UK-CRIME-AUSTRALIA-SINGAPORE

CANBERRA (Reuters, UK) - Australia's parliament urged Singapore to spare the life of a convicted Australian drug dealer on death row on Monday as the man's lawyer called for direct intervention from Prime Minister John Howard.

Australian Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, was sentenced to death in March 2004 for smuggling almost 400 grams (0.9 lb) of heroin from Cambodia. He was arrested in-transit for Australia at Singapore's Changi airport in December 2002.

Singapore on October 21 rejected Nguyen's last bid for clemency, but his lawyer Lex Lasry, who held talks with Singapore's High Commissioner to Australia Joseph Koh on Monday, said he remained hopeful Singapore could change its mind.

"Our client is alive, there's probably four or five weeks to go, there's plenty of time for the Government of Singapore to reconsider its position," Lasry told Australian radio.

In parliament, the leader of the centre-left Opposition ALP, Kim Beazley, introduced a motion to urge Singapore to show mercy to Nguyen and to consider his full cooperation with police since his arrest.

The motion passed with bi-partisan support in a sign of the growing public campaign against the death sentence, but Foreign Minister Alexander Downer played down the chances the motion would help stop the execution.

"It pains me above all that it is proving extraordinarily difficult to win a reprieve," Downer said. "We remain pessimistic about our prospects of convincing the Singapore President to grant clemency. We will just continue to try."

He said the government had done everything possible to try to save Nguyen's life. But Lasry said it was now time for Howard to make a direct plea to Singapore's government.

"Now is the time that we need its (the government's) leaders to basically speak in direct language and say they don't want this young man executed. I'd like very much to hear such a statement from the Prime Minister," Lasry said.

Australia is a staunch opponent of capital punishment, but Singapore, known for its tough stance on crime, mandates the death penalty for murder and drug trafficking.

S'pore firms Should be Wary of PM's urge to invest in China

Singapore's PM visit to China recently focused on urging Singapore firms to invest in the country. Read the Epoch Times article. China may not be a wise overseas investment decision that has been hyped up to be.

===

Published in Channel News Asia:
S'pore firms urged to focus on next wave of growth in north-eastern China

CHINA : Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has described his first official visit to China as a success.

The week-long visit is Mr Lee's first since becoming prime minister last year.

Mr Lee said bilateral cooperation was progressing well.

On the economic front, he said Singapore companies should take advantage of the next wave of growth in north-eastern China.

An impressed Mr Lee agrees with Singapore businessmen he has met on this trip that the next wave of development in China will come from the north-east.

Its most developed province Liaoning has set it sights on becoming the IT centre of north-east Asia.

And this offers tremendous opportunities to Singapore companies like business space provider Ascendas.

Ascendas has struck up a partnership with the software park in Dalian - a key city in Liaoning.

The first phase of the IT Park will be ready by the end of next year.

There are also other opportunities in Liaoning in areas such as services, manufacturing and port facilities.

And Singapore port operator PSA has already staked its claim.

There are also plans by the provincial government to convert the coastline into industrial land.

Mr Lee said: "As they develop, we will go with the flow and ride the tide."

The Chinese government is revitalising the north-east and the centre of gravity is no longer as concentrated in the southern Pearl River delta and Yangtze delta.

As Mr Lee points out, the north-eastern region will be able to learn from the south in their development, thus ensuring quicker progress.

As for the growing bilateral cooperation between Singapore and China, Mr Lee announced that Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy has just signed MOUs with top Chinese universities - Peking, Tsinghua and Fudan - to offer joint degree programmes.

These programmes will allow students to study in both countries.

And it is in areas such as this that Mr Lee says Singapore has a role to play in the growth of China.

Mr Lee said: "We provide the meeting place, we provide the opportunities. We have an environment where the Chinese people, the businessmen, the academics, the students are comfortable. Others are comfortable and we can make a contribution."

Education Minister and chairman of the Singapore-Liaoning Economic Trade Council Tharman Shanmugaratnam said Singapore schools must deepen their engagement with their Chinese counterparts.

"We have to get our kids to know a range of Chinese cities. Again not just the first-tier cities, not just Beijing, Shanghai. You've got to get to the second-tier cities where you can feel the hunger, aspirations and dreams," he said.

Mr Tharman said in the past year, more than 90 Singapore schools have established links with Chinese institutions.

"For a broad-ranging economic relationship in the long-term, people- to-people relationship will have to be developed as a foundation," he added. - CNA/de

=====

China’s Economic Oligopoly And Political Monopoly
By He Qinglian
Special to The Epoch Times
Oct 30, 2005

Recently China’s investors have been skeptical, wondering if “China’s enterprises could still make a profit.” China has used the mouths of “foreign investment experts” to say, “Though the relevant benefits of such heavy industries as car manufacturing and chemical industry are shrinking, the relevant benefits of light industries show no tendency of dropping down.” The statement was clearly intended to pacify worried investors who doubted if their investment in China could be beneficial.

In spite of the pacifying statement, the news from the U.S. stock market was negative. More than 90 percent of more than 70 Chinese enterprises on the U.S. OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB) [1] turned their stocks into “junk stocks.”

No trading in the stock of Chinese companies on the U.S. stock exchange for a few days in a row has frequently been noticed. This gloomy phenomenon has been occurring since the second quarter of this year. Only seven of the Chinese companies hold stocks priced over US$3 per share, while the stocks of the other 50 Chinese companies are priced below US$1. In the U.S., stocks priced below US$3 are regarded as “junk stocks”. To put it in another way, over 90 percent of China’s concept stocks on the U.S. stock exchange have degenerated into “junk stocks”.

A state’s economic competitiveness is closely related to its enterprises. Why did these favorites in the Chinese business community degenerate into “deserted orphans” on the U.S. stock exchange? An analysis of the situations of these enterprises provides a window on China’s economy.

State-Run Enterprises Gain Dominance By Means Of Monopolization

In recent years the number of China’s enterprises who have entered into the top 500 of global enterprises is gradually increasing, which has been used by China as concrete evidence to prove the competence of Chinese enterprises.

Let’s start by taking a look at the Chinese enterprises that made it into the top 500. This July, U.S. Fortune Magazine released the latest annual rankings of the top 500 global enterprises. Totally, 15 of China’s businesses were chosen. The three Chinese enterprises that have a ranking higher than 50 on this list are China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), State Grid Corporation of China (State Grid), and China National Petroleum Corporation (PetroChina). A closer observation of the chosen candidates reveals that almost all of them are state-run monopolies in the petroleum, chemical, banking and energy industries, and they are directly owned by the central government.

This September, China released its own list of top 500 enterprises. This “top 500” has the following features:

First, most of the “top 500” companies are still state-run monopolies. Of all, 83 enterprises make a pure profit of over one billion yuan (approximately US$0.12 billion), with combined revenues totaling 427.1 billion yuan ($52.85 billion), occupying 81 percent of the total revenue of the “top 500”. This points out that the major revenue of Chinese enterprises comes from a very small number of monopolies, most of which are state-run. Though the percentage of the private enterprises picked for the “top 500” has risen to 15.8 percent, the percentage of their revenue is merely 6.7 percent. Based on this, we can conclude competitively, China’s private businesses are far inferior to the large-scale state-run monopolies.

Second, there is the quite remarkable disparity of competitive strength among the chosen candidates. Sinopec, listed as number one, owns assets totaling 620.3 billion yuan ($76.77 billion), and has an annual revenue totaling 634.3 billion yuan ($78.5 billion). On the other end of the list, the assets and revenues of the Zongshen Industrial Group, listed as number 500, are 3.51 billion yuan ($0.43 billion) and 4.56 billion yuan respectively ($0.56 billion), which is only 0.57 percent and 0.77 percent of Sinopec’s assets and revenues.

Third, regarding per capita earnings, of China’s 2005 top 500 enterprises, the cigarette manufacturing industry has the highest per capita earnings, 244,500 yuan ($30,260), while life and health insurance industry has the lowest per capita earnings. Only five of the “top 500” reach a per capita profit over 100,000 yuan ($12,376).

How Are the Chinese Top 500 Enterprises Different From the Global Top 500?

Among the scholars in mainland China, many disagree with the Chinese media’s high praise that Chinese enterprises have entered the upper tier of global top of corporations with their competitive power. Professor Liu Jisheng of Qinghua University’s School of Business pointed out that there are three differences between the Chinese top 500 and the global top 500 corporations.

Firstly, most of the global top 500 are private corporations or family businesses, yet most of the big enterprises in China are state-owned, and some are solely state-funded corporations.

Secondly, most of the global top 500 are in competitive industries such as the automobile industry, but most of the Chinese corporations are in monopolized industries such as oil, electricity and steel.

Thirdly, in terms of economy of scale, operating income, total assets and profit made by the top 500 Chinese corporations constitute respectively 5.3 percent, 5.61 percent and 5.22 percent of those made by the global top 500.

In fact, big Chinese enterprises have two distinctive characteristics. Firstly, they do not rely on market competition to gain size and strength; rather they rely on administrative orders to have forced reorganization. Their survival and development often rely on having the strong state machinery as their backing.

Secondly, these corporations do not rely on unique technical advantages, superiority in service, property rights, price advantage or brand superiority to win in market competition; instead they rely on the monopolization advantage granted by the government to gain a high monopoly return.

Only by understanding these two characteristics of Chinese state-owned corporations can one understand why the stocks of Chinese corporations that were listed in the U.S., after some “initial hype,” have degenerated into “junk stocks” that nobody is interested in.

A General Misconception: The Downfall Of The State-Owned Economy And The Flourishing Of The Private Sector

The deepest impression that 27 years of economic reform in China has left is that China has undergone a large-scale and profound privatization movement, and that China has already become a market economy country.

However people have neglected one point: in the late 1990’s, when Zhu Rongji was the Prime Minister, his strategy for state-owned corporations to follow the policy of “seizing the big and freeing the small” and to withdraw from competitive industries, has formed the base that led to economic oligopoly in China in the end.

In short, “seizing the big” is to rapidly concentrate resources in a very few state-owned monopolizing corporations. Starting from the late 1990’s, relying on government support and profit gained from their monopoly, certain industries in China have already formed the economic pattern of being monopolized by a few state-owned corporations. The private sector can only flourish in the highly competitive industries that the state-owned corporations have withdrawn from.

The Chinese government has political needs for “seizing the big” (i.e., fostering large state-owned corporations). Since the 1990’s, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s one-party despotism has continuously faced with a crisis of legitimization. Many governmental think-tankers already suggested to the government to transform large-size state-owned corporations into “Party assets,” hence accumulating an enormous amount of assets that in name belong only to the CCP.

With this enormous Party asset base, even if faced with political changes in the future, the CCP, with its abundant economic strength, would still win in an election. Stemming from this kind of precautious concern, the CCP’s decision makers have always concentrated on seizing the few state-owned corporations that are most closely connected with the vitals of the national economy and that occupy the leading monopolizing positions, so that it can retain economic control when future political changes occur.

Central Government Enterprises Monopolize Chinese Economy

In recent years, the number of state-owned enterprises and enterprises with the state as the key shareholder has dropped by 4,000 to 5,000 each year. The number of central enterprises that are directly supervised by the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State Council have decreased from 196 two years ago to the current 169. However assets of these enterprises are continuously growing and their profits are also constantly rising.

Official data shows that from 1998 to 2003, the number of state-owned and state-as-key-shareholder enterprises has dropped from 238,000 to 150,000, yet their profit increased from 52.9 billion yuan (approximately $6.54 billion) to 378.4 billion yuan ($46.80 billion). In 2004, the total profit further rose to 531.19 billion yuan (roughly $65.70 billion), an increase of 42.5 percent from 2003.

In 2004, the five industries that made the most profit nationwide were oil exploitation with 177.73 billion yuan ($21.98 billion) of profit, steel with 103.89 billion yuan ($12.85 billion), chemical engineering with 85.63 billion yuan ($10.59 billion), electronic communications with 82.19 billion yuan ($10.17 billion), and transportation with 77.19 billion yuan ($9.55 billion). These industries constitute 46.4 percent of the total profit earned by all industries combined.

An analysis of the profit structure for the state-owned enterprises and enterprises with the state as the key shareholder clearly shows that, in 2004, the profit realized by seven companies—China National Petroleum Corporation, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, China National Offshore Oil Corporation, Baosteel Ltd., China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Telecom—constitutes 78 percent of the total profit earned by central enterprises.

It is well known that communication, energy, electric power and transportation etc. are the most monopolized industries among state-owned enterprises. This shows that the high profit increase for state-owned enterprises and enterprises with the state as the key shareholder are likely due to the strong monopolization of these industries.

These facts prove that, judging from an industrial perspective or the entire economic perspective, sales volume and profit for Chinese industry and monopolized service sectors are concentrated in a very few central corporations. In other words, the pattern of its economic oligopoly has basically taken shape. A monopoly formed with this kind of oligopoly-patterned economy has greatly benefited the Chinese government, such that the director of State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission Li Rongrong reiterated that the central government’s goal is to raise 80 to 100 large-size state-owned corporations and make their way into the global market.

The Chinese Government Facilitates the Oligopoly Economy

Many outside observers agree that an intense and cruelly competitive market has been one remarkable characteristic of the Chinese economy from 1992 to the present. In the late 90’s, the Chinese government declared that state-owned enterprises would completely withdraw from competitive business. This move hid from observers the reality behind the intense competition. That is, the high monopoly of key resources is another manifestation of the Chinese economy.

China’s large-scale state-owned enterprises, especially those directly controlled by the central government, have become the largest beneficiaries of China’s capital market with the help of a series of slanted policies and the unique market access regulations of China.

In just 10 short years, China’s capital market developed a clear route—to serve the peripheral enterprises, then the state-owned businesses, and then the businesses owned by the central government, which include other ultra-monopolized companies. This structure is not the outcome of natural evolution out of China’s capital market, but is the direct logical result of a capital market continuously geared towards political needs.

Political Monopoly Needs Oligopoly Economic Support

There is another question that needs answering: Why does the Chinese government so diligently build large-scale monopolized state-owned enterprises?

The answer is that it is completely a political need.

Right now China is transitioning from an old authoritarian regime to a new form of totalitarian regime. Observers have seen increasingly tightened control of the society by the Chinese authorities, in addition to the government’s high suppression of the general public’s political muscle. However, they have yet to see the dangers China currently faces while transforming from the longstanding authoritarian rule to a new totalitarian rule.

Totalitarian rule requires increased control of thought. It also requires a huge system of organizations with which to control the society. Meeting both needs, in turn, requires a solid economic foundation.

Mao Zedong used every means possible to control people. He did not rely just on political violence and ideological cultural violence; more importantly, he relied on economic control.

If the Chinese people at that time had left the Chinese Communist Party’s economic and cultural entities, they would have had no resources for survival. Chinese intellectuals often opined that they wanted to be Tao Yuanming, who abandoned his official positions and lived as a hermit. Yet there is no place to which they can escape, since China, including every rock and tree, all belong to the “Nationalized Properties” owned by the CCP.

The Chinese government under Hu Jintao relies more and more on total control of the society. Strengthening the party organization is just one method. Another important method is to strengthen economic control. It is unrealistic, however, to fully revert back to the complete economic control of the Mao era. Thus, they can only implement control over the industries that are the life-blood of the national economy, such as the petroleum industry, the energy industry, and the telecommunications companies related to information circulation.

China’s petroleum industry is immense with over 60 branches worldwide. This illustrates the Chinese government’s international energy strategy and, more importantly, its economic dominance within China through its control over petroleum—a modern economy’s life-blood.

There are three criteria for analyzing these increasingly growing state-owned businesses that are fed by the government.

The first criterion is to use the U.S stock market, which is purely based on the performance of the enterprises; the second criterion is to believe the CCP’s evaluation made explicitly to further its political and market dominance; and the third criterion, which is also this writer’s opinion, is to use humanitarian standards, such as whether to support or oppose China’s new totalitarian politics when deciding whether or not to invest in China.

Note: [1] The OTC Bulletin Board (OTCBB) is an electronic quotation system that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices, and volume information for many over-the-counter securities that are not listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market or a national securities exchange.

Protest against Hanging of Nguyen

A protest in Australia and an indoor vigil to be soon held in Singapore ...

Published in The Age, Australia
Singapore activists to protest hanging
October 31, 2005 - 4:07PM

Activists in tightly controlled Singapore plan to stage a rare public protest against the impending execution of convicted Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van.

Next week's indoor vigil would be an unusual show of opposition to capital punishment in Singapore.

Details have yet to be finalised.

"Individuals of the civil society who are concerned citizens against the death penalty are ... coming together to organise it," Think Centre campaigner Sinapan Samydorai said on Monday.

Think Centre is among Singapore's handful of active campaign groups and has long opposed the death penalty.

It would help to support any Nguyen-related event, Sinapan said, and planned to post details on its website.

Melbourne salesman Nguyen, 25, was arrested at Changi International Airport in December 2002 as he was about to board a flight to Australia.

He had 396 grams of heroin taped to his back, and in his luggage.

Singapore has so far rejected pleas for clemency from Australia.

Nguyen is likely to be hanged sometime in November, possibly as soon as November 11.

Sinapan said the vigil would likely be small scale, and he conceded that as most Singaporeans support the death penalty the campaigners faced a tough task.

Earlier this year, a similar vigil was held to protest the execution of Singaporean Shanmugam Murugesu, who was hanged in May for trafficking 1.03kg of marijuana.

The Singapore government last year eased restrictions on some types of indoor gatherings, dropping the need for participants to obtain prior approval from the police.

Outdoor demonstrations, though, remain extremely rare.

Gatherings of more than four people require permission from authorities.

Plain-clothed officers attended the May vigil and at one stage prevented an open microphone session, where members of the audience had been invited on stage to express their feelings.

The Singapore government argues that the selective use of the death penalty helps to deter serious crime and has kept the country of 4 million people safe.

"We weigh the right to life of the convicted against the rights of victims and the right of the community to live in peace and security," the Ministry of Home Affairs has said.

Human rights group Amnesty International has suggested that Singapore may have the highest rate of executions worldwide relative to its size.

According to official figures, 340 people were hanged in Singapore between 1991 and 2000.

In some years, such as 1996, when 50 people were hanged, the state-sanctioned death rate averages close to one a week.

=====

Published in ABC Regional Online Australia
'Candles of hope' lit for convicted drug smuggler
Sunday, 30 October 2005. 21:05

About 100 people have gathered in Brisbane tonight, lighting 3,000 'candles of hope' for Melbourne man, Van Nguyen.

The 25-year-old faces execution in Singapore after being convicted of drug-trafficking.

Tim Goodwin from Amnesty International says tonight's event sends a powerful message.

"What we're trying to do with this event, it's the first of a number of events we'll be holding around the country in the coming weeks to send a message to the Singapore Government is that human rights are very important to all of us and they're particularly important to Australian people as well and we don't want to see the death penalty carried out in this case," he said.

Calibrated coercion and the maintenance of hegemony in Singapore

Academic and journalist, Cherian George, has published a Working Paper Series with Asia Research Institute. The essay discusses the type of "coercion" that the government wields and explains why it seems to work. The entire PDF file can be downloaded here

Read extracts from the paper:

Coercion, nevertheless, remains one of the pillars of PAP dominance. There has been no move to repeal Singapore’s most repressive laws, such as the Internal Security Act, which allows arrest without warrant and detention with trial. On a 5-point repression index, Henderson (1991) rates Singapore as a “2”, together with other countries where there is “a limited amount of imprisonment for non-violent political activity. However, few persons are affected, torture and beating are exceptional. … Political murder is rare” (p.127). The array of repressive tools at the government’s disposal remains large. What has changed is the manner in which those tools are used. Generally speaking, there has been a shift from more spectacular punishments such as imprisonment, towards more behind-the-scenes controls. Economic sanctions are favoured over those that violate the sanctity of the individual. And, controls are targeted at limited numbers of producers and organisers of dissent, rather than at ordinary citizens. In short, coercion is increasingly calibrated for maximum effectiveness at minimum cost...

The authoritarian impulse behind Singapore’s press system is as old as the hills. What is more novel is the PAP’s astute use of global forces pushed by capitalist liberal democracies to reinforce a profoundly illiberal system. While less clever regimes assumed that they had to subvert the press completely in order to assure their preferred results, Lee Kuan Yew recognised that he merely needed to tweak its incentive structure and install the right barriers. This strategy worked because journalism’s main impetus by the late 20th century was commerce, not ideology...

Like all authoritarian governments facing minimal legislative and judicial checks, Singapore’s executive branch has seized sweeping powers to deal decisively with challengers. Catch-all laws give wide latitude to ministers, and the Constitution provides little protection to civil rights. These features of the Singapore system are nothing unusual. What is more unusual is that, even as it maintains and updates its arsenal of coercive powers, the Singapore government appears to have committed itself to the principle of strategic self-restraint, calibrating its coercion to get the job done with as little force as necessary.

The benefits of calibrated coercion have been apparent to various scholars ranging from critical theorists such as Foucault to researchers studying conflict resolution. First, calibrated coercion minimises the sense of moral outrage that could be used to mobilise the public against the state. Second, calibration reduces the salience of coercion, making consensus seem like the sole basis for stability and thus strengthening hegemony. Third, calibrated coercion preserves incentives for economic production and wealth creation, which rulers need as much as do the ruled...

Stop hanging people!

Yet another fine article from Yawning Bread.

I think it's time I said it: judicial murder is wrong.

It is particularly distressing to me that Singapore is one of the black spots on the world map for this. An article by Amy Tan of Reuters, 'Singapore death penalty shrouded in silence' said,

The government revealed recently, only in reply to a question in parliament, that 340 people were hanged between 1991 and 2000.

In a response to a Reuters query, it also said 22 people were executed for drug trafficking in 2001 and 17 in the year before.

Singapore has one of the highest execution rates in the world relative to its population, Amnesty [International]'s Parritt said.

-- Reuters 12 April 2002


Whenever this charge of being too quick with the noose is levelled at the government, they always say capital punishment works. It has deterrence value. Yet if they are so proud of doing the right and effective thing, it strikes me as strange how much they wish to hide it.

The same report by Reuters said,

"We do have a general policy not to give any information on the death penalty," a prison official told Reuters.


As you can see in the sidebar, the identity of the hangman was also supposed to be a secret until an Australian news organisation found him.

Now, before we discuss the claimed deterrence value of judicial murder, an important facet of the Singapore case must be made plain. An estimated 70% of death sentences are given out not for murder, but for drug trafficking, which means the retributive arguments for capital punishment -- a life for a life -- do not apply. This must be borne in mind in the discussion to follow.

The death sentence is mandatory -- that is, the judges have no discretion to reduce the sentence -- if the accused is found trafficking in more than 15 grams of heroin, or the equivalent of heroin. Hence, 30 grams of cocaine would also get you the death sentence. We have had this law since 1975.

The prosecutor does not have to prove that you were trafficking. He only needs to prove possession, and the law makes the presumption that you're trafficking.

to continue reading this well researched article

News You Won't Find

The article below is written by John Pilger, someone I have referred to before on Singabloodypore. It may appear at first not to be relevant to those of you scratching a living in Singapore. Think again, Singapore has sent aircrew and aircraft to Iraq and is one of the few countries still aligned with the Americans in their coalition of the willing.

Can someone think of when was the last time The Straits Jacket referred to Singaporean involvement in the war? Email me any articles you know of or post them in the comments section please.


The Epic Crime That Dares Not Speak Its Name
By John Pilger

10/27/05 "ICH " -- --

A Royal Air Force officer is about to be tried before a military court for refusing to return to Iraq because the war is illegal. Malcolm Kendall-Smith is the first British officer to face criminal charges for challenging the legality of the invasion and occupation. He is not a conscientious objector; he has completed two tours in Iraq. When he came home the last time, he studied the reasons given for attacking Iraq and concluded he was breaking the law. His position is supported by international lawyers all over the world, not least by Kofi Annan, the UN secretary general, who said in September last year: "The US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN Charter."

The question of legality deeply concerns the British military brass, who sought Tony Blair's assurance on the eve of the invasion, got it and, as they now know, were lied to. They are right to worry; Britain is a signatory to the treaty that set up the International Criminal Court, which draws its codes from the Geneva Conventions and the 1945 Nuremberg Charter. The latter is clear: "To initiate a war of aggression... is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

At the Nuremberg trial of the Nazi leadership, counts one and two, "Conspiracy to wage aggressive war and waging aggressive war", refer to "the common plan or conspiracy". These are defined in the indictment as "the planning, preparation, initiation and waging of wars of aggression, which were also wars in violation of international treaties, agreements and assurances". A wealth of evidence is now available that George Bush, Blair and their advisers did just that. The leaked minutes from the infamous Downing Street meeting in July 2002 alone reveal that Blair and his war cabinet knew that it was illegal. The attack that followed, mounted against a defenceless country offering no threat to the US or Britain, has a precedent in Hitler's invasion of Sudetenland; the lies told to justify both are eerily similar.

The similarity is also striking in the illegal bombing campaign that preceded both. Unknown to most people in Britain and America, British and US planes conducted a ferocious bombing campaign against Iraq in the ten months prior to the invasion, hoping this would provoke Saddam Hussein into supplying an excuse for an invasion. It failed and killed an unknown number of civilians.

At Nuremberg, counts three and four referred to "War crimes and crimes against humanity". Here again, there is overwhelming evidence that Blair and Bush committed "violations of the laws or customs of war" including "murder... of civilian populations of or in occupied territory, murder or ill-treatment of prisoners of war".

