. That would have involved far too much inconvenience and frustration.

Singapore can survive the outrage, anyway. As prime minister from 1959 to 1990, Lee was a close ally of both Australia and America in the Cold War, and more recently, as Senior Minister, he has earned the admiration of both Canberra and Washington by helping to drive Islamic terrorists from Singapore. In five times seeking clemency for Nguyen, John Howard dogwhistled to the abolitionist half of his electorate, who praised his humanity. Singapore dogwhistled back, praising Howard for his ‘polite’ protest. That’s when Nguyen was doomed.

Not all Australians were against the hanging. Some, especially in the ‘Deep North’, have long wondered why Australian justice can’t be more like Singapore’s. A Darwin pensioner, Keith Sauerwald, offered to fill in for Darshan if the hangman was dismissed.

Darshan himself, meanwhile, has threatened to sue the prison service for wrongful dismissal. If he does sue — and of course he will only be able to sue if he has indeed been sacked — he will be the rare bird who challenges Singapore’s unwritten ‘social contract’ with the Lees, under which compliant Singaporeans essentially agree to eschew high-minded things like democracy and human rights in return for never-ending wealth. Foreign investors like this arrangement too, and love it that mostly Chinese Singapore isn’t Indonesia — sprawling, poor and Islamic. No other nation in ‘difficult’ Asia gives as good an impression of San Diego as Singapore; Singapore Inc delivers skilled labour and superb infrastructure, and its illiberality is among its chief corporate attractions. This is Disneyland with the death penalty, the only shopping centre with a seat in the UN, a real-life Truman Show, Asia Lite — the clichés about Singapore tend to ring true.

Still, this hanging has undoubtedly tarnished Singapore’s glossy veneer. For one thing, it was conducted with almost unbelievable cruelty. Nguyen’s mother pleaded with the Lees for a last hug of her boy. They refused, but on the day before he died they relented somewhat and, as a favour to Howard, she was allowed to squeeze her condemned son’s hand and ruffle his hair through his cell bars. And Singapore is hypocritical as well as cruel. The city state hangs wretched first offenders like Nguyen but then plays Switzerland to Burma’s money-laundering druglords and mollycoddles big business: the chairman of the government committee convened to oversee corporate governance sat on more than 50 company boards.

Singapore insists, meanwhile, that it’s Asia’s ‘arts hub’, but what kind of arts hub insists that playwrights — and there aren’t many in Singapore — must submit their scripts for approval to an Orwellian ‘media development authority’? Free speech is as badly treated on the street as it is in the theatre. Those who take their soap boxes to Singapore’s ‘Speakers’ Corner’ must pre-register with the state, and gatherings of concerned citizens — the few that actually take place — are photographed by government spooks.

True, there are elections in Singapore, but ballots are numbered and votes can be traced. The last two parliamentary polls were won by Lee’s People’s Action Party long before polling day because more than half the seats weren’t contested, and the PAP controls all but two of Singapore’s 84 parliamentary seats. President S.R. Nathan secured his second term in August when the government-appointed presidential elections committee ruled his three opponents ineligible. The Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, is Lee Kuan Yew’s eldest son. Members of the Lee family run Singapore’s biggest public company, its two leading government investment agencies and the finance ministry.

The press is tame. The Straits Times, started long before Somerset Maugham went out East, rivals Pravda for its obsequious adherence to the party line. I once asked the editor-in-chief, Cheong Yip Seng, about rumours that his newsroom was studded with former members of Singapore’s secret police. He gleefully named them. ‘Why not?’ Cheong beamed. ‘These guys have good analytical minds ...they are all kindred spirits.’

When the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders recently placed Singapore 140th of 167 on the world press freedom index, it was Cheong’s paper they were reading and quite possibly the columnist Andy Ho, who a week before Nguyen was hanged wrote a long-winded essay supporting capital punishment. When one enterprising Aussie television hack asked Ho for an on-camera hug in lieu of the one his government had denied Nguyen’s mother, Ho uncomfortably provided one, with the qualifier that ‘Asians don’t hug’.

Celebrating Executions in America

Blood Feast

By MIKE WHITNEY

There is no more heinous or morally indefensible crime than capital punishment. Nor is there is any person, however monstrous, deserving of execution at the hands of the state. We may never know the motives behind the actions of many criminals, but we can fully grasp the culpability of the state. For it is the state, through its legal machinations, that calmly premeditates the murder of its own citizens.

How can this be considered punishment?

There is no corrective element, at all; just death and finality.

A society that is willing to intentionally kill one of its own people, is a society that is willing to accept barbarism as it guiding principle. There's no middle ground on capital punishment. When one offers their moral support to the practice, they are participating directly in the ritual murder of another human being.

Two days ago, Kenneth Boyd became the 1,000th prisoner to be put to death in the US since the death penalty was reinstated 30 years ago. His final words were, "God bless everyone in here." Thus, Boyd's death becomes little more than a grim milestone of America's commitment to savagery over justice.

A recent Gallop poll indicates that 64% of Americans support the death penalty, down from 80% in 1994. "But the figure of 64% falls to just 50% when the alternative of life without parole is presented". ("US Turns against Death Penalty, Andrew Buncombe)

For years, anti death penalty groups have disputed the evenhandedness of capital punishment, which is overwhelming directed at the poor and people of color. Now, with the widespread use of DNA, a growing number of murder convictions have been overturned by new evidence. "There have also been 122 cases of prisoners on death row being shown to be innocent". (Andrew Buncombe)

This has caused a shift in public attitudes towards capital punishment and many people are becoming more sensitized to its inherent unfairness. I believe that more people would reject the death penalty if the wording of polling questions was simply changed to reflect the real meaning of their support. Staunch death penalty advocates tend to rationalize their support in terms of the evil of particularly shocking crime. They see it as an appropriate payback for bad behavior. .

But, that, in fact, is not the question. The real question is whether or not the state has the right to kill one of its own citizens. That is the only question that should concern us.

Our model of state power is not simply based on what may or may not be fair regarding the punishment for particular crimes. Rather, it is grounded on a larger principle that protects the society at large from the abuses of state power. If, for example, the question were raised in a survey "Does the state have the right to kill one of its citizens", I believe we would find the exact opposite result from the earlier poll. This reflects the innate suspicion that people have of handing over too much power to government.

Again, the nature of the crime makes no difference; it is never within the purview of the state to kill a citizen. Never. That definitive act turns the whole system of representative government on its head. Our government is the offspring of theories that emerged during the Enlightenment; that governments are established as a compromise of one's right to absolute freedom to meet the security needs of the individual. In exchange, the state becomes the guarantor of human and civil rights. This is what we call the social contract.

This model exposes the true origins of the state and suggests the parameters under which it may legitimately operate. And, although the state may be an expression of the public will, it is never more than a crude invention to assure one's safety in a potentially threatening environment. Such a device has no authority beyond its limited powers to protect and provide for its people.

To allow the state the absolute power over life and death is to elevate its significance above those it is created to serve. Capital punishment is a form state worship; elevating the authority of government above the principles that legitimize its existence. It is the "cart before the horse".

Whenever men are murdered by the state in the name of capital punishment; it is the state that is glorified; it is the state that is deified; it is the state that is victorious. And, it is the freedom of every individual that is sacrificed.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at: fergiewhitney@msn.com

Documentary's portrayal of Privy Council case 'highly misleading': Ministry of Law
Friday • December 9, 2005
Lee U-Wen
u-wen@newstoday.com.sg

A DISCOVERY Channel documentary presented a "highly misleading and inaccurate rendition" of a Privy Council case involving former opposition politician J B Jeyaretnam, the Ministry of Law said yesterday.

In a letter to the network released to the media, the Ministry highlighted a factual error during the final edition of a three-part documentary The History of Singapore, which was aired on Sunday.

Commissioned to mark Singapore's 40th anniversary, the documentary premiered in Singapore and 22 other countries in the region over the weekend.

In part three of the feature, titled Lion City, Asia Tiger, the commentator said: "In 1986, he (Mr Jeyaretnam) was prosecuted over a false declaration of accounts by his Workers' Party. He was fined and sentenced to a month in Queenstown Prison ...

