Jeyaretnam (who is not Muslim and who holds a double first degree in economics from the University of Cambridge) begins by emphasizing that while the Paris assailants “claimed to be avenging the Prophet Mohammed” … this attack was not about Islam. Instead it was all about intimidating us from expressing our views and our beliefs where they are something that the attackers do not like. Jayaretnam: Watching commentators across the globe condemn the brutal murders and seeing the huge crowds stand vigil not just in Paris but in London and elsewhere, I couldn’t help but think of [Singapore’s] political cartoonist Leslie Chew and bloggers such as Roy, student activists such as Han Hui Hui, banned films from local filmmakers such as Martyn See, Mirabelle Ang, and Tan Pin Pin, as well as imprisoned septuagenarian author Alan Shadrake and embattled human rights lawyer M Ravi. No bullet was ever fired in Singapore’s war on freedom against them, no one was disappeared in the night (although thousands have fled the scene) but the … government have just as surely slaughtered freedom of expression in Singapore as any terrorist with an AK 47. In fact they have the whole nation cowed in fear… …[T]errorists differ only in degree from authoritarian governments that… have not shied away from murdering journalists and those who ask inconvenient questions, whether it is Sri Lanka, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Mexico, Russia, or Egypt. In other countries journalists, cartoonists, bloggers and ordinary people are imprisoned or sued by regimes that dislike what they say or in the name of religious dogma. Examples include the use of lese-majeste laws in Thailand, blasphemy laws in Pakistan or criminal defamation and sedition laws in South Korea or Malaysia. We can expect [Singapore’s government] to condemn the Paris attacks as barbaric and an assault on civilized values. But they have achieved a degree of control over what can be said in Singapore that would be the envy of many authoritarian regimes and of the terrorists who committed the atrocities today…. I remember a cartoon from the 1970s published in the Singapore Herald, a short-lived and solitary experiment in independent media that soon incurred the wrath of [Prime Minister] Lee Kuan Yew and was shut down. The cartoon showed Lee Kuan Yew in a tank crushing a baby. The baby was labelled something like “A Free Press.” After that the ruling People’s Action Party made sure that no one could read any views other than those they allowed in their State-owned or -controlled media. The Newspaper and Printing Presses Act followed soon afterwards, ensuring that the Government has a veto over the ownership and appointment of the editorial staff of every newspaper…. Who needs to send their zealots to Syria to train with ISIS when they can learn everything they need to know here? The foreign press has been intimidated into silence by defamation suits and threats to restrict their circulation in Singapore. The Wall Street Journal, the Far Eastern Economic Review and the Economist are just a few of the publications that were sued for saying things that are said every day about politicians and institutions in the West. The climate of fear and self-censorship is still as strong as ever despite the pretence that there has been liberalization. [Prime Minister] Lee Hsien Loong was easily able to silence Roy Ngerng by suing him for defamation and have him dismissed from his job. Roy’s and Han Hui Hui’s use of Hong Lim Park to publicize their criticisms of CPF were ended by the Government’s decision to prosecute them for alleged offences that were trivial…. Dr Chee Soon Juan [Secretary General of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party] was silenced. [My own] Reform Party suffered a media blackout during General Election of 2011…. I am banned from attending debates and talks at our national universities and one university even attempted to prevent me from being in the audience…. Leslie Chew, the cartoonist, was arrested and held in jail without bail for an extended period… What is most depressing is that, in contrast to the spontaneous rallies that have erupted in France and elsewhere in response to the murders of the journalists,… authoritarian regimes like Singapore are not only tolerated but held up as shining examples for democracies to emulate…. It is pure hypocrisy if the reaction to this barbaric attack is just about combatting the threat from Islamic extremism and does not grasp the wider lesson about standing up everywhere for universal values like democracy and freedom of expression. As Martin Luther King said, ‘In the end we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.’
Posted on: Sat, 10 Jan 2015 16:36:38 +0000
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