Two recent examples: the US onslaught near Ramadi this month in which 39 men, women and children - all civilians - were killed, and a report by the United Nations special rapporteur in Iraq who described the Anglo-American practice of denying food and water to Iraqi civilians in order to force them to leave their towns and villages as a "flagrant violation" of the Geneva Conventions.

In September, Human Rights Watch released an epic study that documents the systematic nature of torture by the Americans, and how casual it is, even enjoyable. This is a sergeant from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division: "On their day off people would show up all the time. Everyone in camp knew if you wanted to work out your frustration you show up at the PUC [prisoners'] tent. In a way it was sport... One day a sergeant shows up and tells a PUC to grab a pole. He told him to bend over and broke the guy's leg with a mini Louisville Slugger that was a metal [baseball] bat. He was the fucking cook!"

The report describes how the people of Fallujah, the scene of numerous American atrocities, regard the 82nd Airborne as "the Murdering Maniacs". Reading it, you realise that the occupying force in Iraq is, as the head of Reuters said recently, out of control. It is destroying lives in industrial quantities when compared with the violence of the resistance.

Who will be punished for this? According to Sir Michael Jay, the permanent under-secretary of state who gave evidence before the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee on 24 June 2003, "Iraq was on the agenda of each cabinet meeting in the nine months or so until the conflict broke out in April". How is it possible that in 20 or more cabinet meetings, ministers did not learn about Blair's conspiracy with Bush? Or, if they did, how is it possible they were so comprehensively deceived?

Charles Clarke's position is important because, as the current British Home Secretary (interior minister), he has proposed a series of totalitarian measures that emasculate habeas corpus, which is the barrier between a democracy and a police state. Clarke's proposals pointedly ignore state terrorism and state crime and, by clear implication, say they require no accountability. Great crimes, such as invasion and its horrors, can proceed with impunity. This is lawlessness on a vast scale. Are the people of Britain going to allow this, and those responsible to escape justice? Flight Lieutenant Kendall-Smith speaks for the rule of law and humanity and deserves our support.

First published in the New Statesman - www.newstatesman.co.uk

Singapore Should Look at The Press

I believe the article below was published in The Straits Jacket and so it maintains what is believed by some (ex-ISA members),to be a balanced view. A balanced view for the Straits Jacket writer is that every time you slap the Peoples Action Party you must quickly apply soothing ointment to the affected area. Do it quickly in the following paragraph or better still apply the ointment before you slap the area.

Although I am critical of the article I must say "well done" to Chua Mui Hoong for managing to raise such important topics in a way that shows real skill and knowledge of what is acceptable to write and what must be avoided. Chua Mui Hoong has managed to get an article published that will have many thinking about the big issues. Including me...

The Straits Times / Asian news Network

This has been a Black October of sorts for those who harbor hopes of liberalizing, democratizing political change in Singapore.

Two high-profile bits of news have given the republic a decidedly bad press. [Make that three - notice there is no mention of the death penalty even though it has been covered extensively by the Australian media]

A group of academics at Warwick University voted against the institution's plans to set up a campus in Singapore, citing concerns about academic freedom and financial viability. [Yes the academics voted against the plans but the council also decided against the move. The council also involves those within the University higher up the chain of command. So it wasn't a bunch of 'idealistic' dreamers but the University of Warwick.]

And, in its latest report, media watchdog Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore 140th in media freedom out of 167, alongside places like Azerbaijan (141), Bhutan (142), Egypt (143) and Syria (145). [Oh and the last US envoy slapped Singapore before he left. It was also in the RSF report before that and the one before that.]

Should Singaporeans care, when their country gets a bad press internationally or when surveys rank Singapore poorly? [How can they care when The Straits Jacket writers haven't got the balls to inform the people of what is really going on.]

Should Singaporeans be irked that the republic, which has a constitutionally elected legislature and clean elections, is once again rated "partly free" this year by the well-known Freedom House survey, with a dismal score of five for its political rights (seven being least free on a scale of one to seven)? [Falls off chair laughing - 'elected', 'clean elections' in a society where the ruling party owns every source of information that the population can view, gerrymandering etc....]

One approach to such issues is to discredit all such ratings as either inaccurate or demonstrating a "Western" bias. [Or as the "ex-ISA" operative now running the national newspaper makes sure that none of your puppets writes about the issues unless it is in the balanced way - see above]

Another more nuanced response argues for "Singapore exceptionalism," which basically says Singapore's multiracial and fragile society is unique and needs delicate management, and that Singapore is evolving its own brand of political democracy. [and yet not be able to put your finger on what it is that makes Singapore unique, claiming it is multiracial or fragile and therefore unique is the argument of someone who has never been beyond JB or Sentosa. It is the argument that worked when the PAP could control all media and images, the world view, of every Singaporean. Those days have gone with the advent of the internet, global media, global travel. Singapore is unique because it is the only society to have developed economically and yet remain an authoritarian regime.]

There is a third way to respond to Singapore's poor showing in these areas, which is to acknowledge that even if the surveys are not perfect, there may be lessons to be learnt from the substantive issues raised. [Only surveys made by the 'official' government ordained social engineers are 'perfect', Sociology 101. Offical means biased or slanted in favour of showing a good picture of the ruling party.]

In other words, take them seriously enough to examine if, indeed, there are shortcomings in the areas of democratic freedom, human rights and civil liberties in Singapore's system. ["to examine if" more ointment needed here, there are shortcomings, the suppression of the opposition with defamation cases, the highest death penalty rate in THE WORLD, unique?, four peaceful protesters are moved on by over 40 police officers, some in full riot gear for protesting outside the CPF building.]

After all, we are proud of accolades the country wins in the economic field. [What accolades, or is it that you are only allowed to report 'Good News'?]

Stories about its standing in competitiveness ratings, the top quality of its workforce, the high level of economic freedom, as well as having an excellent port or airport are regularly featured in the media and become talking points. [Economic freedom when Temasek and a few other Lee related entities own almost everything of any worth.]

When Singapore does badly in a rating with economic impact, we look carefully at the issue and see if something can be done to rectify the situation. [Unless an overseas publication says that there are problems because the Lee family is appointing family memebers which stinks of nepotism.]

For example, Singapore has been doing badly for years now in competitiveness ratings in the indicators based on school enrollment. [Since when did 'school' automatically equate 'economic'. Surely school is about something else, knowledge,learning, expanding the mind. Not just a factory for turning out unthinking workers.]

The latest World Economic Forum rating put Singapore 69th for primary education and health.

Instead of rubbishing those ratings in the past, efforts were made to improve. Schooling has been made compulsory and, over time, the school enrollment figures should go up, and the rating improve. [Where is this going? Oh sorry ointment.]

But a poor rating on human rights or political freedom seems to attract a different kind of response, with the government disagreeing with or discrediting the report.[Or you just simply not reporting it.]

The response of the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts to the media freedom index is that "the Press Freedom Index drawn up is based largely on a different media model which favors the advocacy and adversarial role of the press." [You as a so called journalist can actually quote this without criticising it. Singapore's media model favours the PAP in order to purposefully undermine press freedom.]

When Amnesty International highlighted Singapore's execution rate last year, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a detailed rebuttal which corrected factual errors. It went on to accuse the organization of distorting facts and questioned its credibility. [Which just by the way IS THE HIGHEST IN THE WORLD PER CAPITA. Don't tell me space constraints? So how many have been executed in Singapore, what is the number, what are their names, what were there crimes? Suddenly we have an authoritative regime questioning the integrity of a Noble Prize Winning Organisation.]

It may well be that reports from institutions like Amnesty and RSF lack the rigor of competitiveness ratings by the likes of the WEF, and are more open to rebuttal. Indeed, rights advocacy groups are by no means saintly institutions and some may have murky vested interests. [More ointment please. How about questioning the 'rigor' of the offically sanctioned statistics?]

Even so, a more constructive response is to adopt a spirit of inquiry and an open mind to examine the substantive issues more closely. [A more consructive response would be for you as a so-called journalist to actually start doing some investigative journalism, start reporting news as opposed to PAP sanctioned dictats.]

For example: Is there cause for concern about media freedom in Singapore? Is the death penalty at risk of being overused? What are the safeguards to ensure that the vulnerable, marginalized groups such as those highlighted by Amnesty receive due process when sentenced? [Media Freedom - you don't have any. Death Penalty - highest in the world. Due Process can not take place when it is 'mandatory'.]

In the case of Warwick University and academic freedom, Education Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam struck the right note when he balanced justifying Singapore to its critics, and taking an honest hard look at areas for improvement.

First, he noted that academics are free to study anything they wish and that many academics here are foreigners who presumably have no issue with lack of academic freedom. [Just don't print it or disseminate it in any way. In fact you probably shouldn't teach it either. Academic Freedom extends beyond simply studying something. As for the many foreigners who have 'no issue', how do you know, have you studied this, or is it on the out of bounds list. What is on that list any how? I don't know, do you? Best just stay clear of that topic.]

"We should never think we are in a perfect spot. Are we at an optimal point now? I doubt it. We must evolve. The intellectual climate is not cast in stone," he said.[It is however dyed white by the PAP. Would that be a climate of fear, that is not cast in stone but laws relating to defamation?]

"It will have to evolve with a new generation of Singaporeans ...but it will have to reflect realities of the world around us, especially on race and religion." [And politics, human rights, civil liberties, death penalty, democracy...]

The same statement can be made with regard to issues to do with human rights and civil liberties.

Is Singapore at an optimal point now on these? Like the minister, I doubt it. Like him, I think we will evolve in our own way. [Or you will evolve in a way that was designed by the social engineering and interference from the men in white.]

On Oct. 6, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in a talk to the Foreign Correspondents' Association that he had no doubt Singapore society and its politics would change. But Singapore won't become and doesn't aspire to be a Western-style democracy, he said. [The sad thing is that he believes that he can tell Singaporeans and the world that Singapore is an authoritarian regime and that it is somehow acceptable.]

Debate about the democratic development of Singapore and taking a hard look at weaknesses in the political system that impede democratic evolution - these are matters of domestic concern, and should not be interpreted as kowtowing to "Western" brow-beating. [Actually debating democratic development will involve questioning the PAP's grip on power and this will mean you will have to face a defamation case, a few years in jail, get fired etc...]

After all, even China is forthright about its wish to evolve a democracy with Chinese characteristics, where the people's "legitimate rights and interests are fully guaranteed," as its first White Paper on democracy released on Oct. 19 stated. [What has this article got to do with China, is Singapore going to follow China? The argument from the PAP and the Communist Party is the usual - The Republic of Heaven is just over the next hill, we are not there yet and need these chains to stay on, but when we get to the Republic of Heaven...]

Within the parameters of keeping the Communist Party in charge, even communist China is paying attention to its democratic evolution.[Should read, "even China is clamping down on press freedom and dissenting voices.]

So when foreign criticisms put Singapore's perceived lack of freedoms under scrutiny, the Singapore government and people should examine the issue with an open mind, not adopt a defensive posture to discredit those views. [Perceived?]

As even government ministers acknowledge, Singapore must change politically. No one knows what kind of creature the Singapore democracy will evolve into. [I do know, it will be another 100 years of the PAP.]

But evolve it must, and part of the process of evolution entails being honest about its flaws.[I always thought that Darwin's theory of evolution referred to competition. In the political arena that would mean more than being a one-party state.]

By Chua Mui Hoong

Australian reporter condemns Singapore's tough stance

It takes a delicate balancing act to match our human rights stance with regional sensitivities, Michelle Grattan writes.

THE imminent hanging - barring a miracle - of the young Australian Nguyen Tuong Van is a horrible and sad human tragedy. But it's more than that.It's the latest example of how capital punishment and lesser-but-excessive sentences for drug crimes in Asia are becoming a serious complication for Australia in its dealings with the region.

The extreme and automatic penalty imposed on Nguyen - for trafficking heroin which he said was to pay for his twin brother's debts - is a jolting reminder of the appalling disregard for human rights in some of our neighbours who are also our friends.

The Schapelle Corby case, fanned by an often feral media, stirred up a lot of negative feeling in this country against Indonesia.While Corby is to serve an inordinately long sentence, it's been clear for some time that Nguyen almost certainly would be executed.

The Howard Government made strong representations, but to no effect.The case highlights, in the starkest terms, the gulf in values between Australia and some of these countries.AdvertisementAdvertisementOf course Australia, too, once had the death penalty (though only for the most serious crime) and in opinion polls many Australians still favour it. But the decision-makers crossed an important moral line and there will be no going back.

Singapore's attitude is barbaric, pure and simple. The report last week of the 73-year-old Singapore executioner, who has put to death more than 850 people and hanged 18 men in one day, was a chilling indictment of an approach to human life that it's hard to believe can exist in a country that's in some ways a model of modernisation.

The Nguyen case is sparking calls that Australia should mount a broad and vigorous international push against the death penalty for such cases.Philip Alston, chief adviser on the death penalty to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, has accused the Australian Government of inconsistency.Alston (brother of former minister Richard) said on Friday that Australia was willing to speak out when international standards on policing terrorism were not met, but did not fight for changes to these mandatory death penalties in drug cases that breach "international legal requirements".

It comes back to choices Australia periodically faces in regional relations. As one Government source puts it: "Asians do some things we wouldn't do. If Australia wants to be the moral policeman, it will be a lonely position."Yet not to do it sees Australia making representations for its own people - that inevitably looks to the region like special pleading, which it is - while dodging the issue of wider human rights abuses.

Howard is not absolutist on capital punishment, although he opposes it for Australia and Australians abroad.Australia's position is that it has no objection to a death penalty for the Bali bombers, which is a mixture of acceptance of Indonesia's sovereignty and a stand of domestic political convenience.After the Nguyen case, the Bali nine drug runners present another nightmare prospect.

If several Australians were sentenced to death there would be a huge domestic outcry (although the feeling is those sentences probably wouldn't be carried out).The Government would be caught between having to apply the maximum pressure while knowing that could be counterproductive, perhaps to the fate of the individuals as well as the wider relationship between the two countries.

The adherence of Indonesia to the death penalty for drug crimes complicates bilateral dealings even short of someone being sentenced.Under Australian law, police can assist overseas authorities in cases up to the point where someone is charged with a crime carrying the death penalty (when help can be given only under strict protocols and to advantage the defendant).

Australian Federal Police is now under sharp criticism for helping its Indonesian counterparts apprehend the Bali nine before they left Indonesia when they could have picked them up after they got off the plane in Australia.Yet for police not to co-operate with their counterparts overseas could prejudice the fight against crime and jeopardise wider co-operative arrangements.

Of course, for Australia and Australians, these problems would not arise if people absorbed the message that there is no mercy for drug offenders in these countries. If any shred of something positive is to come out of recent cases, it can only be that surely they must reinforce this.In the final stages of the Nguyen story, the Prime Minister is under pressure to up the ante. Nguyen's lawyer, Lex Lasry, on Friday urged him to make a "clear statement"."

The Singapore Government would listen carefully if our Prime Minister would say that as a human being and Prime Minister, he did not want this Australian citizen executed," Lasry said.If only it were so. The evidence, however, suggests Singapore is morally deaf and politically immutable on this issue.

Are we game to stand up and be counted on death penalty? - Opinion - smh.com.au

Mother asks Queen to save Nguyen

The mother of Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van has written to the Queen in a desperate bid to save her son from execution.

Nguyen was caught smuggling 396 grams of heroin out of Singapore in 2002 and is expected to be executed within weeks.

The letter, written in Vietnamese and addressed to Queen Elizabeth II, was sent to Nguyen's Melbourne legal team to be forwarded to Buckingham Palace.

Nguyen's mother, Kim, was believed to have pleaded with the Queen in the letter to personally intervene in the case and ask the Singapore government to spare her son's life, The Sunday Age said.

The letter has been translated.

A family friend told The Sunday Age Mrs Nguyen was not coping well.

"She's found it all incredibly hard," a family friend said."She has suffered a lot... She suffers intensely."She's an intensely loving mother. She looks like her heart is breaking."

Nguyen's lawyers believe the execution will not take place for several weeks.Executions are usually carried out at 6am on Fridays.

Meanwhile, a friend of Van says he feels guilt over the Melbourne man's pending execution in Singapore.Nguyen had told authorities he was helping a friend repay a debt, but he did it to get his brother out of trouble.

Student Jonathan Lim backed up Nguyen's claims, saying he loaned Nguyen about $20,000 to help him pay his brother's debts.

Mr Lim told the Sunday Herald Sun Nguyen, who will be hanged within weeks, was no hardened criminal and should be spared."

Van has got a good heart," Mr Lim said."He's had a hard life and he's made a couple of bad decisions, but he's not a lifetime criminal and he deserves another chance."

Mr Lim said Nguyen had written to him from Changi prison to apologise about not being able to repay the loan."

I said, 'Don't worry about it,'" he said."I feel bad in a way because he did it to pay me back."

A prayer service will be held for Nguyen on Sunday, November 6.Nguyen's lawyer is also making a clemency bid to Singapore High Commissioner Joseph Koh.

7news stories

Shouldn't we be boycotting Singapore?

This article published on The Sydney Morning Herald titled "Shouldn't we be boycotting Singapore?" is written by Andrew West in an area of the paper called The Contrarian. Just assuming such an endeavour were to take off in Australia I really fail to see how it would effect a situation whereby Singapore refuses to comply with International Law regarding the death penalty.

Some salient points regarding the political situation are made but fails to grasp one important matter. Singaporean politicians have never claimed to aspire to anything resembling a democracy. Lee Hsien Loong recently stated that Singapore would not be a 'liberal-democracy' for the next 20 years. It is a petty dictatorship that HAS NEVER pretended to be anything else.

Friday, October 28, 2005 - 05:03 PM

If all else fails, as seems the case, what can we do to vent the fury that many of us feel about the impending execution of Australian citizen Nguyen Tuong Van in Singapore? I know what I'll be doing: following the advice of my colleague Mark Baker in The Age, and having as little to do with this quasi-democracy as possible.

The country seems deeply precious -- in the bad way -- its leaders devoid of any sense of humour, always attempting to censor and silence anyone who disagrees with them. As Reporters Without Borders highlights, the Singaporean media are cowed and compliant. It all occurs under the spurious cloak of "Asian values" and respect for the wisdom of elders. What hogwash.

It is a petty dictatorship, where after a suitable interregnum, the ruling family has been restored to power. It is effectively a one-party state, where the government uses its iron grip on the legal system to drive any opponents from office.

First it was Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, who in 1981 smashed 16 years of one-party rule when he was elected to Parliament as the sole representative of the Worker's Party. Then prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, who has since put his son on the throne, said the courageous Jeyaretnam should be "destroyed" for bucking the system.

Lee family regent, Goh Chok Tong, also tried to drive another opposition figure, Chee Soon Juan, from office, by suing him with the aim of bankrupting him, thereby making him ineligible to run for office.

Lee was also an apologist for the tyrants of Burma -- or Myanmar, as he acquiescingly calls it -- and its brutal suppression of Aung San Suu Kyi.

And, of course, it has a politicised legal system, which always seems to find in favour of the whinging government minister suing the opposition into oblivion, and now imposing the death sentence on an unfortunate young Australian. Yes, Nguyen Tuong Van was carrying drugs, not into Singapore, but through Singapore and into Australia, and only to raise enough to pay the debts of his imperiled brother.

Was he aware of his crime and the disastrous impact of heroin addiction? The answers are, respectively, yes and probably. But should his penalty be judicial murder in a country with, according to Amnesty International, the highest per capita execution rate in the world? (More than 420 people have been executed since 1991, the majority for drug trafficking.) I think not but maybe you disagree.

Some correspondents have responded to Mark Baker's call for a boycott -- both as a travel destination and of its companies, such as Singapore Airlines and Optus -- by asking why single out Singapore.

I tell you why. Because it is a petty dictatorship that pretends to be so much more.

Posted by Andrew West at October 28, 2005 05:03 PM

SAVE THE LIFE OF VAN TUONG NGUYEN

Send Urgent Appeals

It appears that some are not prepared to let Nguyen Tuong Van go without a fight. In Singapore no more than four people are allowed to protest and even then you will be confronted by police officers in full riot gear. However I am aware that there are large numbers of students of many nationalities living, working and studying in Australia. Take to the streets of Australia, it is well within your civil liberties. In Singapore you don't have any.

Please stand up for this man, we are urging Universities and human rights organisations around Australia to hold peaceful protests and request that Prime Minister John Howard personally and publicly request clemency for Nguyen Tuong Van. Don't let this young man hang.

For further information please contact me at kate@prisonersoverseas.com

Kind regards

Kate Gibbons

www.prisonersoverseas.com

SAVE THE LIFE OF VAN TUONG NGUYEN

URGENT ALERT

NGUYEN TUONG VAN - Please don’t hang this man

He now faces execution, possibly within 10 days.

Nguyen’s mother fled Vietnam alone in a boat in 1980 and had her twin sons in a transit camp in Malaysia before being accepted into Australia four months later.

Nguyen’s Australian lawyers described the decision as "devastating for him, his family and friends".

Lex Lasry QC said Nguyen had always admitted his guilt and given constructive help to authorities including the Australian Federal Police.

"The decision appears to pay no heed to the provisions of the Singapore Constitution that make specific reference and provide for clemency to those who assist the authorities with information which can be used to prosecute others," he said.

Mr Lasry called on the Singapore Government to reverse its decision.

Nguyen was sentenced to death last year after being found guilty by a Singapore court of smuggling almost 400 grams of heroin from Cambodia via Singapore.

Nguyen said he had the drugs because he was trying to raise money to clear debts incurred by his twin brother.

Kim Nguyen weeps as barrister Julian McMahon explains that an appeal against the death penalty for her son has been dismissed.

Please beware that the link to the website below contains graphic and harrowing images. We have made a decision to link to it, in order to highlight the desperate plight of Nguyen Tuong Van.

THE FACTS ABOUT HANGING

Please write to the President of Singapore Mr S R Nathan and plead clemency for Nguyen Tuong Van. email: s_r_nathan@istana.gov.sg

Please address the President as Your Excellency and end the letter with Yours respectfully. Please be courteous and respectful in your request for clemency.

Please write to Prime Minister LEE Hsien Loong at ee_hsien_loong@pmo.gov.sg

Please address to Dear Prime Minister

Please write to Prime Minister John Howard requesting that he personally pleads for clemency to the President of Singapore Mr S R Nathan, on the behalf of Nguyen Tuong Van. This request has by echoed by Nguyen’s lawyer Mr Lex Lasry. Please Mr Howard make a personal public appeal to the Government and President of Singapore.

The Hon John Howard MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

email:The Hon John Howard MP

Other useful contact details:

Lex Lasry - Australian Lawyer
Email: lexlasry@empirechambers.com.au
1-13 University Avenue, Canberra ACT 2601
Tel:(02) 6257 6007
Fax: (02) 6257 6290 DX 99 Canberra

Joseph Theseira - Singapore Lawyer
Tel: 6533-0288 Fax: 6533-8802
Email: isaaclaw@singnet.com.sg
20A Circular Road
Singapore 049377

UN official criticises Aussie Govt over Nguyen case

Singapore however doesn't come off well in the issues outlined below either, but ABC News focuses on the criticism of Australia possibly in an attempt to shame them into greater action.

The argument that Singapore should be meeting the standards of international law was appealed to during the failed attempt to save the life of Shanmugum Murugesu but we know how that turned out.

From ABC News online.

UN official criticises Govt over Nguyen case

A senior United Nations human rights official says the Australian Government has mishandled the appeal for clemency for Van Nguyen, who is on death row in Singapore.

Twenty-five-year-old Nguyen was convicted for smuggling heroin into Singapore in December 2002.

Professor Philip Alston, the chief adviser on the death penalty to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, says Australia should be aggressively lobbying Asian countries that apply the death penalty in drug cases.

Professor Alston is a professor of law at New York University and the brother of the former Howard Government minister Richard Alston.

He has also been lobbying the Singaporean Government over the case of the Melbourne man on behalf of the UN.

He says that applying a mandatory element to the death penalty in drug cases is a contravention of international law.

Professor Alston is critical of the Australian Government's approach to the Nguyen case, saying it is not enough for the Government to seek clemency in an individual case.

"The appropriate approach which the Government should take, but has opted not to, is pressing not Singapore but a range of other countries in the region on the fact that they treat drug offences as being punishable by death, which is not appropriate under international law," he said.

"Secondly, they classify these cases as requiring a mandatory or compulsory death penalty. So it doesn't matter what the individual circumstances of the case are, the court has no option, no matter how mitigating factors might be brought into case, except to say 'you must die', and that's if there's no further appeal, there's no further consideration.

"That's not consistent with international law, there's a very strong body of that indicating that governments are not permitted to do that sort of thing.

"Now the Australian Government has not been pushing these arguments at all, as far as I've seen, and while it's encouraging that they express regret, I think there is another step they need to take, and it's not just in one of these individual cases but it's going to affect an increasing number of Australians."

Professor Alston says the Australian Government needs to raise the profile of its anti-death penalty argument in the Asian region.

He contrasts the situation to the Federal Government's stance on lobbying Asian Governments on terrorism laws.

"I've seen statements by the Prime Minister [John Howard] and others saying that these are sovereign decisions for other countries and we can't interfere," he said.

"That's not the line we take in relation to policing of terrorism or others instances, where it's clear that international standards are not being respected.