"As a convicted criminal, Mr Jeyaretnam had to give up his seat in Parliament. But Singapore was a Commonwealth country and the last Court of Appeal was still in London with the law lords of the Privy Council. In 1988, they heard Mr Jeyaretnam's case and overturned the conviction, describing it as a grievous injustice."

The letter, sent to broadcaster Discovery Networks Asia and British independent firm Lion Television, which produced the series, argued that the statement was "completely wrong".

"Mr Jeyaretnam was found guilty and convicted over a false declaration of accounts of his Workers' Party. (He) did not appeal to the Privy Council against his convictions in that case and the Privy Council did not "overturn" his convictions," wrote the Ministry.

It said the Council was "only concerned" with the disciplinary proceedings between the Law Society of Singapore and Mr Jeyaretnam, "and not the validity of his criminal convictions" which he received separately.

It added that the Public Prosecutor who secured those convictions "was therefore not represented" at the Privy Council.

The letter further wrote that when Mr Jeyaretnam brought libel proceedings in 1991 against Singapore's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, English High Court judge Justice Brooke, found that the Privy Council "was not itself seized with an appeal against the criminal convictions (against Mr Jeyaretnam) and had no jurisdiction at all in respect of them".

Justice Brooke had, in fact, described the Privy Council's views in the earlier 1988 case as "most unusual", saying that "these opinions were expressed in proceedings to which the prosecuting authority in Singapore, although aware of their existence, was not a party".

Justice Brooke said that "the decisions of the Singapore High Court judges who heard (Mr Jeyaretnam's) appeals are final and conclusive, so far as his guilt or innocence before the Courts of Singapore is concerned". She added, "He (Mr Jeyaretnam) therefore remains duly convicted by the Courts of competent jurisdiction in his home country."

When contacted by Today, the network's senior vice-president (Programming and Creative Services) James Gibbons said: "We just received the letter this evening, and we will be looking into the matter. Unfortunately, we cannot comment any further at this time."

Copyright MediaCorp Press Ltd. All rights reserved.

March 26, 1999
Former president criticises suppression of dissent
Globe and Mail.
Canada.
March 29, 1999
By Marcus Gee

IN the Singapore of the early 1980s, Lee Kuan Yew was the captain and Devan Nair his loyal lieutenant. Mr Lee, independence leader, then prime minister and now senior minister of the tiny Southeast Asian city-state, laid down the law. Mr Nair followed it. As head of the national trade union congress, then president of Singapore, he loyally parroted the "LKY" line on the importance of social order, the dangers of Western-style democracy and the evils of littering.

Then, in 1985, came a shocking break. Mr Lee told Singapore's parliament that Mr Nair had resigned because he was an alcoholic, a charge Mr Nair now calls a baseless slur. Three years later, he left Singapore for good after publicly quarrelling with Mr Lee over the arrest of a well-known government critic. Then he dropped from sight.

For the past few years, Mr Nair has been living quietly in Hamilton, Ontario. He has given no interviews and made few public statements. "I thought it was unseemly for a former president to go whacky-whacking his country," he says.

Those days of silence are over Mr Nair has decided to speak out against the continuing suppression of legitimate dissent in his country. And so, last week, he sat down in the sun-lit drawing room of a friend's house near Hamilton to talk about Lee Kuan Yew, how they drew apart and what he thinks of Mr Lee's Singapore today.

Now 75, Mr Nair is a compact man with a mischievous smile. Sipping a glass of water, he speaks in a plummy baritone that commands attention.

Mr Nair got to know his "captain" when the two were fighting to free Singapore from British colonial rule in the 1950s. A teacher whose father emigrated from India, Mr Nair taught Shakespeare while he was a member of the Anti-British League, an irony he still savours. When the British threw him in jail as a subversive, holding him for a total of five years, Mr Lee was his lawyer.

The two remained close after Singapore won its freedom from Britain. Together, they fought off an attempted communist takeover, weathered Singapore's ejection from the neighbouring federation of Malaysia and transformed their country from a run-down sea port to an economic dynamo bristling with skyscrapers. "I supported him because he was an eloquent champion of the dreams I had for Singapore," Mr Nair says.

But as Singapore grew prosperous and stable and the communist threat faded, Mr Nair began to have doubts about his captain's iron-fisted methods. Perhaps sensing his ally's doubts, Mr Lee asked Mr Nair to leave his power base as head of the trade union congress and move into the presidential palace. As Mr Nair puts it, "He kicked me upstairs."

Being president, he says now, was "the silliest job in the world. All you had to do was cut ribbons." His frustration grew.

But before he could speak out, Mr Nair found himself at the centre of a rumour-mongering campaign that labelled him a drinker and womanizer. He says he was neither, and he suspects that Mr Lee had government doctors slip him hallucinatory drugs to make him appear befuddled. "Lee Kuan Yew decided: This man is going to be a threat, so I'd better begin a total demolishment of his character. He's very good at that."

A case in point: the recent battering of Singapore's most determined dissident, J. B. Jeyaretnam. Singapore doesn't lock up its critics any more; it sues them, instead. Mr Jeyaretnam has faced countless libel suits from Mr Lee and other members of his government. If the party doesn't pay the damages in the most recent suit, the government hints it will ask the courts to shut it down, a move that would oust Mr Jeyaretnam from parliament.

That, says Mr Nair, is an outrage. Mr Jeyaretnam has shown "indomitable courage and dignity in the face of the vilest persecution."

Why didn't Mr Nair challenge his leader at the time? That question has haunted him ever since. "I was prone to hero worship and he was our captain," he says, lowering his head. "Even when I began to feel uneasy, loyalty to the captain superseded all other feelings. That was my weakness."

Mr Nair is not bitter. He gives Mr Lee credit for making Singapore a wealthy, stable place, an accomplishment in which he is proud to have shared. But how much greater that accomplishment would be if Singapore were a wealthy stable democracy. To him, Singapore today is a soulless place whose only ideology is materialism. Whether he could have changed that, Mr Nair wishes now he had spoken up earlier.

15:43:12 EST Dec 7, 2005

SINGAPORE (AP) - A former president of Singapore, Devan Nair, has died in Canada at the age of 82, a television news station reported Wednesday.

The report by Channel NewsAsia provided no further details regarding the death, but a family friend, Margaret John, confirmed the death and said that he had been ill for some time. "He had a number of ailments," she said, and referred calls to his son in Dallas. Those calls were not immediately returned.

Nair moved to Canada in 1995 and lived in Hamilton.

A legislator and a trade union leader, Nair served from 1981 to 1985 as Singapore's third president, a largely ceremonial post.

When he resigned, then-prime minister Lee Kuan Yew claimed in Parliament that Nair had quit to get treatment for alcoholism.

Nair denied Lee's allegation, claiming that Nair's questioning of Lee's government had caused conflict between the two, and that he only stepped down when the prime minister threatened to seek a motion in Parliament to oust him.

In 1999, Lee sued him and a Canadian newspaper over an article that Lee said suggested he had carried out a character assassination of Nair by labelling him an alcoholic.

Nair countersued in 2001, and the suit was dropped.

Lee and Nair were founding members of Singapore's governing People's Action party, and in earlier times had been allies in fighting British colonial rule.

Born in the south Malaysian town of Malacca on Aug. 5, 1923, Nair came to Singapore with his family when he was 10. After the Second World War, he worked as a teacher, marking the start of his involvement with trade unions.

Nair was detained twice by British authorities for anti-colonial activities: once in 1951 for two years, and again from 1956 until 1959.

As a trade union leader, Nair was considered to have shaped Singapore's workers into a restrained but economically effective force that helped the country develop into one of the strongest financial positions in Asia.

© The Canadian Press, 2005

Let us be clear: torture can never be an instrument to fight terror, for torture is an instrument of terror. [...]

Today, on Human Rights Day, let us recommit ourselves to the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and let us rededicate ourselves to wiping the scourge of torture from the face of the earth."