"We don't hesitate to speak out, we say, 'as a law-abiding nation, you should reconsider your laws, you should bring them into line within international standards'.

"There's no reason why we shouldn't be doing that now in relation to these drug offences, where the imposition of mandatory death penalty for a relatively minor drug offence is out of all proportion and it's just not consistent with international legal requirements.""

To read Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer's dismissal of Professor Alston's claims read on...

Singapore bans gay website

It appears that the Media Development Authority is more than happy to practice the banning and fining of websites and web material without so much as a court order. What power from upon high has given the MDA the authority to decide what people can or cannot see? Surely this is yet a further undermining of freedom of expression in Singapore.

There are millions of websites that breach "the Internet Code of Practice, which governs the content of websites in Singapore." Here is another site openly available http://gay.date.com/gay-personals/singapore-singapore.htm. The MDA are applying this code of practice in an arbitrary manner without recourse to proper due process.

All it takes are "several complaints" from so called concerned yet highly misinformed homophobics claiming that the site will "entice young boys to join this lifestyle". The misinformed image of gay men preying on young boys paints an image that gay equals paedophile. An image that has been reinforced by The Straits Times article. This can only be viewed as an attack by the MDA on homosexuality and the continued drive by the government to ostracise the gay community from Singapore.

Some people may be 'offended' by homosexuality but simple offence should not entail banning and fining.

It further undermines the claim by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong "I don't think we are homophobic."

Yes you are, and you openly promote homophobia.

From The Age
October 28, 2005 - 11:01AM

Authorities in Singapore banned a gay website after receiving complaints about the promotion of promiscuous homosexual behaviour and recruitment of underage boys for sex and nude photography, news reports say.

A second website, titled "Meet Gay Singapore Friends", was warned by the Media Development Authority (MDA) to remove offensive content and fined 5000 Singapore dollars ($A3886), the Straits Times said.

Web users in Singapore could no longer access the banned site, which is hosted overseas, from their home computers, the MDA said. It was put on a list of 100 banned websites, including 98 containing pornographic materials and two promoting religious extremism.

Spokesman Kwan Sui Fen said the MDA took action after receiving "several complaints".

Investigations showed the two sites breached the Internet Code of Practice, which governs the content of websites in Singapore.

The banned overseas site also provided listings of public swimming pools without shower doors and pickup places for casual sex, information about mass orgies and explicit personal advertisements recruiting underage boys for sex or nude photography, the report said.

"The way the sites glamorise a promiscuous gay lifestyle and try to entice young boys to join this lifestyle ... is very wrong," the newspaper quoted Ricky Lee, a 33-year-old software programmer and one of the complainants, as saying.

The banned site's registered members grew from 60,000 last year, when Lee stumbled upon it, to more than 330,000 this year.

The MDA has referred the banned website to police, but lawyers noted that trying to make the operator take the website down could be tough since it is run from abroad.

An annual gay and lesbian beach party, which drew international revellers to Singapore's Sentosa Island for four years, was banned by police in August, forcing it to move to the Thai resort of Phuket in November.

Police declared the event "contrary to public interest" in an apparent departure from the gradual acceptance of gays and lesbians into the social mainstream in recent years.

A Sense of False Safety in Numbers

From TODAY
A sense of false safety in numbers
Zooming in on home equity may not give an accurate picture of lower-income households' finances
Friday • October 28, 2005
SIEW KUM HONG

THE Department of Statistics recently released a paper on home ownership and equity of HDB households. It makes for impressive reading, and rightly shines the spotlight on the overall success of Singapore's public housing policy.

In particular, many have cited the impressive statistic that the lowest 20 per cent by income of households in owner-occupied HDB flats have an average home equity (that is, the value of the flat less the outstanding loan) of $138,000.

That is no small sum. But as I delved into the details, I wondered if the report's findings — seen in proper perspective — are as wonderful as some have made them out to be. In the first place, home equity is not an appropriate indicator of wealth in Singapore, given the limited alternatives to home ownership here.

Yes, people can rent. But renting is not a perfect alternative to housing in Singapore, because CPF funds can be used to buy homes but cannot be used to pay rentals.

With the employees' CPF contribution being a hefty 20 per cent of gross salary, this is a major consideration. It can therefore be difficult, if not impracticable, to convert home equity into actual cash.

If a family sells their HDB flat, they may gain some cash, but will lose the ability to use 20 per cent of their combined salaries to pay for housing. This is aggravated by the fact that rentals in Singapore are not cheap, while direct rentals from HDB are stringently controlled and far from guaranteed.

Let's say that the market monthly rental for a 3-room HDB flat is $800. If an average household in the bottom 20 per cent sells its HDB flat and rents a 3-room flat instead, the home equity realised would cover only about 15 years' rentals.

This is assuming the full $138,000 is realised as free cash — unlikely given costs such as stamp duties and legal fees. It may also be necessary to repay any CPF funds used to buy the flat, plus the CPF interest foregone. It is of course possible to monetise part of the home equity by subletting a room or the whole flat. But subletting a room comes with difficulties, especially for big families.

And while the HDB has liberalised the eligibility requirements for subletting the whole flat, that still leaves the question of alternative accommodation, which will reduce the amount of cash from renting out the flat. We must also remember the 13 per cent of the bottom 20 per cent households who do not own their flats.

This 13 per cent translates into a sizeable 23,000 households living in HDB rental flats. They can benefit from the many assistance schemes available.

Still, we need to always remember this under-class with low incomes and without any home equity, who continue to need extra help. In this regard, the recent NTUC proposal to eliminate employees' CPF contributions for those earning less than $1,000, with the Government contributing to their CPF accounts, is noteworthy. But the Government's aversion to welfarism may make this a difficult proposition. The paper raised a couple of other questions that deserve closer attention. 52.2 per cent of the bottom 20 per cent households live in four and five-room flats. This calls into doubt the strategy of tying goodies such as CPF top-ups to housing type, as they may not reach those who would benefit the most.

Furthermore, the income figures in the paper appear inconsistent with those stated in the 2003 Household Expenditure Survey (HES) released earlier this year.

The DOS paper cited an average annual income of $14,100 for the bottom 20 per cent households in owner-occupied HDB flats. But the 2003 survey had reported an average monthly household income of $795 (or $9,540 per year) for the bottom 20 per cent households, taking into account possible annual bonuses.

So which figure is right? Yes, the HES figure covered all households, whether in owner-occupied HDB flats or otherwise.

But when I tried to work back from the figures in the paper for home ownership rates and average annual household income, I could not come close to reconciling the figures. Hopefully, the DOS could shed some light on this.

The DOS paper concluded with some fairly upbeat remarks about the success of the Government's home ownership policies. Yes, the Government has done amazingly well in this regard. But I would urge against drawing conclusions, based simply on this paper, about the wealth of the low-income.

The Government has noted the risks of the growing "asset rich, cash poor" phenomenon. It would be a pity if the illusory asset of home equity is allowed to obscure the needs of low-income households.

The writer is a lawyer commenting in his personal capacity.

Singapore executioner wants out

From smh.com.auOctober 28, 2005 - 7:54AM

The man due to execute convicted Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van in Singapore is a 73-year-old grandfather who can't retire because no-one will take his job.

The Singaporean government looks set to take the 25-year-old Melbourne man to the gallows, after rejecting his appeal for clemency last Friday.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has made a last ditch attempt to save Nguyen's life, but says he has little hope the Australian will be spared.

Singapore's chief executioner Darshan Singh, who has hanged more than 850 prisoners in his 46 years in the role, is due to place the rope around Nguyen's neck, The Australian newspaper reported.

He will say: "I am going to send you to a better place than this. God bless you."

The newspaper says Singh, who lives in a government-owned apartment, wants to leave his job but authorities cannot find a replacement.

Singh is not permitted by law to speak publicly about his job.

But a colleague told the newspaper: "He tried to train two would-be hangmen to replace him, a Malaysian and a Chinese, both in the prison service.

"But when it came to pulling the lever for the real thing, they both froze and could not do it.

"The Chinese guy, a prison officer, became so distraught he walked out immediately and resigned from the prison service altogether."

Nguyen was caught with 396 grams of heroin strapped to his body and in his hand luggage at Singapore's Changi airport in 2002.

He is expected to be hanged in the next four to six weeks.

The picture above and the extract below of an article from The Australian add insight into the final moments of those who face the death penalty in Singapore...

Semi-retired: Darshan Singh, Singapore's chief executioner, wants to quit, but suitable replacements are hard to find

[...]Officials rarely comment on capital punishment, which is carried out without publicity behind the walls of Changi prison.

But The Australian can reveal today that the 73-year-old grandfather, who lives in a modest, government-owned apartment near the border with Malaysia, has been asked to execute Nguyen unless the Singapore Government gives an unprecedented last-minute reprieve.

Mr Singh told The Australian yesterday that under the Official Secrets Act he was forbidden from speaking about his work.

[...]

Nguyen will meet Mr Singh a few days before he is executed and will be asked if he would like to donate his organs.

On the day before his execution, Mr Singh will lead him to a set of scales close to his death-row cell to weigh him.

Mr Singh will use the Official Table of Drops, published by the British Home Office in 1913, to calculate the correct length of rope for the hanging.

On the day of Nguyen's execution, Mr Singh will be picked up by a government vehicle and driven to the prison, arriving at 2am to prepare the gallows.

Shortly before 6am, he will handcuff Nguyen's hands behind his back and lead him on his final short walk to the gallows, just a few metres from the cell.

Mr Singh joined the British colonial prison service in the mid-1950s after arriving from Malaysia. When the long-established British hangman Mr Seymour retired, Mr Singh, then 27, volunteered for the job. He was attracted by the bonus payment for executions.

Mr Singh is credited with being the only executioner in the world to single-handedly hang 18 men in one day - three at a time.

They had been convicted of murdering four prison officers during a riot on the penal island of Pulau Senang in 1963.

He also hanged seven condemned men within 90 minutes a few years later. They had been convicted in what became known as the "gold bars murders", in which a merchant and two employees were killed during a robbery.

One of the most controversial executions in his career was the 1991 hanging of a young Filipina maid, Flor Contemplacion, who was convicted of the murder of a co-worker, Delia Maga, and her four-year-old son, on what many believed was shaky evidence.

He carries out the executions wearing simple casual clothes, often just a T-shirt, shorts, sports shoes and knee-length socks.

To mark his 500th hanging four years ago, four of his former colleagues turned up at his home to celebrate the event with a couple of bottles of Chivas Regal.

Mr Singh boasts that he has never botched an execution.

"Mr Seymour taught him just how long the drop should be according to weight and height and exactly where the knot should be placed at the back of the neck," his colleague said.

"Death has always come instantaneously and painlessly. In that split second, at precisely 6am, it's all over."

IMH to help addicted gamblers

Channelnewsasia.com

I am not going to paste the article here and force all of you to read another inane article from Singapore media, but follow the link, and you'll find something rather amusing: IMH wants to help people addicted to gambling.

Understandably, this is to prevent locals from gambling their savings away. I do wonder, though, whether IMH extends this service to rich tourists who'll come here to gamble away their riches from 2009.

Probably not.

Singapore defends death penalty decision

This is a transcript from PM. The program is broadcast around Australia at 5:10pm on Radio National and 6:10pm on ABC Local Radio.

You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.



Transcript
From abc.net.au
PM - Thursday, 27 October , 2005 18:10:22


Reporter: Peta Donald
MARK COLVIN: The slim chance of a reprieve for Van Nguyen, who faces death by hanging in Singapore, looks even slimmer tonight.

Singapore has made its first official comment since rejecting a plea for clemency last week, and it offers not even a smidgin of hope to the young man.

The 25-year-old former salesman from Melbourne was found in transit in Singapore with almost 400 grams of heroin strapped to his body.

Today's statement, from Singapore's High Commissioner in Canberra, said Singapore's death penalty for drug offences was well known and defended the decision to send Nguyen to the gallows.

In a moment we'll hear from Australia's Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, for his response, but first here's a report on today's development from Peta Donald in Canberra.

PETA DONALD: In Singapore executions are carried out on Fridays.

As he waits in a cell in Changi Prison, the condemned Australian Van Nguyen will take no comfort from today's statement from Singapore's High Commission in Canberra.

The High Commissioner Joseph Koh has issued a strong defence of the decision against granting clemency in this case.

JOSEPH KOH STATEMENT (read by actor): Our strict anti-drug laws send a clear message to drug syndicates not to conduct their criminal activities in Singapore or through Singapore. Our policy has been well-publicised and Mr Nguyen was well aware of it.

PETA DONALD: Mr Nguyen, the High Commissioner points out was caught with 396 grams of heroin, more than the 15 grams that attracts a mandatory death penalty in Singapore.

JOSEPH KOH STATEMENT (read by actor): I understand that this decision is difficult for his family to accept. But the stand the Government has taken on Mr Nguyen is consistent with the firm position that Singapore has taken on similar cases in the past, involving Singaporeans and foreigners alike. Not everyone may agree with our view, but I hope they will understand Singapore's position.

PETA DONALD: Nguyen's Melbourne-based barrister, Lex Lasry, QC, is still holding out hope.

LEX LASRY: We regard the statement as predictable. It's what I would expect the Singapore Government, through the High Commissioner would say, as at today.

I certainly don't see it as in anyway an end of the process. It's a statement, a diplomatic statement, as to their current attitude and we set out to change it.

PETA DONALD: It does seem like a fairly serious development for your client though, that doesn't leave very much room for hope.

LEX LASRY: Well, I don't agree with that.

I think we haven't yet had a chance to redevelop the argument that we've announced we're going to make.

We will make a further approach to the Singapore Government, directly to the President and possibly to the High Commissioner. Now we haven't done that yet, so the Singapore High Commission can't be expected to respond to that.

They have obviously had plenty of media inquiries and they've stated their position as at today, but that position can be changed and we do aim to change it.

PETA DONALD: Lex Lasry is planning to approach Singapore's Government in the next few days.

He says he's pleased with the political support being offered in Australia, but he's still calling for more.

LEX LASRY: What would make us happier and what would help considerably would be if the Prime Minister would make a clear statement that in his opinion our client should not be executed for the reasons that we've given now over a number of days.

I think the Singapore Government would be impressed that a man of the standing of our Prime Minister would be prepared to say that.

PETA DONALD: Have you had any indication from Mr Howard as to whether he'd be prepared to do that?

LEX LASRY: No we haven't, but I… as a human being, I'd ask him to. This is a man's life that's at stake, it's a life we want to save, it's a life that is valuable.

And I understand Mr Howard's opposition to capital punishment and I think it's time for someone of that seniority to speak directly about his feelings about it.

PETA DONALD: But whatever approaches are made, Singapore has a long history of withstanding pressure to save the lives of those it's decided to send to the gallows.

Professor Garry Rodan, the Director of the Asia Research Centre, at Murdoch University, says Singapore is unlikely to buckle.

He points to the case of Singaporean father of two executed earlier this year for a drug conviction, despite a public campaign in Singapore against it.

GARRY RODAN: It doesn't want to give encouragement to advocacy groups, such as those involved in the attempt to have the clemency awarded for the Singapore national who was facing execution. And any concession at all, even if it is in this case to pressure from outside, might be thought by the Singapore Government as a source of encouragement for advocacy groups in general.

MARK COLVIN: Professor Garry Rodan from Murdoch University with Peta Donald.

Nguyen death penalty case not closed: Lawyers

Send Urgent Appeals

This is a transcript from The World Today. The program is broadcast around Australia at 12:10pm on ABC Local Radio.

You can also listen to the story in REAL AUDIO and WINDOWS MEDIA and MP3 formats.

Transcript

The World Today - ABC
Thursday, 27 October , 2005 12:10:00

Reporter: Catherine McGrath

ELEANOR HALL: We go first today to the fate of the Australian man on death row in Singapore. Lawyers for Van Nguyen have said this morning that they do not see the statement from the Singapore High Commission this morning as an indication that the case is closed.

Singapore High Commissioner to Australia, Joseph Koh, today issued a statement saying he understands that the family of Mr Nguyen find the death penalty decision hard to accept, but that Singapore's strict anti-drug laws are well-known, and send a clear message to drug syndicates.

The Australian Government this week indicated it intends to appeal again to Singapore's Foreign Minister, but both the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister have said they believe the case has little hope.

To discuss the latest developments, we’re joined in our Canberra studio by Chief Political Correspondent Catherine McGrath.

So, Catherine, how important is this statement from the Singapore High Commission?

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Well, Eleanor, I think it’s important in the sense that there has been no public comment at all from the Government of Singapore since the decision was handed down on Friday to reject the clemency appeal.

Now, this statement comes from the Singapore High Commissioner here as you said, Joseph Koh, but it will have been thoroughly checked, thoroughly endorsed and effectively written by the Singapore Government.

So every word that is being issued here in Australia is issued with a direct political message too. And the word coming out of this in this statement sends a very clear message that the case has been considered, and was carefully considered, but that the result is, in effect, the result is in place.

Now, it doesn’t…

ELEANOR HALL: Is it…

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Sorry?

ELEANOR HALL: Is it a message then to the leaders in our country that there’s not much point in them making extra appeals?

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Well, certainly there’s no indication here, there’s no comment on an appeal.

But let me read to you some of the words in the statement.

It says, “Our strict,” the Singaporeans are saying, “Our strict anti-drug laws send a clear message to drug syndicates.”

It also says that Mr Nguyen was given a fair hearing throughout the legal process and his appeal for clemency was carefully considered.

The statement goes on to say, the High Commissioner here is saying, “I understand this decision is difficult for the family to accept, but the stand the Government has taken is consistent with the firm position that Singapore has taken in similar cases.”

So, Eleanor, it does not reflect on the fact that there are some papers, some appeals still going ahead by the Australian Government.

But certainly, the message on face value is: Singapore has looked at this, given it careful consideration and the decision is there.

ELEANOR HALL: So what has the response been then from the lawyers for Van Nguyen?

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Well, the lawyers this morning, Eleanor, have been carefully considering this statement and they’re, they’re being reasonably optimistic. They’re saying this is just a statement of the current facts as we know them. And they’re still going ahead with their appeals.

Now they’re, as we’ve heard from them in the media in the last few days, they’re making definite statements on the value of Mr Nguyen as a possible witness in cases here in Australia that could give vital evidence, they say, in prosecuting drug syndicates in this country. And also, they’re saying, the fact that he is remorseful, the fact that he can undergo rehabilitation and has a completely clean record.

Now, I spoke to one of the lawyers this morning, and we’ll hear now from Mr Nguyen’s lawyer, Melbourne lawyer Julian McMahon.

JULIAN MCMAHON: The statement is a response from the Singapore High Commission to all the media inquiries that, no doubt, he’s been getting, and it’s a general response just restating the Government position, but it doesn’t deal with the issues that we’ve been raising or the issues that have been raised on our behalf by the Government over the last year or so.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: So does that give you any reason for hope that those issues will still be considered?

JULIAN MCMAHON: Oh yes, I’m sure that they will be.

It’s been well publicised through the media that Mr Downer is intending to go back to the Singapore Government, and I don’t see that this media statement by the Singapore High Commission is an attempt to pre-empt that at all. It’s just stating the Government’s position.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: Do you think that the Government response is going to have any effect, given that the previous attempts have failed?

JULIAN MCMAHON: Well, obviously I’m hopeful that it will. We’ve now raised the profile of what we consider some of the key factors, and I think that everyone involved will have another closer look.

I mean, the Singapore Cabinet is renowned for the intelligence of its members, and when its closest regional friend urges it to reconsider a matter based in policy, and in law, and with a background of close friendship, I’d have no doubt that they would pay close attention to that and reconsider the matter.

ELEANOR HALL: That’s the lawyer for Van Nguyen, Julian McMahon.

Now, Catherine, do we know whether, how, do we know yet whether Van Nguyen himself has responded to this statement, whether he’s even seen the statement from the High Commission?

CATHERINE MCGRATH: No, well he wouldn’t have seen it yet, Eleanor, as we’ve said, the lawyers have just been studying it. It will be passed onto him in the normal, normal information transfer that goes on.

His lawyers were saying this morning, actually, that he is holding up very well and, but he is hopeful himself, Mr Nguyen is hopeful himself that there might be a positive response.

Now, we heard there Julian McMahon emphasising the Australia and Singapore relationship, emphasising that the lawyers want the Australian Government, as Singapore’s closest non-ASEAN friend in this region, to make a strong statement to say to Singapore that it’s important for the Australian relationship that Australia feels very strongly about this.

Now, it’s not clear at all that Australia will be taking that line. Clearly, the lawyers feel that’s a valuable line.

What the Australian Government has said is they will put in another appeal, they will speak to George Yeo, the Foreign Minister, and, but publicly, as you know, our Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, and the Prime Minister, John Howard, have said that they don’t feel there’s a lot of hope in this case.

Remember, Singapore has had this position for a very long time. It feels the importance of sending the message of tough on drugs is an important one, a consistent one.

So politically, Singapore doesn’t want to be seen to be changing its rule for an Australian when it hasn’t been changing its rule for Singaporeans or other people from other ASEAN countries, who might be in Singapore.

So I think it’s a very, very hard ask and the timeframe now is getting quite close. Singapore does its hangings on Fridays. It’s a ritualistic thing there that that’s when they happen.

There’s no indication yet of exactly when Van Nguyen’s case would be coming forward. His lawyers were originally told, after the clemency appeal was rejected on Friday, that it could be four to six weeks, but they’re not going to get much notice. And the lobbying from the lawyers is going to intensify.

ELEANOR HALL: Catherine McGrath, our Chief Political Correspondent, thank you

Below is an extract from a related article from news.com.au

International campaign

However, while Singaporean representatives have played down the chances of a successful appeal for clemency, an international campaign to spare Nguyen from the death penalty is gathering steam.

Mr Lasry's colleague, Melbourne barrister Julian McMahon, said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer was planning to continue talks with the Singapore Government and he was hopeful these would be positive.

"We've now raised the profile of what we consider some of the key factors and I think that everyone involved will have another closer look," Mr McMahon said on ABC radio.

The Federal Opposition has made a separate bid, with shadow foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd yesterday speaking to Mr Koh, and writing to the country's foreign minister.

Nearly all Federal Members of Parliament are expected to sign a petition addressed to the Singaporean President and Prime Minister pleading for him to be spared the gallows.

Julia Gillard, Senator George Brandis, Bruce Baird, Senator Joe Ludwig and Laurie Ferguson are among those who have signed so far. About 200 workers around Parliament House are also expected to sign.

The Tasmanian and Queensland Governments have now joined Victoria in calling on Singapore to spare Nguyen.

Mr Lasry said his client needed all State, Territory and Federal Governments to pass motions seeking clemency.

International human rights agencies Amnesty International and the Asian Human Rights Commission are also appealing for compassion.

Amnesty International has asked its global network of more than 1.8 million activists in 140 countries to lobby on behalf of Nguyen, while the Asian Human Rights Commission has called on President Nathan for a moratorium on his execution.

Local civil rights group Think Centre will also today hold a press conference in Singapore, detailing its legal case and accuse leaders of the island nation of imposing a "disproportionate and cruel" punishment on him.

It marks only the second time in Singapore's 40-year history that a death penalty case has led to a public outcry.

The first case involved champion athlete Shanmugan Murugesu, described as a "Death Row confidant" of Nguyen. He was convicted of smuggling marijuana and hanged in May.

Nguyen's lawyers said the groundswell of support they had received from Australian governments and international human rights agencies was fantastic and would help their appeal for clemency.

Condemned ... Van Tuong and his twin brother Khoa Nguyen in happier times as children / File

Send urgent appeals

Letters from death row

"Something inside him sparkles" ... Kelly Ng, left, and Bronwyn Lew on their friend, Nguyen Tuong Van, who has written to them almost every week from death row.
Photo: Jason South

Let us not allow the Singaporean government to continue ignoring this case. This is not some dehumanised matter of crime statistics and theoretical arguments. Send urgent appeals.

By Steve Butcher and Craig Skehan of smh.com.au
October 27, 2005

"For myself, I only pray for courage," writes Nguyen Tuong Van.

From his cell in Singapore's Changi Prison, the condemned Australian seeks the virtue many say he already possesses.

As his execution looms, Nguyen prays for God to watch over his family and friends, particularly his mother, Kim Nguyen, who collapsed yesterday while speaking to reporters.

Nguyen recently wrote to his close friend, Kelly Ng, that he did not want to die, "but I know where I'm going and I know how much God loves us all".

Intimate fragments of his thoughts in maximum security were released yesterday as an emotional Ms Ng read Nguyen's letters. "I only ask for what I need and not once have I been disappointed, ever," he wrote to her.

"But then, again, I only ask Him to watch over you all and love you all as much as He has loved me. As for myself, I only pray for courage, lest God's will be done."

Last Friday Nguyen, 25, lost his last legal hope of clemency when the President, S. R. Nathan, was advised to refuse his plea.

He was sentenced to death in March last year after being stopped in transit at Changi Airport in December 2002, carrying 396 grams of heroin as he ran to catch a Qantas flight to Melbourne.

Nguyen told police he agreed to act as a courier for a Sydney syndicate to help pay legal debts owed by his twin brother.

As frantic efforts mount to save his life, Ms Ng and another of his close friends, Bronwyn Lew, spoke how "there's just something inside him that just sparkles".

The women, who have visited Nguyen many times since his arrest, revealed how the warders regarded him as the most admired inmate in Changi.

"Everyone is in love with him over there," Ms Lew said.

In a letter written last week, Nguyen tells of the impending execution of his closest friend on death row. He warns the loss of "my dear friend" may affect later letters and how "it breaks my heart because there is only so much I can do for him".

He writes: "He's asked me a long time ago to write his last letter to his family."

Just hours before Nguyen was told last week his clemency had failed, the friend was hanged.

Nguyen had befriended and counselled many prisoners who have been executed in his 19 months on death row.

Both Ms Ng and Ms Lew said Nguyen had the ability to comfort his fellow inmates. Nguyen encouraged Ms Ng last month to "let any emotions out [because] I want you to let them out when I'm here with you."

The Opposition's foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, yesterday called for clemency, saying it would be "abhorrent" if Nguyen were hanged.

He made the plea after meeting Singapore's high commissioner, Joseph Koh. "I spoke to him in the most direct terms about our request that the Singaporean cabinet extend an act of clemency to this young Australian man," Mr Rudd said.

"For us in Australia, in the Australian Labor Party, we find all forms of capital punishment abhorrent."

Federal Labor's president, Barry Jones, said yesterday Labor had not done enough to help Nguyen. In a speech in which he urged his party to show more courage, he said: "We seem to have gone quiet on our longstanding rejection of the death penalty, one of our oldest political commitments."

A petition for Nguyen's release has been circulated round the Federal Parliament and Amnesty International has begun a worldwide campaign to save him.

17-year-old blogger pleads guilty to two charges under Sedition Act

First spotted this on Used Brains for Sale.
By Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : 17-year-old private school student Gan Huai Shi has pleaded guilty to two charges of making seditious and inflammatory remarks about Muslims on the Internet.

His lawyer hopes the remaining five similar charges can be taken into consideration so he can get a probation sentence instead of a jail term.

Gan is the third person charged under the Sedition Act recently for making racist remarks in his blog.

He made inflammatory comments about Malays and Muslims. He also called himself an "extreme racist."

The defence lawyer said the main reason why Gan had such feelings of ill will towards the Malay community is because of the death of his younger brother when he was only seven years old.

His month-old brother had breathing difficulties and needed to be taken to the hospital in a cab, but a Malay couple refused to let them go first despite his mother's pleas.

By the time the family got to the hospital, his brother was already dead. His mother was subsequently diagnosed with post-natal depression.

Gan's lawyer said as a result of the incident, he became an introvert, spending most of his time on the computer.

Gan's teachers and Malay friends wrote in their testimonials he had never shown any racist tendencies toward them.

One Malay friend, Ismail Kassim who Gan got to know during his part-time work, said he got along well with Gan and often discussed football together.

Defence lawyer Edmond A. Pereira said: "They have all described him as a very quiet person, so none of them knew about his deep sentiments.

"But in front of the computer, he's a different animal. He is extremely remorseful for what he has done and wishes to say sorry to all Singaporeans."

Gan is currently sitting for his 'O' levels which ends on November 22. His case will be heard again the day after.

- CNA /ls

MPs fight to save drug smuggler

The Advertiser
27oct05

NEARLY all Federal MPs and former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser will plead for convicted Australian heroin smuggler Van Tuong Nguyen to be spared the gallows in Singapore.

A petition addressed to the Singaporean President and Prime Minister is being circulated in Parliament House as part of the save Nguyen campaign.

Nguyen, arrested with just less than 400g of heroin at Changi Airport in December, 2002, may be hanged within weeks.

"I am writing as a member, senator or member of staff of the Australian Parliament to express my concern over the decision not to commute the death sentence which has been imposed on Australian citizen, Mr Van Tuong Nguyen," it says.

Related Link:
Send urgent appeals

Downer: Don't execute Australian

From CNN

CANBERRA, Australia (Reuters) -- The Australian government will make a final plea to Singapore to spare the life of an Australian due to be executed for drug smuggling, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has said.

Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, was sentenced to death in March 2004 after being convicted for smuggling almost 400 grams (0.9 lb) of heroin from Cambodia. He was arrested at Singapore's Changi Airport in December 2002, where he was in transit for Australia.

The Singapore government last week rejected Nguyen's final plea for clemency, despite intense lobbying from Australia over the past 18 months.

"I think it's worth getting in touch again with the Singapore government, expressing our enormous disappointment at the decision they've made," Downer told reporters.

He said he would ask Singapore to reconsider the death penalty because Nguyen had cooperated fully with police since his arrest, and because he was willing to give evidence against those responsible for drug trafficking.

Australia is a staunch opponent of the death penalty but Singapore, known for its tough stand against crime, mandates the death penalty for murder and drug trafficking.

Singapore has not disclosed the date of Nguyen's execution, but lawyers told Reuters that hangings are usually carried out three weeks after a clemency appeal is rejected.

Nguyen admitted he acted as a drugs courier, but only to help his twin brother pay off the equivalent of $19,000 in debts to loan sharks.

Nguyen's Melbourne-based lawyer, Lex Lasry, and human rights group Amnesty International have condemned the death penalty and called on the Singapore government to reconsider its decision.

"To now hang him in those circumstances, when he has done everything he can to make up for his conduct, is a grievous injustice. It may be tough as far as Singapore is concerned, but it is grossly unfair," Lasry told reporters in Canberra.

Capital punishment in the city-state has long been shrouded in silence, with little public debate about the issue and even less information on how the process is carried out.

"Families are left in a state of complete anxiety and lack of knowledge until very late in the day," said M.Ravi, a lawyer who has handled death penalty cases.

The executions are generally carried out at Changi prison, in the island's leafy eastern suburbs, and take place at the pre-dawn hour of 0600 (2200 GMT) on Fridays.

In a 2004 report Amnesty International said about 400 people had been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug trafficking, giving the state of 4.2 million people the highest execution rate in the world relative to its population.

Nguyen will be the first Australian executed for drugs charges since 1993, if the sentence is carried out.

Two other Australians, Mai Cong Thanh, 46, and Nguyen Van Chinh, 45, remain on death row in Vietnam after being convicted for drug smuggling.

Nguyen Tuong Van faces death by hanging

I decided to post this message as the Think Centre article contains a link to the Community of Community of Sant'Egidio website which allows concerned persons to send an urgent appeal to the Singapore government .

Send urgent appeals

Think Centre - 21 October 2005 by Sinapan Samydorai

Think Centre is very disappointed that Nguyen Tuong Van faces death by hanging for a non-violent drug offence. The death penalty for Nguyen Tuong Van is unfair, cruel, inhuman, degrading and disproportionate punishment. It violates the right to life.

Nguyen Tuong Van is facing the death penalty for a non-violent drug offence. Nguyen Tuong Van, an Australian, had plead for clemency from the President of Singapore, Sellapan Ramanathan.

The death peanlty for Nguyen Tuong Van is disproportionate and cruel. Is the death sentence in the case of Nguyen just? Justice has become a victim of a law that provides for the state with a "legal framework to kill a person." Its against both the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Death for NGUYEN Tuong Van is disproportionate given the nature of his crime, his youth, lack of criminal history and his opportunity for rehabilitation.

Think Centre opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Think Centre is very disappointed that Nguyen Tuong Van faces death by hanging. Think Centre had been hoping that the President will commute Nguyen's death penalty. Since 2003, Think Centre has been calling for a moratorium on Death Penalty.

Think Centre urges the President to call for a moratorium on Death Penalty and request the Singapore government seek a more humane way to overcome the problem.

Think centre calls on all concern persons, groups and organisations to light candles and host vigils in the coming weekdays - to remember those on death row, pray for Nguyen Tuong Van, and death penalty victims like Shanmugam. Pray the government, the lawmakers, will respect and consider the call for a moratorium on death penalty. Save the lifes of those on death row.

The Singapore government seems to be unnecessarily cruel without any mercy given to those who have make honest mistake. Why not give the person a second chance? This cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment has to go. The laws that permit such cruel punished has to be amended. Think Centre calls on the government, members of parliament, to abandon the use of the death penalty and seek a more humane way to overcome the problem.

In Singapore, the death penalty by hanging is implemented on Friday morning's. There are at least 8 persons on death row.

University plays down fears about Singapore offshoot

It is a story about playing down fears while at the same time openly admitting that those fears are real and that they exist. Yes the big monster is in the cupboard but lets forget about it and get on with the business of making money. After all that is what our business is... said the university management team.

By Kelly Burke Higher Education Reporter
October 26, 2005

The University of NSW has moved to allay fears about academic freedom and human rights at its planned $200 million-plus Singapore campus.

But university management has conceded it cannot guarantee protection of its academic staff in Singapore, given the city-state's harsh laws governing public comment and defamation.

UNSW is one of only two foreign universities granted special status by the Singaporean Government to set up fully fledged independent teaching and research institutions offering undergraduate degrees.

It expects to open the doors of its Changi campus, to be called UNSW Asia, to up to 15,000 students from early 2007.

Yesterday it said its dean of commerce and economics, Professor Greg Whittred would be the Singapore campus's first president (vice-chancellor).

However, the other overseas institution approved by Singapore, the University of Warwick in England, said last week it would not proceed with a full-scale $354 million university campus because of concerns about academic freedom and financial risk.

According to the student newspaper, the Warwick Boar, the university also had concerns about Singapore's ban on homosexuality and certain religious practices and about possible legal reprisals against academic-related comments "that might be seen as being outside the boundaries of political debate".

Under Singapore law, foreign institutions are not allowed to criticise local politics.

UNSW has already secured a State Government-endorsed bank loan of $113 million for the Singapore campus. But it will also receive about $80 million in capital works funding from the Singapore Government, a figure the university's deputy vice-chancellor (international and development), John Ingleson, has refused to confirm or deny, on the grounds that it is commercial-in-confidence.

Speaking from Singapore yesterday, Professor Ingleson said he had been assured by the Government there that students and academics would enjoy complete academic freedom on campus. [so when is the first edition of 'Gay Rights' due off the presses?]He dismissed concerns raised by the Warwick pull-out, arguing that UNSW had "a more nuanced view of how Singapore and [its] society worked". [Nuanced - Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, US State Department... Nuanced]

He conceded, however, that the university would be powerless to protect its academics should they fall foul of the Government over issues of public comment.

"There is no such thing as absolute freedom of speech in any country … in that sense, our staff and our students will be subject … off-campus to the laws of Singapore like anyone else," he said.

Professor Ingleson believed Warwick's decision was based on financial risk rather than concern about academic freedom. [sorry to burst your bubble but it clearly stated fears related to academic freedom]

He said UNSW was not exposed to the same risk as Warwick because the Australian university had closer ties with the region and a more firmly established brand name. [And we have a tighter grip on our academics.]

Singapore's deadly sling

October 25, 2005

The impending execution of Nguyen Tuong Van is a travesty of justice and a failure of diplomacy, writes Mark Baker.

AT DAWN on a Friday soon a young Australian will be taken from his death-row cell in the grey colonial pile of Singapore's Changi Prison, fitted with a hood and noose and dropped to oblivion through a gallows trapdoor. A few hours later his broken body will be handed back to his family.

In the island metropolis to our north, a place that admires itself through a polished veneer of modernity and sophistication, the city-state's brand of justice will be delivered with all the subtlety and compassion of the Middle Ages.

Yet few beyond his family, friends and dogged legal team are likely to mourn the passing of Nguyen Tuong Van, convicted heroin trafficker. As one of his Melbourne lawyers, Julian McMahon, observed despairingly at the weekend, Nguyen is not the kind of pretty young Anglo-Saxon damsel whose distress ignites national indignation.

But there are good reasons Australians should be alarmed and angered by the impending execution of the 25-year-old former Melbourne salesman — and why they should be demanding a much more vigorous response from the Federal Government to the final rejection of his plea for clemency than the limp resignation we are now witnessing from John Howard and Alexander Downer.

In short, Nguyen is to be hanged on a pretext that flouts the principles, if not the letter, of international law, after a flawed trial and after a comprehensive diplomatic snub that makes a mockery of the supposedly close political, defence and business friendship between Singapore and Australia.

Nguyen was arrested at Changi Airport in December 2002 after a routine security check revealed 396 grams of heroin strapped to his body and hidden in his hand luggage. Under Singapore law — the harshest in Asia — anyone found with more than 15 grams of heroin is deemed a trafficker and the mandatory sentence is death.

Canberra's increasing ambivalence about capital punishment surely undermined the credibility of its argument.But the verdict that Nguyen was trafficking into Singapore is a nonsense. He was arrested in the airport transit lounge while preparing to board a plane for the second leg of a journey from Cambodia to Australia. He had not passed through Singapore immigration and he had no intention of entering Singapore. Even neighbouring Malaysia — which has hanged three Australians for drug trafficking since the 1980s — acknowledges a legal distinction between people who formally enter a country and those who are merely in transit (those found with drugs in transit face a relatively modest jail sentence).

Nguyen's lawyers did not pursue this obvious defence because the Singapore courts — which adopt the airs and trappings of their British colonial ancestry but are in practice a deeply politicised law unto themselves — have flatly refused such arguments in the past.

The trial itself and the subsequent failed appeal were also flawed. The judges ignored evidence that might well have brought an acquittal in the Australian courts, or other properly independent jurisdictions.

The Singapore judges ignored evidence that the arresting and investigating police had themselves broken the law by denying Nguyen Australian consular support before he was interrogated, and had failed to secure the evidentiary drugs that showed significant and unexplained variations when weighed at different times. No action was taken against a senior police officer who gave contradictory testimony.

The trial judge also brushed aside a compelling defence argument that mandatory death sentences — which have helped create a world's-worst-practice of 400 people executed in Singapore since the early 1990s — are a violation of international human rights standards.

Singapore's mandatory sentencing regime also meant no consideration could be given to mitigating circumstances or the character of the defendant. And there was plenty that should have been heard.

Born in a refugee camp in Thailand and raised by a struggling single mother in Melbourne, Nguyen was not a drug addict, a drug trader or even an avaricious "mule" for a drug syndicate. Naive and desperate, he was pressured into making the trip to Cambodia to repay substantial debts owed by his twin brother to loan sharks. Nguyen and his family were threatened before he left Australia.

In the end, Singapore's uncompromising policy on mandatory sentencing made a conviction virtually inevitable, but last week's failure of the petition for a presidential pardon — Nguyen's last lifeline — has raised more disturbing issues.

While the Federal Government gave strenuous support to the application for a pardon, including a personal plea by Howard to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during a visit to Singapore earlier this year, Canberra's increasing ambivalence about capital punishment surely undermined the credibility of its argument.

What is left of principle when one day Australia's Government cheers the death penalty for Bali bombers, on another its police assist in sending accused drug runners to face the death penalty abroad and the next it tries to argue against a hanging on humanitarian grounds?

The refusal of a pardon to Nguyen, dictated by the Singapore cabinet, now stands as a stinging diplomatic rebuff to Howard personally and Australia as a whole. And this from a nation that is supposed to be our best friend in South-East Asia and the neighbour with which we have the strongest strategic, commercial and personal links.

The Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister now solemnly shake their heads and lament there is nothing more that can be done. But there is plenty that can be done by Australians who believe state-sanctioned killing — however odious the crime — has no place in a civilised society.

They can boycott Singapore-owned companies such as Optus and Singapore Airlines, they can take their shopping holidays elsewhere, they can protest against the thousands of Singapore military who train on Australian soil and they can start flying to Europe via Bangkok — not a bad idea when a visit to the transit lounge at Changi Airport can finish in a cell at Changi prison.

Mark Baker is opinion editor. He was Asia editor, based in Singapore, from 2001 to 2004 and reported the arrest and trial of Nguyen Tuong Van.

PM downplays hopes for Nguyen clemency

PUTTING THE BLOODY IN TO SINGABLOODYPORE.
I don't like the word 'bloody' being used in the word Singapore. It offends me. Hanging people well that's ok.

From ABC News
Video
The lawyer for young Melbourne man on death row in Singapore has pleaded for the Prime Minister to make a last ditch appeal for mercy, but John Howard does not want to raise false hope.

[Real Broadband] [Real Dialup] [Win Broadband] [Win Dialup]

Prime Minister John Howard says the Federal Government has already done everything it possibly can for Tuong Van Nguyen, who has been sentenced to hang in Singapore for heroin smuggling.

Twenty-five-year-old Nguyen could be hanged within weeks for trying to smuggle 400 grams of heroin in 2002.

On Friday, Singapore's President denied an appeal for clemency for the Melbourne man.

"People have to understand that when you go to another country and commit a crime against the laws of that country, you are punished according to the laws of that country," Mr Howard said.

"I am desperately sorry. If there is anything new then we will put that before the relevant authorities, but if there is nothing new, I don't want to raise false expectations.

Mr Howard has appealed to the lawyers of Nguyen to take any new information to the relevant authorities.

"I feel for the man's family, he did it to help his brother, it was wrong, it was a serious crime," he said.

"He would've known that, but he did it to help his brother. Now I feel for him, as a human being. I don't believe in capital punishment but this is another country - we don't control Singapore."

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says he will make a final written appeal to his counterpart in Singapore, amid claims that the Australian Government is not doing enough to save the man's life.

"I think it's worth getting in touch again with the Singapore Government expressing our enormous disappointment," Mr Downer said.

However, Mr Downer says he remains very pessimistic about Nguyen's chances of a reprieve.

He says Australian authorities are re-examining police reports in the case but hold little hope.

"I don't think we should mislead the public and suggest that either the Prime Minister or I can really turn this around, I think that is nigh impossible," he said.

Nguyen's lawyer Lex Lasry says there is more the Federal Government can do to try to save his life.

Mr Lasry has praised the Federal Government's efforts to help Nguyen, but says there is still more that could be done.

"I think this is the time, in fact, for them to be doing twice as much as they previously have while he remains alive," he said.

Related Audio
Some time before Christmas, and possibly much sooner, 25-year-old Melbourne man Van Nguyen is likely to be the first Australian prisoner executed overseas since 1993. Today his lawyers asked Prime Minister John Howard to become directly involved. They say it is the only thing that might save his life.

[RealMedia 28k+] [WinMedia 28k+] [MP3]

Although the Federal Government says it has done all it can to help Van Nguyen escape the death penalty, an expert on the Singaporean constitution says there is still some hope for the 25-year-old Australian man.

[RealMedia 28k+] [WinMedia 28k+] [MP3]

Extract for a Related Article from The Age...

A deafening public silence surrounds the imminent execution of an Australian in Singapore.

[...]Many Australians know little of the cruelty surrounding the death penalty. It is almost four decades since anyone was taken to a place of execution in Australia and hanged by the neck until they were dead. This ghastly punishment was finally abolished in Australia in 1984. In 125 years, there were 185 executions in Victoria, just 21 in the 20th century. Singapore has hanged more than 420 people since 1991. These judicial killings have had no perceptible impact on the island's drug problem.

In Australia, both sides of politics profess opposition to the death penalty. Yet there have lately been murmurings tantamount to acquiescence. When the terrorists involved in the 2002 Bali bombings were convicted on capital charges, Prime Minister John Howard pointedly hailed the verdicts, but made no principled plea for clemency. It should surprise no one that such official ambiguity may have helped seal Nguyen's fate. The Government says it will make another last-ditch plea for his life. As long as Nguyen Tuong Van is alive, it must seek with vigour clemency on his behalf, reminding Singapore that the death penalty is barbaric and uncivilised.

More Age Related Links:
Fresh appeal for Singapore clemency
[5:03pm] Australia to provide more information to Singapore in a bid to save condemned Melbourne man's life. more
MPs intensify campaign to save Nguyen
Saving Nguyen Van Tuong: Your Say
Rudd's plea to Singapore
Mother's mercy plea
Death sentence: Vote now

Old formula losing impact in new world

First spotted on Singapore Window.

Star, Malaysia
October 23, 2005

Insight Down South By Seah Chiang Nee

FOR many years, Singaporeans have showed little interest in politics, preferring to leave matters to the government as long as it gives them a good life. The ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) called it “the social compact” and it worked like this: The government has a duty to provide jobs and govern well; if it succeeds, it is the citizens’ duty to vote for it. If it fails, then the people have the right to choose another.

Based on Confucianism, it was enunciated by Lee Kuan Yew and largely supported by the people in the years when Singapore’s economic growth faced few problems.

At the time, the government was superb and it delivered, year after year.

Then the world economy changed with the emergence of China and India, and Singapore began to stagnate and was overtaken by many better-endowed nations.

Globalisation has made it impossible for Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to rely on the same “social compact” to rule. No government can guarantee jobs. At the same time, the voters, too, have changed, and so has the PAP.

In recent years as the rich-poor gap widened and unemployment rose, murmurings of hardship by citizens (especially those above 40) have become shriller.

Now that general elections are a year or possibly months away, the political temperature has risen and the government is more willing to crack down on any “threats” to orderliness.

Last week, the political excitement rose by a few degrees when two important foreign commentators joined the debate.

The ambassador of the United States, Singapore’s strategic ally, delivered one of its occasional admonitions against the city-state’s limits on political expression.

In his departure speech, Franklin L. Lavin said governments would pay an increasing price for failing to give citizens freedom of choice and expression. It was posted on the embassy website.

At the same time, one of Britain’s top 10 universities announced it would scrap plans to set up a campus in Singapore because of concerns about academic freedom.

The decision by the University of Warwick council dealt a blow to the city-state’s ambitions to attract more foreign students.

Singapore requires international educational institutions operating in the city-state to agree not to conduct activities seen as interference in domestic affairs. Local universities are also under scrutiny.

Thio Li-ann, a Singapore law professor who drew up an advisory report for Warwick University, had warned “the government will intervene if academic reports cast a negative light on their policies”.

It is the first time that a foreign university has refused to meet government conditions.

Singapore is already home to several foreign campuses, French business school INSEAD, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

It aims to double the number of international students to 150,000 by 2015 as part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on manufacturing.

Warwick and Australia’s University of New South Wales were the only two foreign universities selected by Singapore’s Economic Development Board to set up a full-scale campus, which can award undergraduate degrees.

But it was the American ambassador’s remarks that raised excitement here.

“Singapore has flourished over the past 40 years, but is a 20th century model adequate for the 21st century?” Lavin asked.

“Remaking (Singapore’s) economy is, in a sense, the easy decision. Shaping a political system to reflect the needs and aspirations of its citizens is more difficult and more sensitive,” he added.

His remarks are not surprising given America’s policies on human rights. Liberal Singaporeans cheer them but PAP supporters find them undiplomatic and interfering.

He said it was surprising to find what he called constraints on discussions given Singapore’s strong international links.

“In this era of weblogs and webcams, how much sense does it make to limit political expression?” Lavin added.

PM Lee recently ruled out adopting a Western liberal democracy with a multi-party system in the next 20 years, saying that it was unsuitable for the country.

Neither the American nor the British message will have any impact on politics here. Nevertheless, it is a blow to Singapore’s ambition to attract global talent to become a great global city.

When he became Prime Minister a little over a year ago, Lee promised a freer, inclusive society, but critics say there has not been any real movement towards it.

On the coming election, Lee said he expected to win a strong mandate although his party could perform less well compared to 2001. People who know him say that he is sincere in wanting to open up gradually.

Some observers say he leads the right place at the wrong time, having taken charge when Singapore is going through a painful transition.

For its long-term survival, the city’s declining domestic population needs desperately to be topped up by a large influx of foreigners, but this is under attack by Singaporeans who have lost jobs.

Lee is sandwiched by two groups of unhappy voters. The biggest are unhappy “heartlanders” in the housing estates who are struggling with a lower standard of living, unemployment and rising costs.

These “bread-and-butter” worriers outnumber the second group: young Singaporeans who want greater personal liberties and a freer press. Online petitions demanding more “human rights” have so far attracted relatively less interest.

The government’s strong point, however, remains its ability to convince the majority of Singaporeans that it can generally govern well and provide efficient services.

This will probably sweep them back into power again.

Singapore Media Manipulates Opinion on Subtle Level

TODAY online reported Singapore’s ranking as 140th, a miserable 7 notch climb from its last year ranking, as if to imply that the media in the country has improved since.

It even claimed that it is only one place behind Philippines, as if our media deserves a pat in the back for being just one place behind one of South East Asia’s more liberal democracy. That is however far from reality.

The media in Philippines played a significant part in bringing down its dictators during the People Power Revolution. The Singapore media is however certainly incapable of doing the same thing if they continue to toe the line. I shall explain in greater detail.

In a separate report on Asia which can be downloaded as a PDF file, the section on Singapore notes,

“Singapore (140th), which has a quite different style, still has a very low ranking because the government headed by the son of founding father Lee Kwan Yew keeps its grip on the media and uses drastic laws to crack down on the few independent journalists.”

Compare that to, “ the complete absence of independent newspapers, radio stations and TV stations, the application of prison sentences for press offences, media self-censorship and the opposition's lack of access to the state media" which was reported on TODAY and extracted from the Singapore Annual Report 2005.

It is obvious that in this case, names are not mentioned. This is something that the local media has always practiced with great nuance. They rarely mention anything negative about the Singapore government or its leaders but is quick to look the other way when it comes to activists or Opposition politicians.

Sure, they do critique the “system” at times. As a general rule however, they never identify the real perpetuators. In this case, those at the top of the hierarchy who denies those press freedom.

The deft touch of rewriting, rephrasing, or omitting out certain details makes it more difficult for the average reader to identify the real source of the problem.