Kofi Annan,
United Nations Secretary-General

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits such practices, and there were no reports that government officials employed them during the year. In previous years, there were a small number of cases involving alleged police mistreatment of detainees. Persons who alleged mistreatment were permitted to bring criminal charges against government officials suspected of involvement in such abusive behavior. The media reports fully on allegations of police abuse, and the Government has taken action against abusers. In July, a court overturned a dismissal of a former police officer who was fired in 2001 for allegedly slapping three women detainees in 1999; the Government is appealing the decision.

The Penal Code mandates caning, in addition to imprisonment, as punishment for approximately 30 offenses involving the use of violence or threat of violence against a person, such as rape and robbery, and for nonviolent offenses such as vandalism, drug trafficking, and violation of immigration laws. Caning is discretionary for convictions on other charges involving the use of force, such as kidnapping or voluntarily causing grievous hurt. Women and men over age 50 or under age 16, and those determined medically unfit are exempt from punishment by caning. Although statistics for the year were not available, caning was a commonly administered punishment.

Prison conditions, while Spartan, generally were believed to meet international standards. However, a member of an opposition party who served a 5-week prison sentence in 2002 said after his release that he and other sick bay inmates had been chained to their beds at night. The Government responded that the inmates were restrained to minimize the risk of hurting themselves, medical staff, or other inmates. The Government did not allow human rights monitors to visit prisons; however, diplomatic representatives were given consular access to citizens of their countries.

Male and female prisoners are held separately, and juveniles are held separately from adults. Pretrial detainees are held separately from convicts. It is unknown where persons detained under the ISA are held."

Is this starting to sound like the criminalisation of male individuals who are HIV positive in Singapore? While last week measures were announced that would include help for female and young suffers of HIV and AIDS. As a fellow contributor mentioned recently, it is the institutionalisation of the 'good AIDS' - 'bad AIDS' idea.

08 Dec 2005 12:00:05 GMT

Source: Reuters

SINGAPORE, Dec 8 (Reuters) - A Singapore court sentenced five HIV-positive blood donors to prison for lying about their sexual history, a court official said on Thursday.

The men, aged between 21 and 37, admitted to making false declarations when they donated blood in 2004, an offence under Singapore law, the court official said. One man had participated in an orgy and then lied about how many sex partners he had had, while four men did not admit when they gave blood that they had had homosexual partners, according to court documents.

"Four were sentenced to eight months in prison while one was jailed for ten months" on Wednesday, said Joyce Loh, a spokeswoman for the district court.

All blood donations in Singapore are tested for HIV to prevent infections in recipient patients. The donations made by the five men were destroyed.

Under the state's law, a blood donor who gives false or misleading information can face a maximum jail term of two years and a fine of S$20,000 ($11,830).

Although the Southeast Asian city-state has one of Asia's lowest levels of HIV infection, an increase in the number of cases in the last year -- particularly among gays and heterosexual men who have had casual sex -- has prompted tougher regulations.

In July, the Health Ministry introduced HIV testing as part of the antenatal screening routine for pregnant women, in a bid to eliminate HIV infection of babies.

The ministry also said patient confidentiality can be breached in order to inform the spouses of HIV-positive patients about their partner's illness.

Controversial legislative measures, such as compulsory HIV testing for couples about to marry and criminalising the act of spreading the HIV virus with or without intent, have also been considered but have not been implemented.

Singapore has recorded a total of 2,584 HIV infections to date, of whom 954 have died, 631 have full-blown AIDS and 999 show no symptoms.

From January to October this year, 198 people were diagnosed with HIV; fewer than 10 percent were women, statistics from the health ministry's website showed. ($1=1.691 Singapore Dollar)

Singapore has charged a British man with cocaine trafficking after arresting him along with 12 other foreigners and a Singaporean in an anti-drug operation.

Management consultant Lionel Rudolf Zupancich, 45, faces up to 20 years in jail and 15 strokes of the cane if found guilty of trafficking in about 7 grams of cocaine, court documents showed.

Two other British people as well as seven Thais, a Malaysian, a Japanese, an American and a Singaporean were also arrested in a sting operation.

The arrests came days after Singapore's execution of convicted Australian heroin trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van drew outrage from Australia's government, and raised international appeals for the tightly controlled city-state to end its mandatory death penalty for those caught trafficking in certain amounts of some drugs, including heroin and marijuana.

Singapore investigators say Zupancich was also in possession of the synthetic drug ketamine.

It was not immediately clear if Zupancich or any of the other suspects have entered pleas.

Also, 33-year-old British construction supervisor Jason Taylor was charged with cocaine possession. He could be jailed up to 10 years if convicted.

Authorities seized a total of 21.38 grams of cocaine, 9.07 grams of methamphetamine and 3.75 grams of ketamine, as well as marijuana and Ecstasy from the 14 suspects, a statement from the Central Narcotics Bureau said.

Singapore has some of the world's toughest drug laws, including a mandatory death penalty for anyone caught with more than 15 grams of heroin or more than 500 grams of marijuana. Those convicted are hanged.

Court documents and the Central Narcotics Bureau statement named Thai woman Nipaporn Ton-sai, 28, as a drug syndicate leader and trafficker. She and her 31-year-old American boyfriend were arrested in Singapore's Orchard Road shopping area in Tuesday's sting operation. Nipaporn faces up to 20 years' jail if convicted.

Singapore, December 7, 2005

Women migrant domestic workers in Singapore suffer grave abuses including physical and sexual violence, food deprivation, and confinement in the workplace, said Human Rights Watch in a new report released today. At least 147 migrant domestic workers have died from workplace accidents or suicide since 1999, most by jumping or falling from residential buildings. Migrant domestic workers earn half the wages of Singaporean workers in similar occupations, such as cleaners or gardeners. Unpaid wages is a growing complaint.

"Many domestic workers labor without pay for months to settle debts to employment agencies, work long hours seven days a week, or are confined to their workplace," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Singapore's refusal to extend ordinary labor protections to domestic workers is leaving them open to abuse."

The 124-page report, "Maid to Order: Ending Abuses against Migrant Domestic Workers in Singapore," is based on more than one hundred in-depth interviews with domestic workers, government officials, and employment agents. It details a range of abuses endured by domestic workers in Singapore and the response of the Singaporean government.

Families in Singapore employ approximately 150,000 women, primarily from Indonesia, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka, as domestic workers. Human Rights Watch said the Singaporean government has instituted some encouraging reforms in the past two years. These include creating mandatory orientation programs for employers and domestic workers, prosecuting cases of unpaid wages and physical abuse, and introducing an accreditation program for employment agencies.

But key labor conditions, such as wages, hours of work, and salary deductions are left to employers and agencies, while domestic workers have little or no bargaining power. Human Rights Watch said that authorities have excluded domestic workers from the country's main labor laws. Starting in January, domestic workers signing new contracts will be entitled to a single day off a month.

At least 147 migrant domestic workers have died from workplace accidents or suicide since 1999, most by jumping or falling from residential buildings. Migrant domestic workers earn half the wages of Singaporean workers in similar occupations, such as cleaners or gardeners. Unpaid wages is a growing complaint.

"Many domestic workers labor without pay for months to settle debts to employment agencies, work long hours seven days a week, or are confined to their workplace," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "Singapore's refusal to extend ordinary labor protections to domestic workers is leaving them open to abuse."

"One day off a month is a poor solution," said Roth. "Domestic workers deserve a weekly rest day and protection under Singapore's Employment Act like other workers."

Singapore imposes a monthly levy on employers of migrant domestic workers to regulate demand. Employers pay S$200-295 [U.S.$118-174] to a central government fund each month, more than the wages of many domestic workers themselves. None of these funds, roughly S$360-531 million (U.S.$212-313 million), are earmarked for services geared toward migrant domestic workers.

Intense competition among the more than six hundred employment agencies has led them to shift the cost of recruitment, transportation, training, and placement from employers to domestic workers. To pay for these charges, many domestic workers labor for 4-10 months with little or no pay. Some employment agencies fail to provide assistance in cases of employer abuse, sink domestic workers deeper into debt by overcharging those who transfer employers, and confiscate religious items such as prayer garments and holy books.

To control illegal immigration, the Singapore government imposes a security bond on each employer, who forfeits S$5,000 [U.S.$2,950] if their domestic worker runs away. Immigration regulations prohibit domestic workers from becoming pregnant. Human Rights Watch said that these policies become incentives for employers to tightly restrict domestic workers' movements to prevent them from running away or having boyfriends. For example, some employers prevent domestic workers from having weekly rest days, forbid them from talking to neighbors, and sometimes lock them in the workplace. Heavy debts and confinement at home mean that some domestic workers cannot escape serious workplace abuses.

"I was not allowed to go outside. I never went outside, not even to dump the garbage…," said Sri Mulyani (not her real name), a domestic worker interviewed by Human Rights Watch. "I felt like I was in jail. It was truly imprisonment…. I could only see the outside world when I hung clothes to dry."

Roth said, "In the same way that the government has pursued employers who beat their domestic workers, officials must tackle agencies that charge workers ten months of their salaries and employers who confine domestic workers to the workplace."

Given their isolation in private homes, it is difficult to ascertain the exact proportion of migrant domestic workers who face abuse. The Indonesian embassy estimates that it receives fifty complaints per day, mostly from domestic workers. The Philippines embassy and the Sri Lanka High Commission estimate receiving forty to eighty complaints from domestic workers per month. Human Rights Watch said that many abuses are likely never reported, especially if an employer repatriates a domestic worker before she has a chance to seek help.

Singapore's laws and regulations offer stronger protection than do those of neighboring countries such as Malaysia. Singapore is still far behind Hong Kong, which includes domestic workers in its main labor laws, protecting their rights to a weekly rest day, a minimum wage, maternity leave, public holidays, and paid annual leave.

Human Rights Watch urged the Singapore government to provide comprehensive protections to migrant domestic workers by amending the Employment Act and regulating charges imposed by agencies so that migrant domestic workers do not spend 4-10 months working off their debts. Singapore should consider adjusting the monthly levy to offset the cost to employers.

"In a country well-known for strictly enforcing laws to promote order and efficiency, the failure to provide adequate and equal protection to an entire class of workers is an anomaly," said Roth. "By implementing comprehensive reforms, Singapore could become a standard-setter in the region for migrant domestic workers."

Select testimonies from domestic workers in Singapore featured in the report:

Sometimes there was not enough food….. They bought food from outside, but not for me. When angry, [the employer] would throw my food in the rubbish….. I was very scared. My employer told me, "Tomorrow you have a punishment, no eating."….I took my bag, I ran ran ran. I called my sister, "I'm hungry and my employer is no good. If I stay long, I think I'd go to the hospital." I want to eat everyday, I want to eat enough. -Adelyn Malana (not her real name), domestic worker, age twenty-two, Singapore, February 21, 2005

I was afraid if I ran away, I would be caught by police. Madam often got angry with me, complained to the agency, and the agency also got angry with me. [The agent asked] "What do you want?" I said, "I want to die, ma'am, because the people here are cruel, everything I do is wrong, I'm always called idiot and stupid." [It got so bad,] I really didn't know what to do, so I drank poison for rats and cockroaches. I lost consciousness, and Madam brought me to the hospital…. When the incident happened, I had been working exactly seven months. I had earned S$90 [U.S.$53]. -Muriyani Suharti (not her real name), domestic worker, age twenty-two, Singapore, March 8, 2005

The employer would get angry…. If she was very angry, she would slap me many times. I hadn't finished my contract yet. She said I couldn't go home. I couldn't tolerate it. When I told the agent the employer had slapped me, she just said, "you must suffer. You should control your feelings." If a maid hasn't finished her salary deduction, and she calls the agent, the agent is angry. The agent also slapped me; they didn't want me to leave without finishing the contract and the salary deduction. -Wati Widodo (not her real name), domestic worker, age twenty, March 10, 2005

Harold Pinter – Nobel Lecture
Art, Truth & Politics

Harold Pinter's Nobel Lecture was pre-recorded, and shown on video December 7, 2005, in Börssalen at the Swedish Academy in Stockholm.

In his video-taped Nobel acceptance speech, Harold Pinter excoriated a 'brutal, scornful and ruthless' United States. This is the full text of his address

In 1958 I wrote the following:
'There are no hard distinctions between what is real and what is unreal, nor between what is true and what is false. A thing is not necessarily either true or false; it can be both true and false.'

I believe that these assertions still make sense and do still apply to the exploration of reality through art. So as a writer I stand by them but as a citizen I cannot. As a citizen I must ask: What is true? What is false?

Truth in drama is forever elusive. You never quite find it but the search for it is compulsive. The search is clearly what drives the endeavour. The search is your task. More often than not you stumble upon the truth in the dark, colliding with it or just glimpsing an image or a shape which seems to correspond to the truth, often without realising that you have done so. But the real truth is that there never is any such thing as one truth to be found in dramatic art. There are many. These truths challenge each other, recoil from each other, reflect each other, ignore each other, tease each other, are blind to each other. Sometimes you feel you have the truth of a moment in your hand, then it slips through your fingers and is lost.
I have often been asked how my plays come about. I cannot say. Nor can I ever sum up my plays, except to say that this is what happened. That is what they said. That is what they did.

Most of the plays are engendered by a line, a word or an image. The given word is often shortly followed by the image. I shall give two examples of two lines which came right out of the blue into my head, followed by an image, followed by me.

The plays are The Homecoming and Old Times. The first line of The Homecoming is 'What have you done with the scissors?' The first line of Old Times is 'Dark.'

In each case I had no further information.

In the first case someone was obviously looking for a pair of scissors and was demanding their whereabouts of someone else he suspected had probably stolen them. But I somehow knew that the person addressed didn't give a damn about the scissors or about the questioner either, for that matter.

'Dark' I took to be a description of someone's hair, the hair of a woman, and was the answer to a question. In each case I found myself compelled to pursue the matter. This happened visually, a very slow fade, through shadow into light.

I always start a play by calling the characters A, B and C.

In the play that became The Homecoming I saw a man enter a stark room and ask his question of a younger man sitting on an ugly sofa reading a racing paper. I somehow suspected that A was a father and that B was his son, but I had no proof. This was however confirmed a short time later when B (later to become Lenny) says to A (later to become Max), 'Dad, do you mind if I change the subject? I want to ask you something. The dinner we had before, what was the name of it? What do you call it? Why don't you buy a dog? You're a dog cook. Honest. You think you're cooking for a lot of dogs.' So since B calls A 'Dad' it seemed to me reasonable to assume that they were father and son. A was also clearly the cook and his cooking did not seem to be held in high regard. Did this mean that there was no mother? I didn't know. But, as I told myself at the time, our beginnings never know our ends.

'Dark.' A large window. Evening sky. A man, A (later to become Deeley), and a woman, B (later to become Kate), sitting with drinks. 'Fat or thin?' the man asks. Who are they talking about? But I then see, standing at the window, a woman, C (later to become Anna), in another condition of light, her back to them, her hair dark.

It's a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche. The author's position is an odd one. In a sense he is not welcomed by the characters. The characters resist him, they are not easy to live with, they are impossible to define. You certainly can't dictate to them. To a certain extent you play a never-ending game with them, cat and mouse, blind man's buff, hide and seek. But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort.

So language in art remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which might give way under you, the author, at any time.

But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.

Political theatre presents an entirely different set of problems. Sermonising has to be avoided at all cost. Objectivity is essential. The characters must be allowed to breathe their own air. The author cannot confine and constrict them to satisfy his own taste or disposition or prejudice. He must be prepared to approach them from a variety of angles, from a full and uninhibited range of perspectives, take them by surprise, perhaps, occasionally, but nevertheless give them the freedom to go which way they will. This does not always work. And political satire, of course, adheres to none of these precepts, in fact does precisely the opposite, which is its proper function.

In my play The Birthday Party I think I allow a whole range of options to operate in a dense forest of possibility before finally focussing on an act of subjugation.