This is what media censorship at its most subtle level can do. F**ing with our mind.

Note: It is not my intention to use the F word for fear of being interpreted as being too vulgar, frivolous or shocking. However, it is also my opinion that replacing it with any other word is in itself practicing a form of self-censorship. The F word is used to convey the seriousness of the manipulations by the local media; and what it can do to us.

For more reports, go to:

Reporters Without Borders - Asia Report 2005

Reporters Without Borders - Singapore Report 2005

TODAY Report on Singapore Press Ranking by Reporters Without Borders:
Singapore 140th in press freedom index
Monday • October 24, 2005

Singapore has inched up seven spots in the 2005 World Press Freedom Index, released on Thursday by international association Reporters Sans Frontieres (RSF).

The Republic is now ranked 140th out of 167 countries, one place behind the Philippines.

Last year, Dr Lee Boon Yang, Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts, slammed the rankings for favouring the press' role of criticism and opposition — a model Singapore does not follow.

RSF noted in this year's index report that Singapore "has a quite different style".

It attributes the country's low ranking to "the complete absence of independent newspapers, radio stations and TV stations, the application of prison sentences for press offences, media self-censorship and the opposition's lack of access to the state media".

The 20-year-old organisation was bleak in its assessment of press freedom in Asia, calling it the toughest continent for journalists.

Once again, North Korea was at the bottom of the rankings, with Nepal, China, Vietnam and Myanmar not much higher up the ladder.

But there are a couple of bright spots.

Indonesia is now ranked 102nd, a jump of 15 places, whilst Malaysia is 113th, up nine rungs.

The latter no longer has any journalists or cyber dissidents in prison and peace accords in Indonesia have opened up the former rebel province of Aceh to journalists, said RSF.

South Korea is the highest-ranked Asian country at the 34th spot.

The mostly Northern European countries of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway and Switzerland were once again tied at the top of the rankings.

The United States proved it was no bastion of press freedom through legal moves that undermined the privacy of journalistic sources.

Contributing to this was the imprisonment of New York Times reporter Judith Miller. The move saw the US slip 20 places to number 44 on the list.

One observation made by RSF is that countries that have recently won their independence or have recovered it (within the past 15 years) are "very observant of press freedom and give the lie to the insistence of many authoritarian leaders that democracy takes decades to establish".

It cited nine countries — including ninth-ranked Slovenia and Timor Leste which stands at the 58th position — as part of this group.

As a note to its index, RSF stressed that the rankings "should in no way be taken as an indication of the quality of the press in the countries concerned".

— Derrick A Paulo

Mother's desperate plea

A mother's anguish: Kim Nguyen (centre) is comforted by family and friends yesterday.
Photo: Wayne Taylor


By Steve Butcher

THE mother of a Melbourne man about to hang in Singapore has begged the Australian Government not to give up the fight to save his life.

Kim Nguyen said her heart would stop if Tuong Van Nguyen, 25, was executed on a heroin importation charge.

"He is my heart," Ms Nguyen said. "If something happens to my son, my heart will be stopped."

Ms Nguyen was surrounded by friends and helpers at a packed news conference after returning to Melbourne after visiting her son in Changi Prison.

"I'm asking everyone to please help us … please, the Government of Australia, help us," she said. "I know my son is scared about what is going to happen to him, and it hurts my heart."

Nguyen, of Glen Waverley, will be only the fourth Australian citizen to be executed by a foreign government if his sentence is carried out in Singapore this week.

Sydney barman Michael McAuliffe was hanged in Malaysia in 1993. Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers were hanged in Malaysia in 1986.

Mrs Nguyen's plea came as fears grew that the impending execution might damage the two countries' 40-year relationship after Singapore refused pleas from the highest levels of the Australian Government and Labor Opposition to save him.

Nguyen's Melbourne legal team said there was a real risk the ties of friendship and trust would be seriously weakened by Singapore's decision to reject Nguyen's appeal for clemency.

Barristers Lex Lasry, QC, and Julian McMahon described the decision as a "personal rebuff for our leaders", including Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer.The Governor-General, Major-General Michael Jeffery, and Sydney's Catholic Archbishop, Cardinal George Pell, also requested clemency, as did every member of the federal parliamentary Labor Party.

Nguyen was arrested on December 12, 2002, as he approached a flight to Melbourne at Singapore's Changi airport carrying two packages — 396 grams — of heroin.

The Australian citizen, on his first overseas trip, was returning with the heroin for a Sydney syndicate in return for money to pay his twin brother's legal debts. He was sentenced to death last year and later lost an appeal. Nguyen learned on Friday that his application for clemency had been refused by President S. R. Nathan on the advice of the Singapore cabinet. He may now live only another four weeks.

Under Singapore law, death by hanging is mandatory for anyone possessing 15 grams or more of heroin.

Mr Howard said yesterday the Government had tried everything at a political and diplomatic level and he did not think the "prospects of anything changing are realistic".

But Mr Lasry does not share that pessimism and called on Mr Downer to fight on.

"The diplomatic channels are open as long as our client is alive," he said. "There is absolutely no reason why this decision can't be changed.

"I urge the Australian Government to take the view publicly that this young man's life is valuable and is a life that should be saved."

Mr McMahon said Nguyen was entitled to expect clemency under the Singaporean constitution after twice helping the Australian Federal Police to expose the syndicate.

The lawyers said it appeared Singapore had ignored that assistance and Nguyen's rehabilitation in a decision made without satisfactory reason and which was a "bad error of judgement".

Mr Lasry said that if Nguyen was executed "those who will celebrate that event will be the people who he could have implicated in the criminal conspiracy".

Mr McMahon noted it was unknown whether the media and the Australian public "will give the same sort of weight to (Nguyen's) case that you would give if he were a beautifully attractive Anglo Saxon young lady".

Opposition foreign spokesman Kevin Rudd yesterday called on the Singapore cabinet to reconsider clemency.

Mr Downer said last night: "If anybody has any new and constructive ideas, we're happy to look at them. But there is not anything apparent to us. We have done everything we can."

Amnesty lobbies to save death row Australian

Original story spotted on abc.net

Amnesty International says it will apply whatever pressure it can on the Government of Singapore to commute the death sentence handed down to an Australian drug offender.

The Singapore Cabinet this week rejected an application for clemency by Nguyen Tuong Van, in what was his final avenue of appeal.

It is expected the 25-year-old Melbourne man will now be executed within weeks.

Amnesty spokesman Tim Goodwin has condemned the decision, and is urging the Cabinet to have a change of heart.

"They're the ones who've rejected his clemency application, they're also the ones who can reopen that decision, and commute to a lesser form of punishment," he said.

"We're encouraging our people all over the world in our network and also governments and other prominent people to take this issue up with the Singapore Cabinet.

"Call on them to reconsider it and not to execute him in the coming weeks."

Amnesty International is also calling for the Federal Government to make a further attempt to convince the Singapore Government to overturn the penalty.

Prime Minister John Howard says the Australian Government has done all it can.

But Mr Goodwin has questioned that assessment.

"We'd be encouraging the Australian Government to do everything it can over the coming weeks to make those representations to the Singapore Government," he said.

"I don't think it's enough for us to say well we've done everything we can and just leave it at that.

"I think we have to keep making efforts to intercede and efforts to convince the Singapore authorities right up to the point when he's hanged."

Below is an extract from the statement released by Amnesty International in Australia.

Amnesty International is appealing to Singapore’s Cabinet to reconsider its decision and commute the death sentence against Van Tuong Nguyen.

“While an overwhelming majority of countries have rejected the death penalty, Singapore has a shocking record, hanging more than 420 people since 1991,” Tim Goodwin said. “With a population of just over four million, it has the highest execution rate in the world.”

Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act specifies a mandatory death sentence for at least 20 different offences. “This is the real impact of Singapore’s mandatory death sentences. The courts have no discretion to consider any mitigating factors, which can result in decisions which are completely disproportionate to the circumstances of the case,” Tim Goodwin said.

Under Singapore’s Constitution, there is an entitlement to the expectation in rare circumstances for clemency. Amnesty International is astonished that clemency was not granted given that Van Tuong Nguyen meets the criteria for expectation of clemency - he has always shown remorse, confessed at the earliest opportunity and cooperated fully with the authorities in addition to the sentence itself being disproportionate to the offence.

Related Link:
Singapore: Appalling decision to execute Van Tuong Nguyen

Australian to be Executed in Singapore

Yet again the Singaporean government slanders the good name of its people in the eyes of the world. My sympathy lies with the mother, family and friends of Nguyen Tuong Van. How long can the Singapore government swim against the tide of revulsion?

I have been covering this story for over one year now. Other executions have happened since then. The execution of Shanmugam Murugesu has been one of the very few cases to cause so much as a ripple in the Singaporean media. A campaign was started by a group of Singaporeans and like minded groups to appeal for clemency but to no avail.

The only hope that this situation might turn out differently is if the full weight of the Australian government and media can be brought to bear on the plight of Nguyen Tuong Van. Let the Singaporean government know that it can not treat human beings in such a revolting and inhumane manner, regardless of their nationality or crime.

The Singaporean government should be made to realise that these executions are a stain on their international reputation. One that can not be ignored.

Fri Oct 21, 2005 9:58 AM BST

CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian man convicted of drugs charges in Singapore has lost his final appeal for clemency and will be executed, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Friday.

Nguyen Tuong Van, 25, was sentenced to death in March 2004 after being convicted for smuggling almost 400 grams (0.9 lb) of heroin from Vietnam. He was arrested at Singapore's Changi Airport in December 2002, where he was in transit for Australia.

Downer, Prime Minister John Howard and Governor-General Michael Jeffery had all pleaded for clemency for Nguyen, who will become the first Australian to be executed for drugs charges in Southeast Asia since 1993.

"We are very sad that this has happened. We have done our best, we have done everything we can to save his life," Downer told reporters in Adelaide. "The execution is expected to be carried out fairly quickly, which is the custom in Singapore."

Australia is a staunch opponent of the death penalty but Singapore, known for its tough stand against crime, mandates the death penalty for murder and drug trafficking.

Nguyen's Melbourne-based lawyer Lex Lasry said the Singapore decision was devastating for Nguyen, his family and "anyone who values humane treatment of their fellow human beings".

"Death by hanging is hideous. Further, it is grossly out of proportion to the crime committed," he said in a statement, adding that Nguyen had admitted his guilt and cooperated with authorities.

"We call on the Singapore government to reverse this decision. We make this call in the name of fairness and justice."

But Downer said there was little more Australia could do.

"This was a decision made by the Singapore Cabinet and the President, consistent with the laws and constitution of Singapore," Downer said.

Two other Australians, Mai Cong Thanh, 46, and Nguyen Van Chinh, 45, remain on death row in Vietnam after being convicted for drug smuggling.

In 1986, Malaysia executed Australian drug smugglers Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers by hanging in a high-profile case that sparked a major diplomatic row after then Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke described the death sentence as "barbaric".

The last Australian to be executed in Southeast Asia was Michael McAuliffe, who went to the gallows in Malaysia in 1993 for drug trafficking.

Related Articles:
Mother Begs for Smugglers Life
Singapore Defers Judgement of Australian Drug Trafficker
Battle to Stop a Hanging
Revulsion Over Death Penalty Growing
Amnesty, Australia Asks Singapore
The Case Against The Death Penalty
An Australian faces Singapore's gallows
highest number of per capita executions in the world
Remember Nguyen Tuong Van?

Singapore ranks 140th in the world for press freedom

Singapore (140th), which has a quite different style, still has a very low ranking because the government headed by the son of founding father Lee Kwan Yew keeps its grip on the media and uses drastic laws to crack down on the few independent journalists.

Couldn't have put it better myself. This is considering 167 countries were ranked by RSF, and at the bottom were countries like North Korea. To think we are barely 30 countries away from freedom black-hole countries like China and N. Korea is truly a frightening thought.

Smoking Ban?

Senior Minister of State for Health Balaji Sadasivan says a complete ban on smoking in Singapore has to be considered carefully as it may cause unintended problems.He was responding to recent calls for such a ban when he spoke at the 7th Singapore Stroke Conference.To help stub out the smoking habit, the government has smoking cessation programmes and made cigarettes more expensive and unavailable to the young.Just recently, smoking in public areas like bus interchanges and swimming complexes was banned.Now, there are calls for a complete ban -- from people like neurologist Dr Ramani.He said up to a quarter of all strokes are caused by smoking - and stroke is Singapore's fourth leading cause of death.But Dr Balaji said a total ban raises other issues.He said: "A total ban on cigarettes may cause unintended problems. Banning may increase the illegal trade and smuggling of cigarettes, as happened to alcohol during the prohibition in the US."Tourists may shy away from coming to Singapore. Hence, a total ban on cigarettes in Singapore is a measure which we will have to consider very carefully."Although he hasn't ruled it out for now, the Ministry will be continuing its anti-smoking efforts."I hear Dr Balaji's comments. While I am a little disappointed that we are not going to ban it straight away, I am happy the Ministry is considering it. I think we are in sync," said Dr Ramani, a neurologist at the National Neuroscience Institute.In fact, Dr Balaji said that in time to come, it might not even be necessary to have a smoking ban as the Ministry aims to cut down the number of new smokers to zero.He did not give a time frame for this.The Ministry also aims to reduce the number of existing smokers.

Channelnewsasia.com

As a non-smoker, I am personally in total favour of banning cigarettes, though I can already hear the howls of outrage from smokers all over Singapore. The smoking issue can be rather tricky for nations to handle. New Delhi has given out a controversial ban on depiction of smoking in films, for example, which even I have protest on grounds of freedom of expression, though I am against films which glamourise smoking.

On one hand is the proven facts about what smoking does to you, and not to mention what it does to others around you. On the other hand is things like freedom of choice, and obviously, the revenue from tobacco. Personally, I don't think the real reason that smoking is not banned yet is because of tourists, or the possiblity of underground smuggling, but the loss of revenue from tobacco, especially considering the raised price of packets.

Technorati Tags: smoking, singapore

Singapore's academic freedom must evolve - minister

The claim that Singapore places no restrictions is complete hogwash. So honourable minister why on earth did Warwick pull out of the deal?

Sat Oct 22, 2005 6:54 AM BST

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore's education minister has defended the country's university system but conceded academic freedom needed to evolve after a British university scrapped plans to set up a campus in the conservative city-state.

Tharman Shanmugaratnam told the pro-government Straits Times on Saturday that Singapore recognises academic freedom as critical for any world-class university and that it places no restrictions on what scholars can study here.

Earlier this week the University of Warwick, which was most recently ranked eighth among British universities in The Times Good University Guide, abandoned plans to set up a campus in the state, citing concerns over academic freedom.

Run by the People's Action Party for 40 years, Singapore often gets top marks for its sound economic policies but lags other Asian countries when it comes to freedom of expression.

In an interview with the Straits Times, Shanmugaratnam said: "Are we at an optimal point now? I doubt it. We must evolve. The intellectual climate is not cast in stone.

"It is quite different now from where it was 10 years ago, let alone 20. I have no doubt it will be different 10, 20 years from now."

Warwick and Australia's University of New South Wales were the only two foreign universities selected by Singapore's Economic Development Board to set up a full-scale campus which can award undergraduate degrees.

Singapore is also home to overseas campuses for French graduate business school INSEAD, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It aims to double the number of international students to 150,000 by 2015 as part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on manufacturing.

The state requires foreign educational institutions to abstain from interfering in its domestic affairs.

Local universities are also under scrutiny. In 2003, two economists from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore publicly apologised after the government rebutted their research, which showed that the majority of new jobs created in Singapore went to foreigners.

Last week, outgoing U.S. envoy Franklin L. Lavin slammed the city-state's curbs on freedom of speech.

James Gomez's Blog

A new kid on the block...

I am currently the 2nd Assistant Secretary-General (ASG) of the Workers' Party (WP). I joined the WP in 2001 and was co-opted at my first central executive committee meeting as a cadre member and later as 2nd ASG. In the 2001 general elections my (and team mates) nomination papers to contest the Aljunied GRC were declared void as the statutory declaration form were deemed to be improperly filed. (In 2005, the government amended the Parliamentary Elections Act to do away the need for a statutory declaration.) In 2003 and again in 2005 during the bi-annual party congress, I was elected as a central executive committee member and re-appointed as 2nd assistant secretary-general. I served for a period as chairman of the Policy and Communications committee. During that time, I organized and chaired two public consultation exercises on the New Poor and Social Cohesion and the Casino Proposal. From time to time, I initiate press releases ideas or am directed to speak to the media on selected matters. I contribute articles to the Hammer and my most well known piece is the New Poor. I am presently, vice-chairman of the North-East Area Committee and advisor to the Northern Area Committee.

How not to manage US-Singapore ties

An alternate view on the US Ambassador's comments about Singapore. By the way, I disagree with this, but thought it might be interesting to see how a LA journalist is defending Singapore, when those living in Singapore agree with the ambassador.

LOS ANGELES -- Perhaps the last thing that the well-run city-state of Singapore needs is for some outside columnist to defend it. Among the many natural-born rhetorical defenses available on this amazing island is the redoubtable Lee Kuan Yew. Even at 82, the founding prime minister of modern Singapore is not someone you mess with.

Then there is Kishore Mahbubani, the country's former U.N. ambassador who's now dean of the public policy school at the National University of Singapore. Colleagues at the U.N. used to routinely describe him as "the best and the brightest." George Yeo, foreign minister, educated at Harvard and Cambridge, is no slouch, either. (His many admirers claim that the only chink in his armor is his golf game.)

And the list of formidable Lion City naysayer-tamers goes on and on. So, if this columnist were smart, he'd let Singapore deal with the ungracious and unnecessary remarks about the country's political system recently offered by outgoing U.S. ambassador Frank Lavin.

But I cannot help myself. Like a growing number of Americans, I am tired of Bush officials telling the world how to run its business when we cannot finish a war properly, respond to a hurricane competently, or offer adequate public education to enough of our children.

But before I get this rant really going, don't get the wrong idea. Lavin is anything but a bad guy. Educated at Georgetown and a foreign-service veteran, he came to the job as an investment banker from Hong Kong. (Right, he has money and he's a Republican.) But -- alas -- like many others in the U.S. government these days, he thinks he knows what ails everyone else and apparently isn't shy about telling people what to do and think.

Singapore's political system has produced one of the highest living standards in the world, but Lavin proclaims that he cannot imagine how Singapore can possibly hope to cope with the challenges of the 21st century. Its leaders, he opined, "will pay the price for not allowing full participation of its citizens."

Though representing a country whose political system permitted a minority-vote president to take over the White House five years ago and that disallowed blacks from voting for nearly half a century, Lavin called on successful Singapore to adopt an American-style system that's free-swinging, outspoken and wide open.

"The lack of open and vigorous debates might reduce a government's popularity if it doesn't let ideas or views be properly aired," he declaimed.

Not so fast: Political debates aren't necessarily more "vigorous" just because they are more "open." Indeed, unless those debates are as intellectually rigorous in government chambers, as well as in the airy arenas of opinion, public policy will be no better for all the pointless hot air. And look at America these days: The more "ideas and views are properly aired," the more, it seems, the president's popularity sinks and opposition to the Iraq war deepens.

Sure, Singapore, with some 4 million-plus population, could lighten up and move itself in the direction of an open Oxford debating society. It's a coherent enough place now to turn up the volume. In fact, it has already done a bit of that and is sure to do more. And eventually and inevitably, information-technology globalization will make its public debates as puffy and blog-bleary as our own. Wonderful.

Though anything but vile, Lavin's declamations, uttered as a parting shot, are inherently disrespectful of Singapore's accomplishments. In fairness, Lavin did emphasize Singapore's "very high quality leadership," which is certainly a true statement, especially in comparison to the quality of much Western leadership.

But to Asian ears -- even those outside of Singapore who rankle over the island's superiority complex -- the U.S. rebuke seemed an all too familiar re-run of "My Way or the Highway." This is the American un-wisdom that insists, mullah-like, there's but one true path to political heaven, we the U.S. know what it is, and you -- since you disagree with us -- obviously don't.

I close with this excerpt of a review of a book by the late Dale Carnegie: "Success, Carnegie believed, is due 15 percent to professional knowledge and 85 percent to the ability . . . to arouse enthusiasm among people [by] dealing with them so that they feel important and appreciated . . . handling people without making them feel manipulated.

"You can make someone want to do what you want them to by seeing the situation from the other person's point of view . . . You learn how to . . . win people over to your way of thinking, and change people without causing offense or arousing resentment. For instance, "let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers," and "talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person'."

The book was famously titled "How to Win Friends and Influence People," published in the 1930s but still in print. Send a copy to your friends in the Bush administration.

Singapore tightens rules on pre-paid cards

SINGAPORE (AFP) - The Singapore government has announced restrictions on pre-paid mobile phone cards to prevent them from being used by terrorists to set off bombs and carry out illicit activities.

From November 1, all three mobile phone companies in the city-state will be required to electronically record genuine personal details of all customers who buy pre-paid Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) cards.

SIM cards are tiny removable circuit boards fitted into cellular phones containing data including a directory of phone numbers used by the owner.

Registration requirements for pre-paid SIM cards have been less stringent than those for post-paid cards, whose monthly bills are sent to home or office addresses and are thus quickly traceable to their true owners.

The new requirements are "part of an ongoing and holistic security review by the government to boost Singapores security," the Ministry of Home Affairs, which looks after internal security, said in a statement.

Singapore, a staunch US ally, fears it is on the list of targets of attack by regional and international terrorist groups. It has stepped up security at key entry points, the subway system, sensitive installations and public places frequented by foreigners.

"Criminals exploit the anonymity of pre-paid SIM cards to avoid detection. Terrorist groups like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) have done so too. In the region, we have seen Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) elements using pre-paid SIM cards extensively to avoid detection," Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said in a statement.

He noted that in southern Thailand's restive Songkhla province, three bombs that went off simultaneously in April "were detonated using mobile phones, possibly utilising pre-paid SIM cards.

"Singapore must address this problem urgently as there are over 1.4 million local pre-paid SIM cards, comprising 35 percent of the mobile market, in circulation today," Wong said.

Singapore will not be the first country strengthening controls to deal with the anonymity of pre-paid SIM cards, the statement said. Switzerland and Australia are also enforcing registration requirements, it added.

The changes replace the existing practice by mobile service providers of manually recording customer details, which are sometimes fictitious.

"For example, some retailers had recorded names like Santa Claus, while other retailers simply record their own names as having purchased the pre-paid SIM card," the statement said.

Purchasers of pre-paid SIM cards will be required to show official identity cards in the case of local residents and passports in the case of visitors.

In addition, customers must be at least 15 years old before being eligible to purchase a pre-paid SIM card and each customer is limited to a maximum of 10 pre-paid SIM cards. No explanation was given for the age requirement.

Owners of existing pre-paid cards are required to re-register them over a six-month period ending May 1, 2006, after which SIM cards that are not re-registered will be deactivated.

I don't know how much this move can achieve in terms of security, but I do know that 1) It infringes on privacy, and 2) Some clauses are rather inane, like the age limit, considering the average age for getting a handphone in Singapore, is about 12-13 already. What I also find amusing is that just a few weeks ago, the government was concerned about identity theft through excessive usage of our ICs and IC numbers, and now they implement a move which requires precisely that.

Rethinking political censorship in Singapore

By Dharmendra Yadav, TODAY
First Published 21 October 2005

TODAY, legal and media professionals will gather at the Supreme Court to debate the relationship between law and media. One can expect the issue of the Films Act to be brought up.

The Media Development Authority (MDA) recently noted that the MediaCorp television series Up Close did not breach the Films Act prohibition on party political films, as the episodes in question - which featured five ministers talking about their portfolios - were "non-partisan" and aired "for the purpose of reporting current affairs".

The Government had introduced the ban on party political films amid concerns that "political discourse in Singapore would degenerate into 30-second spots directed by image consultants", and that the quality of election campaigning would be compromised. As then Minister for Information and the Arts George Yeo emphasised, the Government desired "to keep political debate in Singapore serious".

According to the Films Act, "a party political film" is one "made by or on behalf of any political party in Singapore"; by any body whose objectives primarily concern Singapore politics; or by any person for "any political end".

A film has a political end if it contains material "intended or likely to affect voting in any election or national referendum in Singapore"; "partisan or biased references"; or comments on "any political matter". As is typical of most media legislation, the classification is worded broadly to capture diverse activities, even discussion on government policies. It allows for two situations in which a film is not a party-political film: If it is made to report current events, or to give general information on election "procedures and polling times". Offenders can be fined up to $100,000 or imprisoned for up to two years.

The MDA faces a daunting task in deciding what is - or isn't - a "party political film". How does it decide if something is "partisan" or if it merely "reports current events"? Is this best decided by an independent body of persons, or by a group of government employees?

Some, like me, feel a review of the Films Act is in order. For example, its process of assessment, investigation, enforcement and appeal can be codified separately.

Decisions should preferably be made by an independent body of people whose deliberations should be public and free from any perceived political pressure from the dominant party or the opposition parties. There should be opportunities for appeal and for judicial review. Yet even with such codification, any decision can be disputed as subjective, since it is based on interpretation. So, we need to ask if banning such party political films is the best way forward in the first place.

These films can be easily screened outside Singapore, and controversy is often the best crowd-drawer. Also, film bans are increasingly irrelevant in this age of broadband Internet access, which has made it possible to download films from websites that are hosted overseas, such as Martyn See's documentary on Singapore Democratic Party secretary-general Chee Soon Juan, Singapore Rebel.

Even if such websites are blocked - as they are in China - there are Internet entrepreneurs who will simply mirror the website and provide regulators like MDA with a bigger problem to manage. A better solution may be not to ban these films but to require them to include warnings or declarations, for instance.

If the film is deemed partisan, MDA, together with the Singapore Film Commission, can appoint another film-maker to introduce brief footage that will make it less partisan. For example, if the film makes fun of film censors, get a quick view from film censors, or request an academic to provide a brief analysis. Such clips can be screened at the end of the film to balance audience perspective, as a condition for the film being passed for screening in Singapore.

Conditions can also be imposed on where and how party political films can be screened. For example, like R21 (restricted) films, such films could be screened in specified cinemas only. Tickets could be subject to a minimum price of $20 - half of which could be donated to the film commission and the National Arts Council.

These moves would address the Government's concerns about the negative effect of party political films and its desire "to keep political debate in Singapore serious", while in the long run, also enrich our creative industries and make audiences more media savvy.

The writer, a corporate counsel, contributes in a personal capacity. - TODAY

UK university drops Singapore plan on freedom fears

Wed Oct 19, 2005 11:43 AM BST

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - One of Britain's top 10 universities has scrapped plans to set up a campus in Singapore because of concerns about academic freedom, dealing a blow to the city-state's ambitions to attract more foreign students.

The University of Warwick's university council decided to abandon plans for a Singapore branch campus a week after its senate -- consisting of academic staff and a few students -- voted against the expansion plans.

"In the absence of a positive commitment from the academic community, (the council) resolves not to proceed with the plan for a second comprehensive campus of the University of Warwick in Singapore," the university said in a statement.

The city-state is already home to overseas campuses for French graduate business school INSEAD, the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It aims to double the number of international students to 150,000 by 2015 as part of a strategy to reduce its reliance on manufacturing.

Warwick and Australia's University of New South Wales were the only two foreign universities selected by Singapore's Economic Development Board to set up a full-scale campus which can award undergraduate degrees.

"When other universities come to Singapore under the same terms, questions will have to be asked on whether they prize academic freedom and independence as highly as Warwick," said Garry Rodan, Director of the Asia Research Centre at Australia's Murdoch University.

Thio Li-ann, a Singapore law professor who drew up an advisory report for Warwick University, warned that "the government will intervene if academic reports cast a negative light on their policies".

The decision by Warwick, which was most recently ranked eighth among British universities in The Times Good University Guide, marks the first time that a foreign university has refused to meet government conditions.

Singapore requires foreign educational institutions to abstain from interfering in its domestic affairs.

Local universities are also under scrutiny.

In 2003, two economists from the Nanyang Technological University of Singapore publicly apologised after the government rebutted their research, which showed that the majority of new jobs created in Singapore went to foreigners.

Last week, outgoing U.S. envoy Franklin L. Lavin slammed the city-state's curbs on freedom of speech.

Run by the People's Action Party for 40 years, Singapore often gets top marks for its sound economic policies but lags other Asian countries when it comes to freedom of expression.

Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore 147th out of 167 countries in its index of press freedom last year, behind Hong Kong, Thailand, and India, but ahead of Cuba and North Korea.

Related Links:
Warwick Lecturers Vote 'No'.

Up Close

UP CLOSE takes a behind-the-scenes look at five Cabinet Ministers at work and spends time with them at their regular haunts.

The first 4 episodes let viewers get up close with these Ministers and get to know them better. The series also finds out what these Ministers do to experience up close the lives of the Singaporeans in order to get a taste of the real issues of concern, and see for themselves what truly matters to these people.

The concluding episode of UP CLOSE on Thursday 5 May, 8pm - Up Close with the Prime Minister - features Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a special forum where he engages in a frank discussion with a group of Singaporeans on the Singapore that they want.

Martyn See the maker of Singapore Rebel takes the claim that the above series of programmes does not breech the Films Act to task.

...Interesting that MICA has chosen not to invoke the exemptions provided for in Section 40 of the Films Act but opted instead for Section 33 which allows films relating to "reporting of current events." Does this mean that anyone who wishes to make a documentary about opposition figures can now do so if they follow exactly the same format as 'Up Close?'

2) More than one person has commented to me that 'Singapore Rebel' feels exactly like 'Up Close'. My video does not contain a single mention of Chee Soon Juan's party nor its platforms. Until now, MDA has not told me exactly why 'S'pore Rebel' has been deemed a 'party political film.' The above letter does not bother to disclose the reason either.

3) The police report lodged against MediaCorp for the screening of 'Up Close' includes another documentary, made by Hong Kong-based RTHK and shown on CNA in 2002. Success Stories : Lee Kuan Yew charts the political career of Lee Kuan Yew and contains scenes on the Government's responses to political opponents such as Francis Seow, Tang Liang Hong, JB Jeyaratnam and Chee Soon Juan. Would the Government qualify this documenatary as "non-partisan" and aired "for the purpose of reporting current affairs" as well?

4) Interesting that the above letter has chosen the term "ministers" instead of "PAP ministers" and "non-partisan" rather than "unbiased." Section 33 of the Films Act, for which I am under investigations for, is much broader than that. That MICA has now given the all-clear to Up Close means that the series

to continue reading go to Martyn See's site.

Related Links:
Sign the Petition for Martyn See
List of other links available here.

At the kopitiam with Ah Boon and Michael

A down to earth discussion on the situation of Singaporean workers and the PAP from the Singapore Democrat website. A conversation between two Singaporeans at a Kopitiam. Good to hear. Really worth listening to.

Followed by an announcement by Dr Chee.

Something needs to be done about the music though.
29 Sep 05 At the kopitiam with Ah Boon and Michael

The Role of Civil Disobedience in Democracy

"Civil Disobedience is the act of disobeying a law on grounds of moral or political principle. It is an attempt to influence society to accept a dissenting point of view. Although it usually uses tactics of nonviolence, it is more than mere passive resistance since it often takes active forms such as illegal street demonstrations or peaceful occupations of premises. "

Something to ponder about. Singaporeans have to be convinced that lawbreaking on the grounds of moral principle is not necessarily evil. Almost all laws are rooted in some moral justification. Those that do not meet any moral justification can ignored as legitimate laws. What is wrong with someone protesting peacefully in Singapore on the streets as long as they pose no disruption and annoyance to the majority public? There should not be a law against that. If there is one it becomes an illegitimate law. But what did the Angeloean regime in the opening scene of Act II in the recent spate of budding harmless but constructive civil disobedience in Singapore say in defence of their actions?

We must not make a scarecrow of the law,
Setting it up to fear the birds of prey,
And let it keep one shape, till custom make it
Their perch and not their terror.

Where do we go from here?

Warwick lecturers vote against Singapore campus

Guess which University I attended?

Warwick lecturers vote against Singapore campus
By John Burton in Singapore
Published: October 14 2005 11:57 | Last updated: October 14 2005 11:57

Senior lecturers at Warwick University in the UK have voted against setting up a branch campus in Singapore due to worries about limits on academic freedom, dealing a possible setback to the city-state's ambitions to become a regional hub for higher education.

Singapore requires international educational institutions operating in the city-state to agree not to conduct activities seen as interference in domestic affairs.

The lopsided 27-13 “no” vote by Warwick's senate this week is believed to be the first time a foreign university has rejected the conditions set by Singapore. Although the vote is non-binding, it is likely to put pressure on the university council to abandon the Singapore plan when it makes a final decision on October 18.

Warwick and Australia's University of New South Wales are the only two foreign universities selected by Singapore's Economic Development Board to set up a full-scale campus.

The city-state has succeeded in attracting smaller schools operated by several top institutions, including Insead and the University of Chicago Graduate Business School, in an effort to triple the number of university students to 150,000 in the next decade.

The Warwick vote came as the outgoing US ambassador to Singapore warned in a farewell speech that Singapore's limits on expression might cause the government to “pay an increasing price for not allowing full participation of its citizens”.

Faculty and students at Warwick have questioned the costs of the nearly £300m ($525m) project and the university's ability to attract quality students and staff to the Singapore campus. But much of the criticism has focused on limits on academic freedom and civil liberties, including curbs on gay rights and high execution rates for criminals.

Warwick recently sent a letter to EDB asking that its students in Singapore be exempt from strict laws limiting freedom of assembly, speech and the press, and the removal of bans on homosexuality and certain religious practices on campus.

It also sought guarantees that staff and students would not be punished by the Singapore government for making academic-related comments that might be seen “as being outside the boundaries of political debate”. EDB said it would not comment.

The demand that the Singapore campus enjoy the same degree of academic freedom as in the UK came in response to an advisory report[requested a copy but was informed that the commissioned opinion is confidential] by Thio Li-ann, a law professor at the National University of Singapore, which said freedom of “speech is permissible as long as it does not threaten real political change or to alter the status quo”.

She warned that “the government will intervene if academic reports cast a negative light on their policies” but said the presence of Warwick in Singapore could “serve as an impetus for continued liberalisation”.

Does anyone know what the word 'vindication' means?

Related Links:
Singapore
Published on Wed Oct 12 19:05:32 2005..
Educating the global village
Published on Wed Oct 12 18:50:26 2005..Warwick's invitation to set up a campus in Singapore is part of a much greater phenomenon: the globalisation of higher education. Hayley Mace reports
Senate awaits response on human rights as vote on Singapore approachesPublished on Wed Oct 12 18:46:30 2005..
Singapore dream hangs in balance as staff vote
Published on Wed Oct 12 17:59:53 2005..The financal implications exposed: ?294m campus, up to ?200m debt
VC: Singapore dream could be ?sinking ship?
Published on Mon Mar 7 15:51:05 2005..David Vandelinde talks to the Boar about about his desire to develop Warwick into a global player
Singapore project dealt further blows
Published on Mon Feb 21 13:23:30 2005..Possibility of SEDB shun and plunging applications from Far East threaten scheme
Singapore concerns
Published on Mon Feb 7 14:01:54 2005..Letter to the Editor
Singapore Fears
Published on Mon Jan 31 16:21:54 2005..Editorial
University divided over ?85 million gamble
Published on Mon Jan 31 15:22:45 2005..University insider blows whistle on in-fighting and spiralling costs surrounding the ambitious plans to open a campus in Asia
Warwick Asia plans advance
Published on Mon Jan 17 12:07:43 2005..Feasibiltity study to follow Warwick group's

How can Singapore become a Global City?

I was pretty surprised to see an article like this in CNA. Read it and you'll find out why. The part that interested me was at the end, which I've pasted here. It also calls for the opening up of Singapore so that it can become a global city, and asks people to exercise tolerance.

Those sections of the media that proclaim that nation-building is an important part of their agenda should be more careful in their reporting of conspicuous consumption and large remuneration packages. The more they publicise these during difficult times, the more envy they unintentionally provoke.

As Dr Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's public relations genius, knew, the way to arouse any emotion is to repeatedly show, air or print the triggers of the emotion.

The NKF incident also showed why the Government plays such an important role in our lives - we want it to. We grumble the Government interferes too much. So, why did Singaporeans instinctively ask where it was?

Most of us were surprised that the police investigated the presence of white elephants at Buangkok. But should we be?

Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng had said: "Regardless of whether (the offender) thinks it is a silly law or not, he does violence to the rule of law even if his actions are peaceful."

So, let's not call for new laws - whether about ungracious commuters who don't give up their seats or other annoying matters, as some readers have done - unless there is some harm that cannot otherwise be taken care of. We never know the unintended consequences of such laws.

Related to this, the majority should be tolerant of minorities. Letters to the press show that some feel minorities, whether racial or disabled, ought to conform.

The principle for new laws and imposing majority views should be rooted in John Stuart Mill's comment: "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community against his will, is to prevent harm to others."

Mill was a political philosopher who greatly influenced the thinking of the American and British ruling and intellectual classes in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rise of London and New York have much to do with this.

In short, talented people elsewhere are attracted to these two global cities partly because the residents are more optimistic, the state plays a smaller role and attitudes and laws are more tolerant.

Of course, if we find the price of changing too high, we can opt for something less. But it would be a shame not to aim high.

A surprisingly candid piece about Singaporeans, with a very veiled jibe at the government: "Most of us were surprised that the police investigated the presence of white elephants at Buangkok. But should we be? "

On the side note, I was a bit jolted by this piece of information, which says some letters suggest that minorities should conform. Coming from a minority of a minority of a minority, it disturbs me that people today can think like that, instead of exercising tolerance for the statistically disadvantaged.

On Academic Freedom in Singapore

I sent a letter to the Straits Times Forum on 15 October. It probably won't be published, so I decided to post it here as well:

Dear Editor

Two seemingly unrelated articles in the Straits Times caught my eye on 14 October.

The first article was yet another scathing Forum letter ("Don wasn't non-partisan in his analysis") by Chen Hwai Liang, the Prime Minister's Press Secretary. Once again, NTU academic Dr Cherian George was lambasted for certain views that he had expressed about how the Singapore government manages civil disobedience.

The second article that caught my eye was "Warwick's S'pore plan hits uncertainty". At the invitation of the Economic Development Board, Warwick University had been looking seriously into setting up a branch in Singapore. But now Warwick's senate has voted 27-13 against the idea. Why?

According to the Straits Times, the Warwick senate's "overriding concern" was the issue of academic freedom in Singapore. In particular, Warwick's arts and social studies departments expressed "overwhelming opposition" to the idea of Warwick setting up a branch in Singapore.

Taking the Chen-vs-George episode as an example of the way things are done in Singapore, are we surprised to hear about the Warwick professors' grave concerns? Surely not. There is a lesson to be learned here and I hope that our government can see it. Till then, Singapore is the loser.

For more background, read these Singapore bloggers' posts and commentaries:

Singapore Classics - I Not Stupid.
Mr Wang Says So - Calibrated Coercion.
Zyl (Ringisei) - By the Will of the Heavens.

The University of Warwick has a student newspaper, the Warwick Boar, which has been reporting on the Warwick-Singapore issue. In comparison to the Straits Times, the Warwick Boar articles give the reader a more direct sense of the university staff's concerns about the proposal to set up shop in Singapore. Here is an excerpt from one of the articles:

Human rights are an issue that ought not to be ignored when thinking of Warwick in Singapore - the cannabis issue that is still so controversial here in Coventry will be incredibly more so in Singapore, with the penalty for being found with cannabis in the country being death. This is one emotive example of the inconsistencies and problems that will have to be properly thought of and considered when a move to Singapore takes place.

And here is an excerpt from another article:

Many academics were concerned over the realities of academic research in a country where political protest is banned, censorship is a reality and homosexuality is illegal. The harshly worded message asks for guarantees that "its campus in Singapore should enjoy the same degree of academic freedom as its campus in the UK."

It also asks for "specific exemptions" from a range of Singaporean laws including those that limit freedom of speech and association. It explicitly cites examples of a Gay Pride society or students campaigning against the death penalty as activities that it expects Warwick students to be able to do without government interference.

There are also concerns about issues such as the financial costs of setting up in Singapore.

Govt runs away from legal action by protesters

From SgReview
14 Oct 05

For all its bravado, the PAP Government never ceases to run away from a fight it knows it cannot come away looking good. The latest example is the Attorney-General (AG) asking the courts to have the legal action taken by Ms Chee Siok Chin, Ms Monica Kumar, and Mr Yap Keng Ho against the Government dismissed.

What's more the AG is applying for the dismissal to be heard in chambers where the public cannot attend.

Ms Chee, Ms Kumar, and Mr Yap had filed an Originating Motion in September 2005 and named Minister for Home Affairs Wong Kan Seng and Commissioner of Police Khoo Boon Hui as respondents.

The three activists had asked the courts to declare that the police had acted unlawfully and unconstitutionally when it ordered the four protesters (including Charles Tan who is away presently) to disperse during a silent protest outside the CPF Building on 11 August 2005. Under the Constitution, only five or more people gathered in a public area is deemed an unlawful assembly.

In its application, the AG has said that the Originating Motion should be "struck out or dismissed" because it is "irregular, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious and/or that it is an abuse of the process of the Court."

In addition, the AG wants the costs of its application be paid by the protesters.

The hearing for the protesters' Originating Motion is set for 21 October at 10 am. The AG's application is set for 19 October 2005, two days earlier, at 2:30 pm.

Question: Why can't the AG make his argument that the Originating Motion is irregular, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious at the hearing itself on 21 October and ask the judge to dismiss it? Why go through the trouble of asking the courts to do this at another session in chambers?

Answer: Because the Government doesn't want the matter to be debated in an open court where the public has access.

There you have it, Singaporeans. The PAP says that citizens have no right to protest. If the courts go along and dismiss the protesters' Originating Motion, it would be further confirmation that we effectively live in a one-party dictatorship.

The government has once again demonstrated its flair for skirting around possibly intractable issues-the Attorney-General, who would have been representing the Home Affairs minister and the Commissioner for the Police in the suit brought forward by the CPF building protesters, has applied for the case to be dismissed on the grounds that it is 'irregular, scandalous, frivolous or vexatious and/or that it is an abuse of the process of the Court'. But as always they are making their own call as to the legitimacy of the people's concerns; who is to say that the issue brought up by then protesters-the transparency and accountability of government bodies that handle public funds-is not an important one? why denounce the plaintiffs before they have even had a chance to explain themselves?

In reality the respondents would probably have easily won the case regardless of whatever argument the protesters put up. So why resort to this tactic? The difference is that the public would have access to the court hearing; they could hear for themselves the protesters' side of the case; the news might report on court proceedings, which might include what the protesters have to say. And that would not be so good for the image of the authorities, would it?

Singapore releases casino law for public consultation

I got this article from a China newspaper, weirdly enough. None of the local papers have this article... yet.

The Singapore government said Friday it is seeking public feedback on a draft of a casino law that will regulate the city state's two proposed gambling resorts.
The Casino Control Bill aims to ensure casinos remain free from criminal influence or exploitation, that gaming is conducted in accordance with the law, and that the potential of casinos to harm young or vulnerable people or society is minimized, the government said in a statement.

The bill will also provide for the creation of the Casino Regulatory Authority National which, along with the Council for Problem Gambling, will act as a watchdog for the industry.

Singapore reversed a decades-old ban on casino gaming in April this year to allow the building of two casino resorts to help boost tourism by 2009.

But the project has triggered sharp debate, with supporters saying it will boost the economy, and opponents warning it will lead to gambling addiction and other social ills.

The proposal sparked a rare protest with thousands of citizens launching an online petition warning that the casinos would lead to a spike in gambling addiction _ unusual in that Singaporeans so rarely challenge their government's plans.

The tender to develop and operate the casinos has been twice delayed and the request for proposals to build the first casino is now expected at the end of November.

The government said the bill will be released Monday on its public feedback Web site and submissions can be made until Nov. 11.

UPDATE: CNA just brought this article in.

A Casino Control Bill has been drafted to regulate the casino gaming industry in Singapore.

The government will release details of the Bill for public consultation on Monday.

Industry watchers say the Bill will spell out the do's and don'ts of casino gambling but it will only be half the story.

Sociologists and lawyers are not betting on the Bill as a fix-all.

Still, they say it's much needed to help operators and customers play the right cards by outlining a set of rules to keep crime at bay.

It'll also provide for the setting up of the Casino Regulatory Authority and National Council for Problem Gambling.

But just what else might the Bill contain?

S Suressh, partner at Harry Elias Partnership, said: "Definitely the regulatory authority will have the right to enter the premises and inspect the operations.

"There'll probably be rights for them to inspect the records of the casino and the integrated resort.

"I am sure the bidders will be interested in looking at the licensing regime, what kind of licensing requirements are envisaged and what kind of suitability criteria will be used."

Lawyers say the Casino Control Bill by itself will not solve any problem as it only provides a framework for the authorities to address issues and mitigate the negative impact of gaming.

The key still lies in effective policing and how these rules are enforced.

Other provisions expected are a voluntary opt-out scheme for individuals to be barred from the casino, entry levies for Singaporeans and credit limits.

Associate Professor Paulin Straughan, a sociologist at the NUS, said: "I expect the laws will have a bill which requires the casino operators to train their employees to recognise someone who is at risk.

"But I think that is a tall order because it takes a very skilled, well-trained counsellor to pick up the tell-tale signs with confidence and say this person is in a vulnerable stage."

Industry watchers say the Bill is a prelude to the Gaming Act in Singapore and more needs to be done to make it work.

From Monday, the public can view the Bill at the Feedback Unit's website at www.feedback.gov.sg.

Separately, the National Council on Problem Gambling has launched a new website at www.ncpg.org.sg to kick off its public education programme.

Do you know your geography?

Something that may appear to be more light-hearted than the usual posts here. It does however scare the hell out of me to think that some people have zero geographical knowledge.


Invade! Invade!
Geography isn't the strong point of the imbeciles in this vox pop. But, bless 'em, that still doesn't stop them wanting to invade Iran! Or was that Australia? Or, hang on - France?

I have never been a man of prayer but after watching this I might decide otherwise.

http://www.wimp.com/invading/

When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth

An article not entirely related to Singapore apart from a small mention as a base for the British propaganda machine. It is however relevant to journalists the world over...

When journalists report propaganda instead of the truth, the consequences can be catastrophic - as one largely forgotten instance demonstrates.

By John Pilger

10/13/05 "ICH" -- -- ''The propagandist's purpose," wrote Aldous Huxley, "is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human." The British, who invented modern war propaganda and inspired Joseph Goebbels, were specialists in the field. At the height of the slaughter known as the First World War, the prime minister, David Lloyd George, confided to C P Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian: "If people really knew [the truth], the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know."

What has changed?

"If we had all known then what we know now," said the New York Times on 24 August, "the invasion [of Iraq] would have been stopped by a popular outcry." The admission was saying, in effect, that powerful newspapers, like powerful broadcasting organisations, had betrayed their readers and viewers and listeners by not finding out - by amplifying the lies of Bush and Blair instead of challenging and exposing them. The direct consequences were a criminal invasion called "Shock and Awe" and the dehumanising of a whole nation.

This remains largely an unspoken shame in Britain, especially at the BBC, which continues to boast about its rigour and objectivity while echoing a corrupt and lying government, as it did before the invasion. For evidence of this, there are two academic studies available - though the capitulation of broadcast journalism ought to be obvious to any discerning viewer, night after night, as "embedded" reporting justifies murderous attacks on Iraqi towns and villages as "rooting out insurgents" and swallows British army propaganda designed to distract from its disaster, while preparing us for attacks on Iran and Syria. Like the New York Times and most of the American media, had the BBC done its job, many thousands of innocent people almost certainly would be alive today.

When will important journalists cease to be establishment managers and analyse and confront the critical part they play in the violence of rapacious governments? An anniversary provides an opportunity. Forty years ago this month, Major General Suharto began a seizure of power in Indonesia by unleashing a wave of killings that the CIA described as "the worst mass murders of the second half of the 20th century". Much of this episode was never reported and remains secret. None of the reports of recent terror attacks against tourists in Bali mentioned the fact that near the major hotels were the mass graves of some of an estimated 80,000 people killed by mobs orchestrated by Suharto and backed by the American and British governments.

Indeed, the collaboration of western governments, together with the role of western business, laid the pattern for subsequent Anglo-American violence across the world: such as Chile in 1973, when Augusto Pinochet's bloody coup was backed in Washington and London; the arming of the shah of Iran and the creation of his secret police; and the lavish and meticulous backing of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, including black propaganda by the Foreign Office which sought to discredit press reports that he had used nerve gas against the Kurdish village of Halabja.

In 1965, in Indonesia, the American embassy furnished General Suharto with roughly 5,000 names. These were people for assassination, and a senior American diplomat checked off the names as they were killed or captured. Most were members of the PKI, the Indonesian Communist Party. Having already armed and equipped Suharto's army, Washington secretly flew in state-of-the-art communication equipment whose high frequencies were known to the CIA and the National Security Council advising the president, Lyndon B Johnson. Not only did this allow Suharto's generals to co-ordinate the massacres, it meant that the highest echelons of the US administration were listening in.

The Americans worked closely with the British. The British ambassador in Jakarta, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, cabled the Foreign Office: "I have never concealed from you my belief that a little shooting in Indonesia would be an essential preliminary to effective change." The "little shooting" saw off between half a million and a million people.

However, it was in the field of propaganda, of "managing" the media and eradicating the victims from people's memory in the west, that the British shone. British intelligence officers outlined how the British press and the BBC could be manipulated. "Treatment will need to be subtle," they wrote, "eg, a) all activities should be strictly unattributable, b) British [government] participation or co-operation should be carefully concealed." To achieve this, the Foreign Office opened a branch of its Information Research Department (IRD) in Singapore.

The IRD was a top-secret, cold war propaganda unit headed by Norman Reddaway, one of Her Majesty's most experienced liars. Reddaway and his colleagues manipulated the "embedded" press and the BBC so expertly that he boasted to Gilchrist in a secret message that the fake story he had promoted - that a communist takeover was imminent in Indonesia - "went all over the world and back again". He described how an experienced Sunday newspaper journalist agreed "to give exactly your angle on events in his article . . . ie, that this was a kid-glove coup without butchery".