Mountain Language pretends to no such range of operation. It remains brutal, short and ugly. But the soldiers in the play do get some fun out of it. One sometimes forgets that torturers become easily bored. They need a bit of a laugh to keep their spirits up. This has been confirmed of course by the events at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad. Mountain Language lasts only 20 minutes, but it could go on for hour after hour, on and on and on, the same pattern repeated over and over again, on and on, hour after hour.

Ashes to Ashes, on the other hand, seems to me to be taking place under water. A drowning woman, her hand reaching up through the waves, dropping down out of sight, reaching for others, but finding nobody there, either above or under the water, finding only shadows, reflections, floating; the woman a lost figure in a drowning landscape, a woman unable to escape the doom that seemed to belong only to others.

But as they died, she must die too.

Political language, as used by politicians, does not venture into any of this territory since the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45 minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny, which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued - or beaten to death - the same thing - and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua. I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf. The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace. A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity. 'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people" were the victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over 100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of health care and education and achieve social unity and national self respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us. President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in 1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia, USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified them as communists. They died because they dared to question the status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance. 'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, 'the American people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days - conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the 'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally - a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort - all other justifications having failed to justify themselves - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank. They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,' said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way. The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets! *

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden, of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes? China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile insanity - the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons - is at the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force - yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the following short address which he can make on television to the nation. I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere, often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist? This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a limb. You find no shelter, no protection - unless you lie - in which case of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be argued, become a politician.
I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?


Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror - for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching, unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us - the dignity of man.

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape, London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

From Imagethief

Van Nguyen Died For Your Sins: Executions as Public Communication

The Australians were doomed from the start, literally and metaphorically.

They were doomed because they misapprehended the nature of capital punishment for drug offenses in Singapore. They thought of it as retribution, or punishment. This is wrong. Drug-offense executions in Singapore are, first and foremost, public communication. That radically affects how the Singapore government can be expected to respond to noisy pleas for clemency. Mercy is appropriate for punishment, but it is bad for deterrent communication. The louder and more passionate the public please for clemency became, the more inevitable was Van's execution.

The Singapore government is fairly transparent about its death penalty. Anyone entering the country by airplane is treated to "the lecture", in the form of a standardized announcement of the stiff penalties for drug offenses, including death. Immigration entry cards carry the same warning. The country publicizes many of its executions via coverage in the local media. The reason why is that, unlike many nations that apply a death penalty, Singapore appears to have given some thought to how to wield it most effectively as a deterrent.

In order to be effective a deterrent needs to be two things. First, it needs to be credible. In other words, people have to believe in the threat. Second, that credibility has to be communicated. A deterrent that no-one knows about or believes in is useless. Your trained rottweiler is a credible burglar deterrent. But you still put a "beware of dog" sign on your gate and scatter shredded dog toys, an enormous dog dish and a cow femur around your yard to drive the point home. That's the communciation. It lets the thief know the penalty for hopping your fence and saves you the trouble of winnowing pieces of human flesh from between your dog's teeth before his breath goes foul.

In the US, a death sentence is often an abstraction for those convicted; something sinister that hovers on the horizon, but which is often delayed for a decade or longer by the legal process. In a sense, the death penalty in the US is not credible ("hang 'em high" Texas possibly excepted). This lack of credibility is aggravated by laws that differ from state to state. Singapore, on the other hand, is very systematic and uniform about meting out the death penalty for drug crimes. It applies strict criteria for when the death penalty applies to drug offenses, and those criteria are openly published. The appeals process is limited and the time from conviction to execution, anecdotally, is generally around a year. That's immediate enough to make the prospect of death very real and credible indeed.

The Australian protests over Van's execution yesterday arguably played right into Singapore's hands on two fronts. It not only let them communicate their penalty globally, which the Singapore government has no qualms about, but it also let them publicly demonstrate the credibility of the deterrent by refusing to entertain pleas of clemency. The message was quite clear and effective: We are willing to execute a citizen of a first-world ally despite repeated, public pleas from his government and tearful mother. So you'd better believe we will damn-sure hang your narrow, friendless Burmese/Thai/Malay/Indonesian/Lao smuggler ass without a second thought.

From the Singaporean government's point of view, the consistent application of the death penalty is the lynchpin of the credibility that must be communicated. Any visible erosion of that credibility is dangerous. You can think of this a bit like you would think of negotiation with kidnappers or terrorists. You can never be publicly seen to give in as that sends a message to others that they might succeed at the same thing. If you do negotiate, you will do it only in quiet situations where there is little risk of public disclosure. If there was to be any hope for Van at all (and that hope was never more than gossamer), it would have come from sotto voce diplomatic communication out of the public view, accompanied by restrained and dignified public silence. Candlelight vigils make nice photo-ops and public remonstrations generate good copy for Aussie politicians. But they essentially guarantee that the Singapore government will follow-through with the execution, because to do anything else would undermine the entire communication strategy around their deterrent.

Whether Singapore's death penalty, credible or not, has any actual deterrent effect is, of course, nearly impossible to measure. It's a truism amongst anti death-penalty campaigners that the deterrent effects of the death penalty are suspect. The fact is that, no matter how stiff the deterrent, Singapore is a strategic trans-shipment location. That is the unintended consequence of making yourself the modern transportation and air hub for one of the world's most important drug production regions. And in Southeast Asia, and Australia as well, there is obviously a ready supply of people who will risk their lives for a large enough payoff.

Speaking of public communication, after Schapelle Corby and Van Nguyen, the Australians might want to think twice about having a noisy public protest if another one of their own is booked on drug charges in the next few months. Right now they are looking like the whiny kingpins of the Southeast Asian drug trade. Unfair and untrue, but that's the perception being created.

Another spooky aspect of Singapore's drug laws that is seldom remarked upon is that Singaporean citizens and (gulp) permanent residents can be prosecuted in Singapore for consumption of drugs overseas, even in places where it is legal or barely criminal. Singapore has, in effect, made its drug consumption laws extra-territorial, ensuring that its social values and legal restrictions apply to citizens and PRs no matter where they may live. Drug consumption spans a pretty wide range of activities, from the manifestly corrosive habits of a heroin junkie to the arguably pretty harmless dormitory spliff. The philosophical questions raised by this are, therefore, interesting ones.

Following the promulgation of that law, in 1998, in another classic piece of Singapore drug-enforcement public communication, a couple returning from a rave in Malaysia a few years ago was famously arrested at the causeway and convicted for smoking marijuana. They were reportedly, and not very credibly, rumbled by sharp border guards who spotted their reddened "addicts eyes". My Singaporean friends theorized that it was more likely informers planted at the rave who had ratted the couple out. Many Singaporeans I know take it for granted that informers are also cultivated amongst Singaporean student communities overseas. After all, if too many defenseless Singaporeans caught the bong habit in the dorm rooms of libertine Perth, London or Los Angeles, who knows what that might lead to. Reggae, perhaps.

Disclosure: Imagethief opposes the death penalty in all applications. It is, I believe, a worthless deterrerent, prone to error and more often applied as a tool for satisfying an unworthy social lust for vengeance rather than as a gravely considered sanction of last-resort. In a societies that claim the mantle of modern civilization it is hypocrisy of the deepest level and there should be no place for it.

This pretty much sums up the activities of 2005.

Image of Singapore Tarnished
29 Nov 2005

Source: The Australian
By: Garry Rodan

WHATEVER the merits or otherwise of the Singapore Government's refusal to grant clemency to Nguyen Tuong Van, its handling has dealt a blow to Singapore's image. The city-state is renowned for bureaucratic efficiency and meticulous attention to detail by its political leaders.

This didn't square with John Howard learning from reporters that, while he was making his plea to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Van's mother was already in receipt of the Singapore Government's decision letter.

More than clumsy diplomacy, the clemency episode is the latest illustration of growing challenges facing the ruling People's Action Party in managing contradictions inherent in the Singapore development model. Singapore's increasingly sophisticated market economy has also involved the proliferation of government-linked companies that are central to the power base of the PAP. And Singapore's rise as a regional media and information hub has gone hand in hand with stringent curbs on free _expression.