These lies, bragged Reddaway, could be "put almost instantly back to Indonesia via the BBC". Prevented from entering Indonesia, Roland Challis, the BBC's south-east Asia correspondent, was unaware of the slaughter. "My British sources purported not to know what was going on," Challis told me, "but they knew what the American plan was. There were bodies being washed up on the lawns of the British consulate in Surabaya, and British warships escorted a ship full of Indonesian troops down the Malacca Straits so that they could take part in this terrible holocaust. It was only later that we learned that the American embassy was supplying names and ticking them off as they were killed. There was a deal, you see. In establishing the Suharto regime, the involvement of the IMF and the World Bank was part of it . . . Suharto would bring them back. That was the deal."

The bloodbath was ignored almost entirely by the BBC and the rest of the western media. The headline news was that "communism" had been overthrown in Indonesia, which, Time reported, "is the west's best news in Asia". In November 1967, at a conference in Geneva overseen by the billionaire banker David Rockefeller, the booty was handed out. All the corporate giants were represented, from General Motors, Chase Manhattan Bank and US Steel to ICI and British American Tobacco. With Suharto's connivance, the natural riches of his country were carved up.

Suharto's cut was considerable. When he was finally overthrown in 1998, it was estimated that he had up to $10bn in foreign banks, or more than 10 per cent of Indonesia's foreign debt. When I was last in Jakarta, I walked to the end of his leafy street and caught sight of the mansion where the mass murderer now lives in luxury. As Saddam Hussein heads for his own show trial on 19 October, he must ask himself where he went wrong. Compared with Suharto's crimes, Saddam's seem second-division.

With British-supplied Hawk jets and machine-guns, Suharto's army went on to crush the life out of a quarter of the population of East Timor: 200,000 people. Using the same Hawk jets and machine-guns, the same genocidal army is now attempting to crush the life out of the resistance movement in West Papua and protect the Freeport company, which is mining a mountain of copper in the province. (Henry Kissinger is "director emeritus".) Some 100,000 Papuans, 18 per cent of the population, have been killed; yet this British-backed "project", as new Labour likes to say, is almost never reported.

What happened in Indonesia, and continues to happen, is almost a mirror image of the attack on Iraq. Both countries have riches coveted by the west; both had dictators installed by the west to facilitate the passage of their resources; and in both countries, blood-drenched Anglo-American actions have been disguised by propaganda willingly provided by journalists prepared to draw the necessary distinctions between Saddam's regime ("monstrous") and Suharto's ("moderate" and "stable").

Since the invasion of Iraq, I have spoken to a number of principled journalists working in the pro-war media, including the BBC, who say that they and many others "lie awake at night" and want to speak out and resume being real journalists. I suggest now is the time.

John Pilger's book Tell Me No Lies: investigative journalism and its triumphs is published in paperback by Vintage. To contact the Free West Papua Campaign, e-mail [samoxen@aol.com] or phone 01865 241 1200

Govt shouldn't equate analysis with advocacy

Received via email, but originally posted on http://forums.delphiforums.com/sammyboymod/messages/?msg=83756.4

Oct 13, 2005
Govt shouldn't equate analysis with advocacy

IN MY [Cherian George (Dr)]article, 'Managing civil disobedience' (ST, Oct 10), I analysed 'calibrated coercion' as one under-appreciated governance skill of the People's Action Party, and speculated that the opposition's strategy of civil disobedience presents a new challenge that the PAP would have to manage carefully.

The Prime Minister's press secretary, Mr Chen Hwai Liang, has responded by presenting the Government's position on its own success factors ('Govt doesn't depend on 'calibrated coercion').

I will continue to refine my own analysis based on Mr Chen's and other responses. The PAP's record of political stability is unique in the world and deserves nuanced and sustained study, which I, like others in the academic fraternity, are committed to. I therefore welcome the Government's engagement with my ideas.

However, I am saddened that the Government has chosen to cast my article in partisan terms. Worse, it claims that I 'commended' the strategy of civil disobedience. This is not just a misrepresentation of my views. It is also a serious accusation, as it suggests that I was inciting readers to break the law.

I did not. I tried to explain Dr Chee Soon Juan's strategy, not champion it. Unfortunately, Mr Chen has chosen to equate analysis with advocacy. By this token, a historian who studies the rise of communism must be a communist himself. The terrorism expert who explains the motivations of Al-Qaeda operatives must be siding with terrorists. And a sociologist analysing Stefanie Sun's international appeal must be a groupie. Such labelling would make much academic research untenable.

Only time will tell conclusively whether Dr Chee's application of civil disobedience to Singapore is as irrelevant as communism, as dangerous as terrorism, or as benign as a Stephanie Sun song.

However, until experience tells us otherwise, my own hunch is that it is possible to work legally for a better Singapore, and to call for changes in laws without breaking them. Most Singaporeans who are in favour of faster political liberalisation (including opposition leaders other than Dr Chee) appear to share this faith.

I also share the view of PAP MP Charles Chong and his grassroots leaders that Singaporeans who want to press for change need to be 'very creative, but within the law'.

That does not mean alternative approaches, such as Dr Chee's, don't deserve close and dispassionate scrutiny. Sadly, readers may get the impression from parts of the Government's response to my article that it will treat such study as equal to instigating others to break the law, and therefore out of bounds.

As for me, I will choose not to come to this pessimistic conclusion despite the unfair accusation, and accept on faith that there remains room in Singapore for the critical discussion of serious issues.

Cherian George (Dr)

Related Links:
Civil Disobedience and Taking the Judiciary to Task
Managing civil disobedience
By Cherian George
Air-Conditioned Nation

Social disapproval better way to deal with racist remarks

Ang Peng Hwa, Dean of Nanyang Technological University's school of communication and information and author of Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet, writes in and shares his thoughts with the ST on dealing with racism. Why society should hold more responsibility in dealing with racist remarks themselves, and the ineffectiveness and consequences of total reliance on the law to deter racism.

PRISON setences have been meted out to two Singaporeans for racist comments. It has been described as a test case, signalling the state's firm line against people who abuse their right to free speech.
The case may raise public expectations that the state should intervene whenever people encounter hateful speech. While such sentiments are rooted in a healthy disgust for racism, it is worth pausing to ponder whether recourse to the law should be the automatic response.
The alternative is to use social disapproval. If enough Singaporeans express their disapproval of racist statements, this is preferable to using the law, in all but the most extreme cases.
Why?
First, the legal approach has limits. Racist expressions, no matter how reprehensible and incomprehensible, will always exist both on and offline. With the Internet, they crop in up in many nooks and crannies of e-mail, blogs, websites and chatrooms. Sometimes ephemerally. Sometimes more permanently.
It is therefore not possible for the police to track every single one of these racist and offensive remarks.
If the laws are strengthened, the Government will have to put more resources into policing the Internet. Not to do so will leave the efficacy of such laws to chance. Passing laws that can be so easily broken will eventually corrode public confidence in the law.
With the Internet, it is just not possible, let alone cost-effective, for the authorities to police such expressions. The only sensible and effective way to police such statements is to use the body of Internet users.
Social disapproval is not a watertight way to uphold social norms, but it has a wider reach than the authorities and it costs the taxypayer nothing. An analogy here is that of parking in spaces intended for the disabled. The most effective enforcement mechanism is not a parking auntie at every disabled parking lot. Except for the most intransigent motorist, a polite ticking off by other drivers is enough to keep the lots free for the disabled.
Furthermore, the law has difficulty drawing clear lines between racist speech and legitimate and necessary discussions of racial issues. In the end it must come down to a judgement call, depending on context and circumstance. In the absence of clear lines, many well-meaning people may pull back and refrain from such discussions. Legitimate questions, which would have generated productive and enlightening conversations, will not surface. Discussions will be driven underground, together with misconceptions that will not be challenged.
Second, government intervention implies that ordinary citizens cannot manage such ruptures themselves, and this can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Citizens need practice in judging for themselves, first, whether the expression is racist and, second, the necessary and appropriate response. In doing so, they will have to engage with the multiple perspectives of Singapore's various communities, which will in turn strengthen Singapore's multiracialism. The process will be messier and less decisive, but it is the engagement, the exercise of judgement and application of social sanctions that are ultimately the best bet against racism.
The alternative, of leaving it up to the state, fails to develop a mature society, rendering Singaporeans forever dependent on the Government. When is an expression racist? Only when the Government says so? Only when the judge says so? When should one not make racist statements? Only when a police officer can catch you? The spectre of race riots has been in the case of the racist bloggers. However, one of the key lessons of such events has been underplayed.
When one studies the history of racial conflict here and around the world, one is struck by the role of unscrupulous politicians in fomenting unrest. But one is also left wondering how it was possible for people to believe the instigators when they made outrageous racially charged statements. Firm legal action may be needed when individuals actively spread the seed of violence by instigating their followers to violate the rights of other communities to live in peace. However, society must also tend the soil, encouraging citizens to be more discriminating when confronted with racist speech. This comes with practice, not by delegating the job to authorities.
The law is necessary as the ultimate backstop.
The Sedition Act is best treated like an insurance policy: It needs to be there but one should not hope to collect on it. It is certainly not a substitute for self-control in leading one's own life. In managing racist speech, therefore, the law is best untouched and unused for the most part.
Yes, Singapore society should stand up against racist voices in its midst. But the alternative inaction is not necessarily government action. It can also be the voice of reason from a responsible citizenry.

Empowering Women

History will undoubtedly reveal that the quest for gender equality and justice was one of the defining events of the twentieth century. Beginning with struggles for women’s suffrage in the early decades, the women’s movement for equality generated sufficient impact that by the end of the century, the majority of the world’s nations had pledged to eradicate gender discrimination through instruments such as the Convention on Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), the Beijing Platform for Action and the UN’s Security Council Resolution 1325.

As feminists expanded and deepened their understanding of the roots of gender discrimination, they realized that women’s access to power and decision-making authority in the public realm is as critical to achieving gender equality as changing power relations in the private sphere of households and relationships.

This triggered mobilisation and advocacy for women’s representation in elected bodies, as well as a voice in public policy. Political empowerment of women became a clarion call by the mid-seventies. Many victories were won. The Scandinavian countries, the US, and developing countries such as Uganda, India, the Philippines, South Africa, Brazil and Mexico, have all made tremendous strides in enabling the entry of large numbers of women into the formal political system.

However optimistic this might sound. This, in Singapore, still represents a problem. Female MPs occupy a measly 10 seats, out of 84 seats. And it is easy to forget that out of all those Asian countries with women active in politics, most of them entered upon the basis of nepotism, or through a husband. For a lone, but capable woman with little connections, it is difficult, if not impossible to come up high in the political ladder.

But with these achievements, new and troubling questions have arisen, necessitating a re-examination of both implicit and explicit assumptions underlying the movement for women’s political participation: that the transformation of both the position and condition of women in society could be lastingly achieved only through political change (in the form of enabling policies, legislation, enforcement and protection of rights); that women in politics would advance the cause of gender equality and women’s rights;that unless women themselves were represented in local, national and global political bodies, the momentum for such change could not be sustained; that a critical mass of women in political institutions would also initiate change in broader policies of development and international relations – for example, by developing policies of peace and non-violent conflict resolution, access to and protection of the full body of human rights, sustainable and socially just development, and placing people above profits; and that a critical mass of women in political institutions would transform the very nature of power and the practice of politics through values of cooperation and collaboration, holding power in trusteeship (“power on behalf of, not over”), greater transparency and public accountability - in other words, that women would play politics differently and practice power accountably. It would be a grave disservice to thousands of courageous women to say that all these assumptions have been belied: women have had significant impact on politics and political institutions, on many levels. But few would claim that increased representation of women in elected bodies has transformed these institutions, engendered policies, or altered the nature of public power itself.

There is widespread agreement among feminist thinkers and activists that we seriously underestimated the power of existing modes of politics to corrupt, co-opt, or marginalise women. We did not fully understand how women would be compelled or manipulated to compromise their goals for narrow party interests. We failed to address the possibility that many of the women who gained entry into the formal political sphere would be advocates of patriarchal, mainstream, elitist or fundamentalist ideologies.

The experience of the last twenty years teaches that we cannot conflate biological women with women committed to gender equality and social justice. Feminists interested in gender, power and political transformation the world over have realised the complexity, resilience and insidiousness of the patriarchal model of political power, and how cleverly it neutralises those challenging it. We have learnt that power more easily alters us than we can alter it. It appears that our early assumptions have been tested, and found only partly valid.

This does not mean we abandon campaigns for greater representation of women in political bodies – or deny our own achievements. But we must recognize that this is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the kind of change in politics and power that we set out to achieve.

We are at a historic moment, when we must learn from our own experiences, and re-cast our vision and strategies, based on the insight and wisdom gained over previous decades. After the events of 11 September 2001, it is even more urgent that women committed to agendas of peace, tolerance, equality, multilateralism and sustainable global development have greater voice and control over local, national and global politics.

But this is a difficult task unless we are able to articulate more clearly what engendered public power and policies look like. Feminist women around the world know a good deal about this, but there has been no way of surfacing and systematising that knowledge, and converting it into concrete measures, models and strategies.

The need of the hour is processes that will: help surface, collate and sharpen knowledge and strategic insights about gender and public power; generate a set of measures to help assess the impact of women in politics on public power, policy, and political culture; yield data and information to analyze that impact; and culminate in the development of sharper strategies for both women’s political empowerment and the engendering of public power and policy.

Only then can we hope to move from having more female bodies in politics to women actually transforming power.

Stop the Trafficking of Women and Children

The petition below was started by a group of volunteers from women's group UNIFEM Singapore, the petition seeks more public education for those who travel abroad to poor communities for sex with children. I first spotted references to the petition in an article By Jasmine Yin of TODAY. Singapore does its part to net child-sex tourists

To: Community, Businesses and Government of Singapore 22 September 2005

We, the undersigned, support greater effort and action to stop the trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation. In particular, we seek to protect the most vulnerable – those below the age of 18 years who are victimized by adult demand for sexual services of such children and young persons. UNICEF estimates that there are more than 1 million child prostitutes in Asia.

While there should be continued attention on alleviating poverty and improving public education to address the supply side, we believe more can be done to address the demand side. We recognise the damage this demand inflicts on young lives in terms of physical and psychological abuse; on their communities as they are unable to break out of the cycle of poverty and abuse; and on our own society for morally bankrupting us if we stand by and do nothing.

We believe it is the collective responsibility of members of the community, businesses and government agencies to stop this demand that transcends national boundaries.

1. From the community, we seek to end the culture of silence. Our community needs to acknowledge the ugly fact that there are Singaporean men who use children and young persons for sex, whether as preferential or opportunistic abusers. They take advantage of their victims’ poverty, marginalisation and lack of protection and justify their actions as “helping someone make a living” or as being culturally acceptable or tolerated in the host country In particular, border regions like Batam, have a thriving sex industry fuelled by demand from more affluent neighbours like Singapore. Part of this demand is met by children and young persons trafficked into the trade. We seek community action in the form of public education of these facts, vigilance against offenders and public support for concerted action by businesses, non-government organisations (NGOs) and our government. We urge each individual to exercise his or her influence in their family, place of work and community.

2. From businesses, especially those in the tourism and entertainment sectors with regional reach, we ask that they recognise the problem of child sex tourism and trafficking, and the important role they can play in prevention. We call for businesses to maintain ethical standards of conduct and not turn a blind eye to the fact that their services and facilities may be used in the commercial sexual exploitation of children and young persons. We urge businesses to implement staff training to aid recognition and reporting of incidents, mechanisms for reporting and customer education to stop demand.

3. From government, we ask for urgent action to put in place all necessary and viable legal and policy measures to prevent and deter the commercial sexual exploitation of children and young persons, both in Singapore and overseas by members of our own community. These may include making it a criminal offence to engage in sexual activity with anyone below 18 years of age while overseas. We seek more effective cooperation among our government agencies and among government agencies across national boundaries, as well as government cooperation with businesses and NGOs to enforce measures aimed at prevention and at bringing offenders to justice.

This petition is made out of our belief that as members of a civilised society we have a responsibility to treat every person, regardless of age, social or economic status, ethnicity, nationality or religion, with respect, dignity and common humanity, and ensure the protection of the most vulnerable against those who seek to exploit and degrade them for personal gratification. We demand that positive action be taken immediately by Singaporeans and Singapore residents to help stop the commercial sexual exploitation of children overseas.


Sincerely,

The Undersigned


View Current Signatures


Below is an article and list of very relevant links I posted on Tuesday, August 02, 2005 titled
Matchmaking or human trafficking?

If anyone has any other related stories, please feel free to post them here in the comments section, anonymously if you like, or email them to me. If you wish to report directly to an international organisation then email:

Report'AT'PolarisProject.org

From Yawning Bread and first spotted on Tomorrow.sg.

I have written two previous articles about the quickie-bride business in Vietnamese brides and Vietnam's house of virgins. In both, I expressed my strong opinion about how unsavoury this kind of quickie match-making is.

Now, a reader of Yawning Bread -- let's call him Terence -- has provided me with information about an even seamier underside of this business, which may qualify as human trafficking. Terence seems convinced that Singapore is looking the other way while other countries have been doing something about it.

Naturally, it is very difficult to get hard proof about the most disturbing aspects of his story, for the more sensitive the matter, the more closely the businessmen involved will guard those secrets. This is something that only determined investigators, able to set up undercover operations, can penetrate.

But Terence's inside information has an internally consistent logic and is very plausible as a business method. Perhaps not all matchmaking agencies operate like this, but among the lot, some will be using the business model described below, not least because Singapore and some other countries aren't doing anything to stop it.

to continue reading click here.

Yawning Bread finishes the article with a request for others to forward this information on to either local or international authorities who might be able to do something. I have forwarded the information regarding contacting Polaris to Yawning Bread as they currently have the first hand email they received from 'Terrence'.

Related Articles and Links:
Sex trafficking growing in S.E.Asia
Trafficking in Persons Report
Conference on Tackling the Demand for Child Tourism and Sex Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia
UNIFEM Singapore
Polaris Project
Standing Against Global Exploitation
Protection Project
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Captive Daughters

It is Time to Fight Back

The argument from OpenDemocracy is that human rights and democracy are under threat. A threat that has originated from terrorism and from the responses of numerous governments to terrorism. OpenDemocracy maintains that fundamentalisms of all kinds are closing in on justice, reason and imagination.

They say it is time to fight back.

An extract from the OpenDemocracy article is included below:

Democracy and openDemocracy

Democracies must hold on to their moral advantage in the face of terror. Most people in the world, given the opportunity, prefer to live under a government of their choosing, buttressed by the rule of law, run by men and women whom they trust and who conduct themselves transparently, honestly and with integrity. This choice is presently denied to many people and, even where it theoretically exists, the results are not always as good as they might be. It remains true, nevertheless, that people of most cultures and political persuasions tend to prefer democracy to tyranny.

Those who pursue another agenda must therefore discredit democracy in order to win recruits. The challenge for democracies is to demonstrate that they are indeed morally based forms of government, true to their principles. This will not impress diehard fanatics or true believers in another cause, but they are lost in any case. It will hold the attention of the overwhelming majority of ordinary citizens and that is what counts. Failure to keep to our democratic principles enables extremists to persuade their recruits that democracies are hypocritical, disguising a lack of principle beneath empty rhetoric.

Leaders who undermine the central attributes of their own democracies – especially its foundation, the rule of law and equal access to justice – and who conspire to permit the use of torture, extraordinary rendition, arbitrary detention, detention without trial and extra-judicial murder, are themselves acting as recruiting-sergeants for terrorist organisations.

Fundamentalism, and what it teaches

The suicide and other terror attacks that began a generation ago in Lebanon and Sri Lanka and continued in Palestine have now spread across the middle east, from Israel and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Iraq. They are linked to the direct threat of fundamentalism – a political programme of authoritarian rule in religious form, which has, in some contexts, been able to garner significant popular support. Fundamentalism, a wider current of thought and action than the terrorism which is one of its adjuncts, does threaten the state, the government and the way of life of societies in the region.

The challenge of fundamentalism makes it all the more important to distinguish the open politics of democracy and human rights from a narrow definition of voting and a majority rule which may lead to majority tyranny.

The institutional and legal principles of democracy are universal:

- the rule of law and equal access to justice
- guarantees of human and civil rights that are upheld and independently monitored
- free and fair elections involving a genuine competition of ideas, permitting consensual, non-violent changes of government
- freedom of speech, press and media
- healthy, autonomous civil society institutions and networks, independent of the state
- accountability of authority and transparency of decisions
- entrenched property and economic rights
- social justice and basic security
- an ethos of dialogue, questioning, trust, and moral awareness
- widespread, free access to the information needed to discuss, scrutinize, make choices about and uphold all these components of a democratic society

Behind these are the core values of democracy:

- the political equality of all citizens
- open deliberation before decision-making so that all can voice their interests and concerns
- a high degree of citizen participation in the processes of democracy, that respects and encourages the different views of others
- a pluralism of institutions and the independence of critical voices that maintain the long-term health and openness of democratic societies.

The form these aspirations take may change: to be universal is not to be beyond history. To thrive, democracy requires a community that experiences itself as such – still most commonly the nation-state; and each nation-state will find its own democratic voice and personality. The way each society embraces the democratic virtues of disagreement and tolerance will differ, but all must be rooted in reason, humanity and imagination, and all demand dialogue and ideas to come alive.

Democracy is a form of anti-fundamentalism; its wisdom and openness resist monolithic certitudes. In times of rapid and hurtful change, growing inequality and the erosion of national authority by global powers, the appeal of fundamentalist doctrines demands a steady refusal not to reply in kind. When sanctions and force have to be used, their application should be limited and their character must be one of policing not conquest. A human security approach is needed to respond to the grim realities of genocide and tyrannical repression. Violence must be a last resort, used only within a clear legal and accountable framework.

Anthony Barnett and Isabel Hilton of OpenDemocracy

Singapore's Culture Advantage?

SINGAPORE : Foreign Affairs Minister George Yeo has said one of Singapore's strength is its ability to observe differences among different cultures.

He said it was this ability to understand differences and respond to differences that gives Singapore the edge in being able to adjust products and services to the customer.

Mr Yeo made the comment in an interview with Chinese daily Lianhe Zaobao, the transcript of which was made available on Tuesday.

He said the reason Singapore was able to do this was because it is itself very diverse internally and the people are used to it from a young age.

Using an example of a shop-owner in Orchard Road, Mr Yeo said when customers walk in, the shop-owner is able to do a quick assessment and decide if the customer is a Singaporean or not. And if not, to decide if he is a Japanese, Korean, Australian, American or whatever nationality.

Mr Yeo said this ability to be nuanced in their assessment, in their response, was what makes Singaporeans the way they are.

One has to wonder if this observation is really true. Understandably, Mr Yeo is speaking from a financial viewpoint, and how he cites the Orchard Road shop is very telling. If the customer is a foreigner/tourist, it can be assumed he is going to spend more than an average Singaporean. Japanese and American tourists, most likely, are going to spend more than an Australian, perhaps, though this is just an example.

Viewed in this, the way Mr Yeo speaks about the so-called "culture advantage" is very misleading. The culture understanding only extends to gauging the depth of the customer's pocket. Adjusting products and services according the customer? Fellow singaporeans will be shown last season's Prada bags, while the tourists will get a cup of tea and free discourse on the newest designs from Prada.

Also, this highlights a key racial issue: naturally, Singaporeans would treat a Caucausian customer better than a Singaporean one of whatever race. Aside from the financial factor, this only serves to illustrate the colonial mentality, still ingrained within us. Nuanced assessments and responses? The Japanese customer will get a mispronouced, and overused "Ari-gato".

In a country where inherent racism has yet to be conquered, saying we are culturally advantaged is rather rich.

Just another example of 1) How deluded/misleading politicians are, and 2)How inept the local papers are.

U.S. envoy slams Singapore's political curbs

Wed Oct 12, 2005 7:51 AM BST

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The outgoing U.S. envoy to Singapore criticised the city-state's limits on political expression, saying governments will pay an increasing price for failing to give citizens freedom of choice and expression.

U.S. Ambassador Franklin L. Lavin [pictured] said it was surprising to find what he called constraints on discussions given Singapore's strong international links.

"In this era of Weblogs and Webcams, how much sense does it make to limit political expression?" Lavin told an audience at his farewell dinner on Tuesday. The speech was made available on the U.S. embassy's Web site.

Extract form the speech,

Singapore has its share of challenges as well. Singapore has flourished over the past 40 years, but is a 20th century model adequate for the 21st century? Singapore is grappling with the definitional questions of what kind of society it wants. Remaking its economy is, in a sense, the easy decision. Shaping a political system to reflect the needs and aspirations of its citizens is more difficult and more sensitive. What are the bounds of expression? What say should citizens have in their government? In this era of Weblogs and Webcams, how much sense does it make to limit political expression? Remember, we have the death of distance. There are no islands anymore. As part of Singapore’s success is its strong international links, it is surprising to find constraints on discussions here. In my view, governments will pay an increasing price for not allowing full participation of their citizens.

In August, police ordered a 36-year-old filmmaker to surrender equipment used to make a documentary on opposition figure Chee Soon Juan. A student on a state scholarship shut down his personal Web site in May after a government agency threatened a libel suit for his online comments.

On Friday, Singapore jailed two men for posting racist comments aimed at the country's ethnic Malay community, who are mainly Muslim, on the Internet.

"Singapore has flourished over the past 40 years, but is a 20th century model adequate for the 21st century?" Lavin asked.

"Remaking (Singapore's) economy is, in a sense, the easy decision. Shaping a political system to reflect the needs and aspirations of its citizens is more difficult and more sensitive," he added.