For four decades, its leaders have skilfully reconciled competing political and economic pressures to preserve state economic interests and authoritarian rule. But in the context of globalisation, managing and concealing contradictions is proving more difficult.

It is the internationalisation of government-linked companies that has driven involvement in Burma and which contradicts the harsh, punitive stance on drug trafficking within Singapore. As Australian media have highlighted, while Singapore's courts have been sending hundreds of drug mules to the gallows, GLCs have seized on business opportunities in one of the world's leading drug-source countries. At home, GLCs are insulated from such media scrutiny.

With the internationalisation of Singapore's cashed-up GLCs, the negotiation of free trade agreements and the more comprehensive integration of Singapore into the global economy, official rhetoric depicting Singapore as a transparent market has also come under unprecedented critical international scrutiny. Temasek Holdings, with a portfolio of $83billion in about 40 companies, and the Government Investment Corporation, managing more than $140billion of taxpayers' money in overseas investments, have been the principal focus. Many of the companies involved are not publicly listed and are exempt from legal or regulatory requirements for routine external reviews or public declarations.

In separate FTA negotiations with the US and Australia, the lack of transparency of GLCs and the independence of Singapore's regulatory authorities were contentious issues, viewed by the US in particular as serious obstacles to competition in the domestic market.

The International Monetary Fund has also called for more transparent fiscal and monetary frameworks and raised concerns about the scope for conflicts of interest in Singapore owing to interpenetration of executive power, regulatory authority and leading GLCs. For instance, Lee's wife, Ho Ching, is the executive director of Temasek.

Contradictions are also playing themselves out in domestic politics. The Government's transparency claims have been an unwitting political opportunity for critics. In August, 12 anti-riot squad police wearing helmets and knee-high protective gear, and armed with shields and batons, formed a phalanx in front of the Central Provident Fund (national superannuation) building in the city centre. This was in reaction not to a security threat but to four silent protesters wearing T-shirts and carrying placards demanding greater transparency and accountability in the use of public funds.

Although the protesters did not appear to violate the Public Entertainment and Meetings Act, which requires a permit for a public meeting of more than five people, they were dispersed and their T-shirts and placards confiscated on the pretext of possible charges of causing a public nuisance.

Tension between the media hub and curbs on free _expression also entered a new phase this year with the mushrooming of internet weblogs (or blogs). With no moderators, system administrators or web content managers for Singapore's authorities to monitor, filter or warn, they have provided new avenues for government critics. The blog of Chen Jiahao, the former beneficiary of a government scholarship to study at the University of Illinois, was at the centre of one controversy when he criticised scholarships as overly restrictive. After threats of defamation proceedings from a leading state bureaucrat, Chen was intimidated into shutting down his blog.

The Films Act contradicts the state-nurtured image of Singapore as a creative arts hub, as does propaganda by the government-controlled media. This act was invoked earlier this year when Martyn See's Singapore Rebel, a documentary on political dissident Chee Soon Juan, was withdrawn from the Singapore International Short Film Festival. The making, distribution and showing of films containing "wholly or partly either partisan or biased references to or comments on any political matter" is banned under the act, which provides for a two-year jail sentence or an $80,000 fine.

Creative thinking is alive, though, with political activist Yap Keng Ho filing a police complaint against Singapore's national broadcaster MediaCorp for allegedly violating the Films Act by screening a number of pro-PAP, party-political programs.

Significantly, such contradictions have not hitherto prevented a string of international educational institutions from conducting operations in the city-state. However, concerns about academic freedom weighed heavily when one of Britain's leading institutions, the University of Warwick, last month declined Singapore's invitation to set up a campus. This not only put Singapore authorities in damage control, it has raised the bar for all other courted institutions. Can the University of NSW, for instance, maintain its academic reputation without the formal and binding protections of academic freedom sought by Warwick's faculty? To genuinely realise its ambition of becoming a global schoolhouse, Singapore might have to make significant concessions. This is easier said than done.

The authoritarian PAP regime is not going to collapse any time soon. It has proved remarkably resilient precisely because it has been constantly modified. But new challenges present Singapore's leadership with a dilemma. Either it embarks on a successful new phase in refining the mechanisms of authoritarian rule or it will increasingly struggle to manage the inherent contradictions of its own success.

Garry Rodan is director of the Asia Research Centre and professor of politics and international studies at Murdoch University in Perth.

By Jesse Hogan
December 7, 2005 - 1:31PM

theage.com.au

Web links
Nguyen's message
PDF Funeral program

Thousands turned out for the funeral in Melbourne of executed drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van this morning, offering tears, hugs and applause as the coffin was removed at the conclusion of the 11am Catholic requiem mass.

Kim Nguyen, stoic upon her arrival, sobbed as her son's coffin was carried out to the front steps of St Patrick's Cathedral at 12.42pm.

She held a photo of the 25-year old Nguyen as the coffin was placed in the back of a silver hearse.

The congregation clapped spontaneously as the procession moved outside.

Nguyen's twin brother Khoa — dressed entirely in white, the Vietnamese colour of mourning — was one of the pallbearers.

"Van is not a martyr, he was not a hero," the family declared.

"But he has become dear to many because within the struggles of his short and sometimes difficult life, he learned to live only for others and with a heart of love for God, and for all the people he knew," their statement in the mass booklet read.

Father Peter Hansen, honouring Nguyen's final request, asked the congregation of more than 2000 to hug each other at the communion part of the mass, instead of the customary handshakes.

People began entering St Patrick's before 9.30am for the Catholic requiem mass, with guests filling the cathedral by the time it began to the strains of Amazing Grace.

Hundreds of guests stood in the aisles once the cathedral's 2000-capacity pews were filled, while others stood outside listening to the temporary public address system.

Nguyen's lawyers Lex Lasry, QC, and Julian McMahon — both of whom visited him on death row last week — attended the service, as did Father Peter Norden, who officiated at a prayer vigil for Nguyen last week.

Nguyen's close friends Kelly Ng and Bronwyn Lew both read eulogies during the mass, as did his Singaporean friend Goldgan Ng and Mr Lasry.

Mr Lasry told the congregation that Nguyen grew spiritually during his time in jail, with his selfishness giving way to selflessness.

"Over the three years I knew Van I saw a change in him that I had never seen before," he said.

Fr Hansen, alternating between English and Vietnamese, conceded Nguyen's life was "not always virtuous", but said he was remorseful and deserved to live.

At times, he referred to Nguyen as Caleb — the name he took when baptised in Singapore's Changi Prison.

He also reaffirmed the church's opposition to the death penalty, and rebuked those who said Nguyen was "not fit" to have a funeral service at St Patrick's.

Nguyen's final journal entry, written two hours before his death, was also printed on the last page of the prayer book.

"It is now my 11th hour. My work here is done now. Pray, may I not have failed you completely and by the grace of God may you find strength and comfort in these words my heart now speaks to you my brothers and sisters," the entry read.

"Fear not, my brothers and sisters. Fear not."

Kim Nguyen thanked all the priests involved in the service before the coffin was driven away.

This was all done in silence, despite the hundreds of onlookers.

Nguyen was arrested at Changi Airport in possession of almost 400 grams of heroin in December 2002.

He was hanged in Singapore on Friday after extensive appeals for clemency were rejected. His body was flown back to Australia on Saturday.

Nguyen will be buried in a private ceremony.

The Think Centre

Dec 10 - International Human Rights Day - reminds us of persisting human rights problems in our communities and in the world, and of the enormous efforts still required to make human rights a reality for all.

Human rights must be viewed as a vital part of civilisation, designed to equip generations with the knowledge of their inalienable rights, and the means to exercise and defend them. But none as sacrosanct as the right to life.
Singapore has been accused of having draconian laws and disrespecting human life. Recent episodes on drug-traficking offences highlighted the need for human rights education, judicial discretionary powers and abolition of mandatory death penalty.

Human rights include rights to health, to education, to food, to housing, to participate in politics, to be free from torture, arbitrary arrest and detention - in short, the rights needed to be free from want and fear.

Human rights education thus enables our people to be better informed of international perspectives on human rights charter and better appreciate the value of human life.

Abolition of the mandatory death penalty is a positive policy decision by a progressive, nimble and caring government. Instead of being defensive on grounds of sovereignty and legality processes, governments will be viewed as geniunely open-minded, rehabilitative towards criminal offences and respected as a state that values the sanctity of life.

Moroever, its been noted that Singapore authorities need to allow access at least within 48 hours of a persons detention, within the period the accused has to be produced in court. Singapore authorities cannot continue to justify its denial of early access of legal counsel to the accused - we cannot remain an exception to international legal practices.

This International Human Rights Day, Think Centre calls on Singaporeans to support its call to the government:
- to institutionalise human rights education in schools and the community
- to empower the Judiciary with discretionary power on drug trafficking sentences
- to abolish the mandatory death penalty in Singapore


In a global community where technology is permeating societal barriers, cultural walls and international borders, our Ministry of Foreign Affairs with Permanent representatives in Geneva and New York, are constantly engaged on human rights and defending Singapore's position for or against on the thematic issues including death penalty, migrant worker's rights, and others.

Let us remake Singapore not only into a global vibrant city, but also cultivate a vibrant society which is thinking, progressive and humane.

Think Centre wishes you a reflective International Human Rights Day 2005.

By Fabio Scarpello of Asia Times.

SINGAPORE - To the world, Singapore is a remarkable success story: a former fishing port, the city-state in just 40 years has turned itself into Asia's second-richest country in terms of per capita income. Yet, underneath there's another reality that speaks of a widening wealth gap, with most forced to work long hours to make a living.

"There is a growing gap," said Sinapan Samydoray, chairman of Think Centre, a Singapore-based organization that deals with social issues. "The bottom 20% of the population earns less than

10 years ago in real terms. Almost 87% of the people are staying in government houses. Sixty percent of the people do not pay tax because they earn too little."

Singapore's social divide increased during the economic crisis that hit East Asia in 1997. While the average income of Singaporeans fell by 2.7% in that period, that of the poorest families fell by a staggering 49%, according to a paper by Professor Mukhopadhaya Pundarik of Singapore's National University. However, it seems the problem is inherent in the country's past and present political economy (the production, distribution and consumption of goods and services and their management).

Singapore's success story has been mainly based on attracting foreign investment. To do so, the country offered top-class infrastructure, a corruption-free environment, tax incentives and - crucially - low-cost labor. The policy has borne fruit. Multinationals poured in, and the country's economy ballooned from S$8.9 billion in 1965 to the current S$180.5 billion (US$109 billion).

In the last few years, competition from countries such as China, India, Thailand and Malaysia has meant that, to remain competitive, Singapore's workers have been asked to tighten their belts further. In addition, the new global climate spurned a soul-searching among Singapore's political elite, who decided to shift the country's economy to higher-value added activities.

The tougher competition and the shift in economic policy have not affected the country's well-educated and the rich. In fact, the number of millionaires in Singapore is increasing faster than any other country, according to the Merrill Lynch/Capgemini World Wealth Report in 2004. Those with assets of more than US$1 million now number 48,500, an astounding 22.2% more from the previous year.

At the same time, the bottom 60% of the city-state's 4 million inhabitants - who are not as well educated or skilled - face an increased chance of unemployment as well as daily hardship to make ends meet. Singapore's official unemployment rate stands at 3.3%. But, according to a recent Ministry of Manpower labor market report, 66.7% of those still looking for a job six months after having been laid off are people with no more than a secondary education. "Those who are 40 to 50 years old are really struggling. They have no education to handle the new technology," Samydoray said.

And things do not look too promising. The country's gross domestic product growth has slumped to about 4% from last year's 8%, and Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is on record as saying that "the jobless rate may rise to about 5% in the coming years, as Singapore loses jobs to China and other countries where labor costs are lower."

To make matters worse, as explained by Samydoray, there is no minimum wage in Singapore, and the influx of temporary foreign labor has driven wages down for locals. "Every employee has [his/her] own contract," he said. "There is no minimum wage and it all depends on how good you are at bargaining. Migrant workers are not wrong but they keep labor costs very low and locals are stuck. Singaporeans are forced to find two jobs just to survive."

However, long working hours are often not enough for low-paid Singaporeans to earn the S$1,500 a month, deemed the minimum necessary to get by. For these people, the city's perks are out of reach. Fil Low, a 20-year-old shop assistant at I Nuovi Cosmetics, averages two hours overtime a day but still only makes S$ 900 a month. "We do not really enjoy our life because of our schedule," she said. "We can only really go out about two or three times a month. It is not an enjoyable life. Professionals have a good life. For us, it is just making a living."

Lion, 52, drives his taxi a minimum of 12 hours a day, seven days a week. He never goes to a cinema, bar or to see friends. "I am just too tired and not in the right mood. I work all the time but I still cannot support my family properly," he said, without disclosing his monthly earnings.

Razman, 30, works as a security guard at a Carrefour supermarket during the day and as a personal trainer in a gym three nights a week. He averages 14 working hours a day, which pocket him about S$1,400 a month. "I never go out," he said. "I sometimes see my friends in the evening for a couple of hours when I am not working at the gym, but no more than that. I am usually tired ... I am used to this. Maybe it is in my genes; my father also worked very hard. Whatever other people do in other countries, we have to do twice as much. It is Singapore's lifestyle."

Fabio Scarpello is an AKI-ADN Kronos International Southeast Asia correspondent. He can be reached via www.fabioscarpello.com.

From JGNews who also maintains his own blog.

Expect Singapore bloggers to be the target of new legislation or rules that will govern electronic communication during the next general election, which must be held no later than July 2007. Online political expressions have consistently surged in Singapore during periods leading up to national elections. These expressions are often discussions and debates centered around the rules and processes of the elections. But their special emphasis has always consisted of alternative reportage of election rallies and other elections-related news.

Expect Singapore bloggers to be the target of new legislation or rules that will govern electronic communication during the next general election, which must be held no later than July 2007. Online political expressions have consistently surged in Singapore during periods leading up to national elections. These expressions are often discussions and debates centered around the rules and processes of the elections. But their special emphasis has always consisted of alternative reportage of election rallies and other elections-related news.

Presidential elections do not cause a stir on online forums. The first election for the Elected Presidency was in 1993. The mainstream media supported the PAP government’s favoured candidate Ong Teng Cheong, and at the time there were no personal websites or such things as blogs promoting either Ong or his rival, a former civil servant. Online discussions in forums in 1993 such as soc.culture.singapore did carry discussion on the criteria of selection for presidential candidates. Similar discussions in other online forums continued in subsequent presidential elections in 1999 and 2005, but these were again mostly confined to the procedural issue of selecting candidates and candidates’ qualification criteria. But online postings in discussion forums about the presidential elections have been low compared to general elections because of the absence of real contests.

Although the ruling party places legal and structural obstacles in front of opposition parties, it has been unable to totally prevent opposition parties from contesting the general elections. This, plus the general view that opposition parties do not get fair coverage in the local media, especially during elections times, has made the online domain an important avenue where alternative election “reporting” or postings take place. Either individually or in an organized manner, forums and overseas-based websites have been platforms used to make available alternative reports on general elections in Singapore. Blogs hold the potential to widen the coverage for individual reporting on future elections.

General elections and online alternative reporting

Even before the internet was widely available in Singapore in 1995, the Bulletin Board Service (BBS) at the National University of Singapore was used to discuss politics during the 1991 election and the 1992 by-election. The BBS was run by Technet that allowed staff and students to post text-based content on an electronic notice board, some of which were alternative reports of the elections. All these postings however could only be viewed internally and were not accessible to the general public, although staff and students from the Nanyang Technological University could also access it.

It was after the internet was widely made available in 1995 and the establishment of various online forums and websites that alternative reporting of election rallies and other election related news began to appear. This was most notable in 1997 and in a reduced form in the 2001 general election. But what was typical was that during the run up to each election, the PAP government introduced new legislation to control online political expression. In July 1996, a regulation called the Class Licence Scheme was introduced that required websites dealing with political and religious issues register with the authorities. It also made website owners responsible for all the contents on their sites.

Nevertheless, during the 1997 election, Sintercom, founded by an early user of soc.culture.singapore, Tan Chong Kee, became a front runner in election reporting online. Also, Sintercom was exempted from registering under the Class Licence Scheme after negotiations with the authorities, who were assured that Sintercom’s editors and site owners would “exercise responsibility, intelligence and maturity” when managing the website. Sintercom organized teams of volunteers to attend various election rallies and write reports on them. The website also put up past election results, constituency maps and extracts from the various party manifestoes. Some postings on soc.culture.singapore by individual posters were also compiled and carried on the Sintercom site. Tan claimed that overall, Sintercom’s reportage was timelier and fairer in coverage than the mainstream Singapore newspapers.

Ahead of the November 2001 general election, the Parliamentary Elections Act was amended in October to allow and set conditions for political parties to campaign or carry out “election advertising” on the internet. However the rules forbid the websites of non-political party groups or non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to do the same, thus restricting the space for online election activities to only political parties. It was only a few months earlier, in July 2001, that Sintercom was compelled to register under the Class Licence Scheme with no room for debate. Tan refused to register the site and shut it down instead, leading to the loss of a major source of online alternative reporting, as Tan had made plans to continue the tradition of election reporting that Sintercom had done for the previous general elections. The new laws prevented local NGOs from taking up the job of election reporting or advertising. Think Centre had to remove some articles from its site during the run-up to the election after the Elections Department demanded that it remove material that could be construed as elections advertising, in one instance specifying a particular article.

But overseas-based websites could escape Singapore government censure. Those such as the Singaporeans For Democracy (SFD) site carried news reports and articles about the 2001 elections in a section labeled “elections 2001”. These were mainly from international news agencies, news magazines and newspapers, as well as opposition leaders and academics. It also featured letters from the public about election issues, and also contained a number of links to elections-related websites. However the SFD site has stopped uploads since 2003.

The 2001 legislation made alternative reporting on the election suffer a setback. While the mainstream media was still deemed to be too biased in their election coverage, the volume of reporting on election rallies dropped, mainly because of the closure of Sintercom. However, the mantle of non-mainstream, alternative election reporting fell onto certain individuals who continued to report on election events. These were posted largely anonymously on forums like sgForums.com and Sammyboy’s Alfresco Coffee Shop, and were not journalistic reports but personal accounts of observations and experiences at opposition rallies. Sometimes these postings were contested. However, the number of postings about the elections was small and not coordinated.

Blogs and political expression

Starting in 2004, Singapore has witnessed an explosion of blogs. It has been estimated that there are between 2,500 and 15,000 blogs based in Singapore. Only a handful of these are overtly devoted to politics. Most blogs are personal diaries and journals, others ranging from social commentary to humour and satire, with some political issues thrown in. Some blogs provide more specific socio-political commentary. Although the number of political blogs have been increasing, most of these are “nameless” entities whose authors do not provide their real names or email addresses.

Chee Soon Juan is probably the first opposition politician to have a personal home page. It came as a “Chee Soon Juan” link on the Singaporean For Democracy website which is hosted overseas. Between 1997 and 2001, it carried alternative news reports on the activities of Chee as well as some of his speeches delivered at various conferences. Much of such information has been incorpaorated in the SDP website after it was launched in the run-up to the 2001 general elections.

Individual press releases issued by JB Jeyaretnam, former secretary-general of the Workers’ Party began to appear online after he left the party in 2001. In the beginning he would fax his press releases to Think Centre, and the NGO representatives would type this up and upload it on their website. Such releases would also be sent through the Think Centre mailing list. In 2004, a JBJ supporters’ website was set up by volunteers. His press releases would be faxed to the volunteers who would then type it and upload it. In 2005, in order to take advantage of the blog technology, a blog was set up specifically to upload his press releases. Again the role of a volunteer to upload data is still essential.

The 2005 presidential election saw some political traffic online. Seen as a potentially eligible candidate, Andrew Kuan set up a personal website promoting himself as a candidate. His website contained information about his background, qualifications, curriculum vitae, various other details about his life and beliefs, all for the purpose of advocating his candidacy for the office of the elected president of Singapore. In addition, after he was deemed unqualified to run for president by the relevant government committee, an online petition supporting him as a presidential candidate was also started.

With arrival of blogs, a small number of opposition figures have started blogging, namely Goh Meng Seng, Melvin Tan and James Gomez, all from the Workers’ Party of Singapore. Goh is a member of its executive council and in his blog, entitled Singapore Alternatives, identifies himself as a member of the party and states that he will write on various policy views and personal beliefs. Melvin Tan’s blog is entitled Singapore Loyalist but does not list is real name, and states that his writings are done on his personal capacity and do are represent the official positions of the Workers’ Party. He also takes part in forums under the handle “SgLoyalist”. James Gomez is an assistant secretary-general of the party and has a personal website as well as a blog. His personal website became active in early 2004, and showcases his publications, conference trips, meetings, and his professional work. In October 2005 he created a blog dealing specifically with his work with the Workers’ Party.

Blogs and other personal websites dedicated to politics have emerged because there are persons engaged in politics who are able to generate a sizable amount of information. This means there is a latent pressure on politicians who are able to generate large amounts of information to move towards individual websites or blogs. Whether they do so or not depends on personal inclinations, the political value of doing so, and the capacity to engage with new technology. The number of politicians with individual online presence is also an indication of the digital divide both in terms of technology and mindset within the opposition movement in Singapore.

Conclusion: Blogging and freedom of expression

Blogs represent the newest medium for expressing independent though and reaching out to the larger world. It is also becoming the area where threats to freedom of expression have been increasing. The Singapore authorities and other establishment figures have taken action against individual bloggers or internet users whom they deemed to have disparaged against them or broken some laws.

The first official case against a blogger was in late 2005 when Chen Jiahao, a student and former government scholar based in the United States, had allegedly written posts in his blog criticizing some of the policies of the Agency for Science, Technology and Research. The head of the agency, Philip Yeo, then threatened Chen with legal action if he did not remove all of the offending material. Chen apologized to Yeo and shut down his entire blog in order to be completely safe from prosecution.

The next prominent cases that came a few months later involved three internet users who were charged under the Sedition Act. The first incident saw two ethnic Chinese bloggers in their 20s charged with sedition for making inflammatory postings on the internet against Muslims. The second incident involved a third ethnic Chinese male in his teens who was similarly charged for making inflammatory posts in his blog.

Although not related to legal actions, other developments are changing the blogging landscape in Singapore. Several secondary schools and junior colleges have asked student bloggers who criticized or insulted their teachers online to remove the offending remarks or posts, with some of the students being suspended for a few days.

From the 1990s to 2001, only organisations, real or virtual, came under the purview of the law. These cases, however, have since set a precedent for prosecuting individual bloggers or other internet users. Hence, raising the profile of bloggers especially those who provide alternative sources of news and commentary in restricted societies is important. In particular, to highlight threats and actual attacks against freedom of expression on the internet.

The upcoming general elections are seeing another surge in online political expression. Given developments in technology, blogs have come to occupy an important part of Singapore’s online landscape. But it remains to be seen if bloggers would be willing to venture further with online political expression, thereby risking a clampdown by the authorities; or whether they would be pressured by existing laws to impose constraints on themselves. One way or another, during the run-up to the next election, Singapore bloggers are likely to be the target of close observation.

Blogs can and are increasingly fulfilling the role of watchdogs, alternative news sources and even non-partisan political players because they are crossing beyond the boundary of their original uses as vehicles of personal expression. They have extended their reach to promote and debate topics as diverse as governance, integrity and fair dealing, and in doing so may effect positive changes. In countries with restrictive environments, it is important that bloggers be properly protected by law from arbitrary or unfair prosecution. Only by doing so can blogs be another frontier of freedom of expression.