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong last week ruled out adopting a Western liberal democracy with a multi-party system in the next 20 years, saying that it was unsuitable for the country.

Lavin, whose four-year tenure saw the conclusion of a U.S.-Singapore free-trade agreement and a deepening of security ties, takes up a new post in Washington as undersecretary for international trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce.

He will be replaced by Patricia Herbold, a lawyer and a Republican fundraiser.

[Who according to John Burton] has suggested that the Bush administration might be preparing to take a tougher line on Singapore's human rights record.

Ms Herbold, a lawyer and Republican fundraiser, told a US Senate hearing on her confirmation that she would continue a dialogue that Washington has with Singapore regarding the openness of its society and its political system.

A parliamentary republic with elections held at regular, constitutionally mandated intervals, Singapore has been dominated by the People's Action Party (PAP) since independence in 1965.

Opposition politicians, who hold only two of the 84 seats in parliament, have long complained that frequent defamation suits by PAP officials have stifled dissent -- a view echoed by a 2004 U.S. State Department report on Singapore.

Many analysts expect parliamentary elections in the coming months although they are not due to be held until mid-2007.

In May, Amnesty International criticised Singapore's human rights record, saying that control on political expression remained tight despite government promises of greater openness.

Related Links:
Channel News Asia report on the speech which ignores the above reference to Freedom of Speech.

How the Straits Times reported his departure from Mr Brown's coverage.
http://www.mrbrown.com/blog/images/us_envoy.jpg

Extract from a question and answer session from Today Online.

Speaking to Today, Mr Lavin said he felt it was "very difficult to find a platform if you have a policy point to make that might be critical of the government".

"I think governments should take a broader view of political expression. It will provide a greater sense of attachment for the Singapore population."

During the question-and-answer session, he said that one-party political dominance here has "enormous strengths", such as "very high quality leadership" which maximises its long-term vision. But the system also has weaknesses, and "the lack of open and vigorous debates might reduce a Government's popularity if it doesn't let ideas or views be properly aired", he said.

Referring to a failed demonstration outside the US embassy last year against the Iraq War, Mr Lavin said he was "embarrassed" when the police asked him if he wanted to press charges against the demonstrators. "I said 'no'. I mean, go ahead, hold the signs and say something if you want to."

Updated
US envoy slaps Singapore over freedom of speechby John Burton of FT.
The Washington Times, EMBASSY ROW

In Defence of The Right to Offend

Singapore is not a free and open society. It is the blatant and unapologetic nature of the admittance of such a situation that still shocks. It can be uttered by Singaporean politicians and judges with the clear knowledge that such a situation will be tolerated/accepted/unchallenged by the population. They control the horizontal and the vertical and will do so, according to Lee Hsieng Loong, for the next 20 years.

The present situation regarding the four bloggers, two of whom have been sentenced with two now waiting to hear of their fate, reminded me of a few articles posted a few months ago. The first was posted in February 2005, and the second was posted in the same month. In fact it was something Judge Magnus said.

“The right of one person’s freedom of expression must always be balanced by the right of another’s freedom from offence.”Judge Magnus

I have been searching in vain to find where the 'Right to Freedom from Offence' is enshrined. Now I am referring to the word 'offence' not harm or the threat of harm or any variation. Can someone point me to the section either in the Singaporean Constitution or the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, that defends the "Right to Freedom From Offence"? Maybe Judge Magnus could help me out.

Judge Magnus seems to be confirming the lack of liberal democracy in Singapore that Lee Hsien Loong confirmed in a recent speech. The judicary is also operating along the same 'non-liberal' policies. A case of the executive, judiciary and legislature reading from the same page to put it nicely.

The bloggers were sentenced for being racist and from what I have been reading they have also been lumped in with criticisms of religion and certain religious practices.

As far as I am concerned there is no space for racism but being anti-religious is another matter. A complicated matter, but one that does not simply fall under the 'racist' banner.

SingaporeClassics covers the legal angles of the recent sentences given in the court.

Democracy is not a tea party.

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted. A fundamental decision needs to be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other’s positions. (But they don’t shoot.)Salman Rushdie

Defend the right to be offended

The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible. Salman Rushdie

I have decided to post the entire article from OpenDemocracy in the hope that people will actually read it.

Defend the right to be offended
Salman Rushdie
7 - 2 - 2005


“The moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.” Salman Rushdie sounds the call for a new enlightenment.

I was in Washington just before the Iraq war began in March 2003 and was invited to speak to groups of senators from both parties. The most obvious distinction between the Democrats and the Republicans was that the Republicans used exclusively religious language. They discussed why they hadn’t seen each other at a certain prayer meeting. One senator said to me, in tones of genuine horror, that what he disliked most about Osama bin Laden was that he called America a Godless country. He said: “How can he call us Godless? We’re incredibly God-fearing!”

I said: “Well, senator, I suppose he doesn’t think so.” But his outrage at being presented as un-Godly was undeniably sincere. He meant business. And the increasing power of God-fearing America – of the Christian coalition, Mel Gibson, The Passion of the Christ variety – subsequently determined the result of the November 2004 presidential election.

Now here in Britain I discover another kind of Anschluss of liberal values in the face of resurgent religious demands. One of its results is the proposal by Tony Blair’s government – under the auspices of its Serious and Organised Crime and Police Bill – to introduce a ban on the “incitement to hatred on religious grounds”.

The pressure of members of English PEN has wrested a late concession from the government, which has renamed the proposed offence “hatred against persons on racial or religious grounds”. But the danger the legislation carries for freedom of speech, while diminished, remain. It seems we need to fight the battle for the Enlightenment all over again in Europe as well as in the United States.

That battle was about the church’s desire to place limits on thought. The Enlightenment wasn’t a battle against the state but against the church. Diderot’s novel La Religieuse (1760), with its portrayal of nuns and their behaviour, was deliberately blasphemous: it challenged religious authority, with its indexes and inquisitions, on what it was possible to say. Most of our contemporary ideas about freedom of speech and imagination come from the Enlightenment. We may have thought the battle won. If we aren’t careful, it is about to be “un-won”.

Offence and insult are part of everyday life for people in Britain. All you have to do is open a daily paper and there’s plenty to offend. Or you can walk into the religious books section of a bookshop and discover you’re damned to various kinds of eternal hellfire, which is certainly insulting, not to say overheated.

The idea that any kind of free society can be constructed in which people will never be offended or insulted is absurd. So too is the notion that people should have the right to call on the law to defend them against being offended or insulted. A fundamental decision needs to be made: do we want to live in a free society or not? Democracy is not a tea party where people sit around making polite conversation. In democracies people get extremely upset with each other. They argue vehemently against each other’s positions. (But they don’t shoot.)

At Cambridge University I was taught a laudable method of argument: you never personalise, but you have absolutely no respect for people’s opinions. You are never rude to the person, but you can be savagely rude about what the person thinks. That seems to me a crucial distinction: people must be protected from discrimination by virtue of their race, but you cannot ring-fence their ideas. The moment you say that any idea system is sacred, whether it’s a religious belief system or a secular ideology, the moment you declare a set of ideas to be immune from criticism, satire, derision, or contempt, freedom of thought becomes impossible.

Now, with its proposed law “to prevent hatred being stirred up against people targeted because of their religious beliefs”, the current British government has set out to create that impossibility. Privately its architects will tell you the law is designed to please “the Muslims”. But which Muslims, when and on what day?

The ability of this law to protect “the Muslims” seems to me arguable. It is entirely possible that instead it will be used against Muslims before it’s used against anyone else. There are identifiable racist and right-wing groups in this country who would argue that Muslims are the ones inciting religious hatred, and these groups will use, or try to use, this law.

There is no question that there also are Muslim leaders who are anxious to prosecute – for example – The Satanic Verses, and will try to do so if this law is passed. So this law will unleash some major expressions of intolerance.

Already, at a theatre in England’s second-largest city Birmingham, rioting Sikhs have forced the closure of a play set in a Sikh temple by a young woman writer of Sikh origin, Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti – and the government has said nothing to criticise what was effectively criminal action. The novelist Hanif Kureishi made one of the best comments about the affair, when he noted that the theatre where Bezhti (“Dishonour”) had been performed was a temple, too. Evangelical Christians caught on quickly and protested against the BBC’s screening of Jerry Springer – The Opera.

The response of many British writers on this issue has revealed striking failures of perception. I took issue with Ian Jack, editor of the respected literary magazine Granta, when he said that he was happy to support the British police when they defended Rupert Murdoch’s printing plant in Wapping, London, from striking print-workers in 1986, but did not think that the Birmingham theatre and its play should be protected from the threatening Sikhs. Forgive me for not seeing the logic of the principle of “self-restraint”. It seems to me to be a liberal failure to say that even though we don’t understand what is upsetting those who say they are offended, we shouldn’t upset them. That’s condescension. That’s saying “you can have your little religion over there in the corner and we won’t fool with you.”

What this kind of attitude ultimately does, and what the government’s law will do – even with the late amendment conceded thanks to the persuasive advocacy of English PEN – is to undermine a principle of free expression which affects everyone in Britain, religious or not. If we cannot have open discourse about the ideas by which we live, then we are straitjacketing ourselves. This is the starting-point of the Enlightenment.

It does matter. People have the fundamental right to take an argument to the point where somebody is offended by what they say. It’s no trick to support the free speech of somebody you agree with or to whose opinion you are indifferent. The defence of free speech begins at the point when people say something you can’t stand. If you can’t defend their right to say it, then you don’t believe in free speech. You only believe in free speech as long as it doesn’t get up your nose. But free speech does get up people’s noses. Friedrich Nietzsche called Christianity “the one great curse” and “the one immortal blemish on mankind”. Would he now be prosecuted?

There is a long tradition of irreverent, raw, and critical remarks about religion in Britain. From eminent thinkers to the country’s favourite comedians like Rowan Atkinson in the BBC comedy Blackadder muttering “Bad weather is God’s way of telling us we should burn more Catholics.” Even if the government doesn’t think that such remarks will find their way into court prosecutions, the very possibility that they might, at the discretion of the state’s senior legal officer, the attorney-general, will be enough to bring down the curtains of self- and corporate censorship.

It will be a sad day if what remains a bad law comes into effect in Britain. If it does, it will be important to disobey it and have it tested in the courts, which one hopes will recognise its manifest absurdity.

The way things are done in Britain often makes them seem local, even technical, rather than a matter of principle. Government spokesmen in London justify their actions in terms of the need to “close (an) unacceptable loophole” rather than on the need to be God-fearing, or by claiming that this is a God-fearing country. But the example set by the United Kingdom parliament on this issue is a signal to the world. It should not be that freedom of thought and speech and of the imagination can be closed down by bigots.

The above is an abbreviated version of a speech that Salman Rushdie gave at English Pen.

Fourth blogger investigated in Singapore

According to Financial Mirror who picked it up from the The Sunday Times, reproduced at Asia Media, a fourth blogger is under investigation for racism. This case is slightly different as the individual, still unnamed, re-posted someone elses work. Can you be charged with racism or under the Sedition Act when you yourself have not actually written the article merely re-printed it? Looks like we are about to find out. It leads to a more interesting issue.

The focus of the crack down has moved from the authors to the distributors of the material. I might be living outside Singapore but the message is getting louder and clearer. They are consciously sending a message to all of us involved with the Singaporean Blogosphere and the Sedition Act is all encompassing.

The site in question is still up and running, in fact I have been reading the posts for the last 30 minutes.[chinapore.blogspot.com has now been removed] Is that an offence too? I imagine it will not remain online for much longer. It also makes me wonder whether or not if by linking to a site I can also be charged under the Sedition Act. So I am going to be overly cautious and remove the link. However it doesn't take a degree in computer engineering to work out the address.

Racist[allegedly] blogger investigated in Singapore

A fourth racist[allegedly] blogger is being investigated by police in Singapore, after two young men who posted hateful remarks about Moslems and Malays on the Internet were given landmark jail sentences, The Sunday Times reported.
The latest blog, or weblog, is called China Pork [link removed, just type in the name of the site followed by .blogspot.com]and belongs to someone who goes by the name of Chinapore.

The site reproduced postings by 17-year-old private school student Gan Huai Shi, the third person after Benjamin Koh Song Huat and Nicholas Lim Yew to be charged with making seditious comments on his blog, "The Second Holocaust".

Gan has shut down his blog, but Chinaport said he decided to re-post Gan's articles "for others to express themselves".

Police spokesman Siow Cheng Cheng confirmed the probe is underway.

Animal shelter assistant Koh, 27, and former assistant marketing manager Nicholas Lim, 25, were jailed for a month and a day respectively on Friday. Lim was also fined 5,000 Singapore dollars (USD 2,976).

In imposing the sentence under the Sedition Act, Senior District Judge Richard Magnus cited current terrorism fears.

Singaporeans "must realize that callous and reckless remarks on racial or religious subjects have the potential to cause social disorder, in whatever medium or forum they are expressed," Magnus said.

The cases were viewed as a watershed moment in the arena of Internet expression in the city-state. (dpa)

Dr. Chee Interview - The Pilot n' Jo Show

Dr. Chee Interview - The Pilot n' Jo Show

They speak to SDP Secretary-General, Dr Chee Soon Juan about free media, free speech, censorship and podcasting as a tool to reach out to the heartlander. It is something I should have linked to a long time ago. It actually caused quite a stir when the podcast of the same interview was released. Actually led to calls by someone claiming to be Dr. Richard Lim that they remove it immediately because it was a political broad/podcast.

Download
QuickTime (175 MB)
Run time: 31:23

Yellow Ribbon Project misses main point

Link:
http://www.yellowribbon.org.sg/

Actions Undertaken For Martyn See

I received the following communication and felt I should pass it on to those of you who have shown an interest in the proceedings. If you haven't already signed the petition please consider doing so.

Martyn See has posted an article entitled Let us watch political films, say ST readers

Below are the actions we are engaged in re. Martyn See's case.

1. Steven McDermott's petition is online www.singabloodyspore.blogspot.com
He intends sending it to Dr Lee and to the Singapore ambassador to the UN.

2. Dave Carley has sent to the Playwrights Guild for dissemination. Also to the Writers Guild for dissemination and approach to ACTRA. Has asked a good University of Michigan prestigious film school contact, who has enlisted the help of a professor. Sent info to friends who can be counted on to write. Has written himself.

3. Nelofer Pazira will do outreach to the artists/film communities.

4. Helen Pridmore is also contacting the artists community and PEN if she has a good PEN contact. Also to all known members of Canada's Artists for Amnesty. The Gazette has posted the appeal, following Helen's approach. The Gazette includes information on a variety of issues, including human rights.

5. AI Canada's Parliamentary Relations Coordinators have approached two supportive parliamentarians (Sen. Andreychuk and David Kilgour).

6. The appeal will be distributed to groups and action circles by Marilyn McKim (Urgent Action coordinator) this week. Sent to all contacts (AI and non-AI). I will update the appeal for the December 10 Human Rights Day Write-a-thon. The Singapore Democratic Party has entered the appeal on its website www.Singaporedemocrat.org Have approached a good contact (a writer) re. getting PEN's participation. I am keeping Martyn informed of our actions.

7. Michael Backman, an acadenic/writer in Australia, will include information on Martyn See in the updated edition of his book The Asian Insider: Unconventional Wisdom for Asian Business (Pallgrave-Macmillan), to be published early 2006.


AI-USA PLANNED/ACTUAL INITIATIVES:

1. Posted appeal on online action centre. http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/action/index.asp?ms=T1

2. Distributed appeal to PIRAN (Philippines/Indonesia network).

3. Sent to thousands who are signed up for their action centre.

4. Considering a petition with big-name artists asked to sign.

5. Approach to some press contacts.

6. Included in Artists for Amnesty monthly appeals.


AI-HONG KONG

1. Distributing the appeal

2. Possible approach to film festival organizers.


AI - ASIAN REGIONAL OFFICE

1. Has the appeal on its website www.asiapacific.amnesty.org


AI-GERMANY

1. Letter-writing by members.

MEDIA AND OTHER COVERAGE

Several agencies are covering it. SEAPA (Southeast Asia Press Alliance) and IFEX issued an Alert Update.

And I believe that Singapore Rebel has been shown at the European Parliament according to a poster reproduced on the Singapore Democrat website.

European Parliamentarians screen Martyn's Singapore Rebel

4 Oct 05

By banning Martyn See's film, Singapore Rebel, from the Singapore Film Festival, the PAP thought that it could prevent the documentary from being seen by Singaporeans and the international community. The plan backfired – and in spectacular fashion. The ban has created a firestorm outside of Singapore where the documentary has been
screened in Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Sweden, the US, and now in the European Parliament (below)!

With the advent and the advancement of the Internet as a communication tool, the Singapore Government is foolish to try to stop the spread of information about its dictatorial ways. If it is wise (unfortunately authoritarian regimes are too intoxicated with wealth and power to know the folly of their ways), it will begin to
reform the political system. Now that the world has seen the PAP in live action and full technicolor, let's see whether it will continue to persecute a hapless filmmaker, and harass Mr Jacob George and Ms Tan Pin Pin.

To continue reading click here...

Civil Disobedience and Taking the Judiciary to Task

The Straits Times today presented to the public the rationale behind the recent white elephants and a four person protest outside CPF building. The article on 'Managing Civil Disobedience' was by Cherian George, a former ST journalist and author of Air-Conditoned Nation. His Review article is adapted from a previous posting in his blog, Air-Conditioned Nation.

Cherian expained that these actions are carefully used to counter the Regime. By peacefully and publicly challenging a law or a practice, activists force the target of their lobbying into a potentially lose-lose corner. If the big bad Regime overreacts, they not only give publicity to the cause but presents the situation as a David vs Goliath one. If they don't react act at all and ignore the protests totally, they embolden the protestors and encourage others to join the cause. This is the fundamental game of brinkmanship inherent in civil disobedience.

In the four people CPF building protest, the Regime overreacted and used the Men in Blue to 'break up' a peaceful protest. That they did but at a price. Now three of the four are taking to court the Police Chief and his boss, the Home Affairs Minister. They want the court to make the latter two admit that the dispersal of the creative four people protest was without doubt "unlawful and unconstitutional manner". It is unlikely the two would admit to that allegation. Then the truth becomes clear. The protest is not really about transparency and the use of public funds by the Regime, the real protest is about the supposed separation of powers in Singapore - the Legislature, Judiciary and the Executive.

What would the Court do? Civil disobedience has done its work and can the Regime leaders return the spike? This is yet another opportunity for the Judiciary to demonstrate that they are separate from the Executive. But looking at the track record, somehow the courts always backs the Regime's leaders in defamation suits, however shaky the case. It is ok for a Regime leader to say without fear that so and so is a political gangster but it is not ok for an opposition politician to say that he has in his hands a police report at the start of a rally.

On October 21, can we expect the Court to throw out the CPF protestors' case that their dispersal was unlawful? Or do we cross our fingers that surprise, surprise, the Court manages to cajole the Police Chief and the Minister to reconcile their differences with the activists.

Poloniusian civil disobedience in Singapore. Though this be madness, yet there is method in't.

The government is not homophobic, the PM says

From: Yawning_Bread
The government is not homophobic, the PM says

7 Oct 2005

"I don't think we are homophobic," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said. Then he went on to give everyone reason to wonder.

At a luncheon Question and Answer session organised by the Foreign Correspondents' Association on 6 October 2005, Lee was asked by Time magazine correspondent Jake Smith how he felt about gays, while throwing in a comment that the Singapore Government gave "every impression of being somewhat homophobic".

Immediately came Lee's denial: "I don't think we are homophobic," adding that he agreed with the view taken by his predecessor, former PM Goh Chok Tong, that homosexuals "are people like you and me", words that he himself repeated to the journalists present.

Then, barely stopping to take a breath, came the backtracking.

The government must remain sensitive to segments of the population which are uncomfortable with gays, Lee said. On the one side are the gay activists who want more space and feel entitled to it. On the other are those who condemn homosexuality. A balance needed to be struck between two opposing forces, the Prime Minister said.

He went on to pose the question, "How do we provide the maximum space...." but in phrasing it, he revealed a paucity of intelligent thought: "....without it becoming intrusive and oppressive on the rest of the population and without causing a backlash which will lead to polarisation and animosity?"

Excuse me! Who is being intrusive and who is oppressing whom?

In criminalising consensual homosexual relationships, is the State not intruding into gay people's private lives? Is the homophobes' insistence that gay relationships should be condemned and penalised, when it's none of their business, not intrusion? Is irrational prejudice, censorship and the deliberate reinforcement of social stigma not oppression?

Instead, Lee thinks that if gays and lesbians feel they are entitled to equal treatment and say so, that is being intrusive and oppressive upon the rest of the population.

For a person who is holding the post of Prime Minister, Lee seems bereft of bearings. He failed to recognise that his government is duty-bound to defend justice and equality. It is a sad day when the Prime Minister thinks that ignorance and hate should be given equivalent weight to considerations of justice and equality, and that his job is merely to achieve some balance that keeps everybody happy.

Not even balance, actually. In order to avoid "polarisation and animosity", the trade-offs all come out of the gay side. Illegal. Censored. Banned.

Meanwhile fundamentalist Christians are free to organise rallies to condemn homosexuality, and pass around uncensored flyers calling it a sin.

Worse, now the Prime Minister himself, in acknowledging that "there will be those who say this is wrong, it's a sin, not just a crime but a sin," has inadvertently conceded that a religious proscription is being taken into account in formulating laws and policies.

Perhaps he has forgotten that this is a secular state, and the moment we begin to let one religion arm-twist government policy, we are finished.

People Like Us, a gay and lesbian advocacy group, also reminded him of this point. In its press statement, the group said,

"The Prime Minister referred to people who objected to homosexuality as a "sin". The government should ask whether the opposition to gay equality is not a virulently vocal, religiously-motivated campaign by a small number of people that is in no way representative, but merely seem so because they have the clout and resources to make themselves heard. Policy-making by a secular government operating in a multi-racial society like Singapore should not be taken captive by the religious beliefs of segments of its citizens."

For someone who claims his government is not homophobic, Lee made 2 remarkable gestures.

Firstly, he ruled out gay marriage, apparently unaware that more and more judicial benches are ruling that denial of equality in marriage is homophobic discrimination.

Secondly, he ruled out gay celebrations. Once again he used homophobic language to prove his non-homophobia. He said gay groups should not "flaunt (their) gayness" through parades and parties like the Nation.05.

Flaunt is a word much favoured by the Christian fundamentalist rightwing of America. Their thinking goes like this: if you aren't ashamed that you are gay, then you are "flaunting" it.

Where, we wonder, did Lee Hsien Loong pick up such language?

This reason for not allowing gay events was that "it will be offensive to a large number of Singaporeans and will be very divisive."

Meanwhile the Singapore Tourism Board is proudly selling Thaipusam as another of Uniquely Singapore's colourful festivals. The police likewise lend their support to ensure that the Kavadi parades go smoothly.

At Thaipusam, we get to see people "flaunting" their Hinduness, never mind if many Singaporeans are horrified by the idea of skewering human bodies with metal spikes. If you are offended or if it sickens you, you can always stay away, can't you?

People Like Us made a similar point. In its press statement, it said,

"Just as maintaining racial harmony is founded upon the core principle that people of all races are equal in law and policy, and racist speech frowned upon, so integration and acceptance of the gay community cannot be realised unless the government adopts a similar principle regarding sexual orientation, and recognises that the threat to social harmony comes primarily from homophobia."

It's easy for the Prime Minister to claim his government is not homophobic. But this is Singapore. We like objective measures of performance. So People Like Us' press statement laid them out:

".... the following are critical to establish that the government's positions are not homophobic:

"1. Decriminalisation of consensual gay sex and the equalisation of the age of consent;

"2. Equalisation of censorship standards between heterosexual and homosexual themes and content;

"3. Registration of gay-identified societies;

"4. Removal of homophobic bias in the Ministry of Education's curricula."

From now on, there will be no more wasting of time with doublespeak. There will be objective tests to determine government homophobia or non-homophobia.

Convicted for sedition, blogger insists: 'I'm no racist'

There is a lot of attention on the sentences being imposed on two young men, the use of the Sedition Act should receive some focus as it seems to encompass almost anything you say on line, and it is not a redundant law in that it has been used. Below is an article that contains some words from those directly involved. At the bottom of the article are a few words from Friskodude.
Weekend • October 8, 2005

Ansley Ng
ansley@newstoday.com.sg

BLOGGER Benjamin Koh Song Huat spent his first night in a prison cell on Friday after becoming one of the first persons to be convicted under the Sedition Act.

"It was the first time I had seen that word — sedition," Koh told Today in an exclusive interview hours before he was sentenced. "I didn't know what it meant until my lawyer explained it to me."

But Koh probably came to learn the meaning of "sedition" the hard way.

Entries posted on his blog in June and July were peppered with vulgarities and insulted Islam and the Malay culture.

Still, he maintained during a 40-minute phone interview that he was not a racist.

He said he has many Malay friends from his days at Swiss Cottage Secondary School.

So, when news of his arrest broke, he got calls from one of them.

"They called me, laughed and said: 'You racist? Come on lah'," said Koh.

How it started

His ugly online tirade started after a trip to East Coast Park in June when he was walking his dogs and had a run-in with some Malay families, who shy away from dogs on religious grounds.

He went home later that day and "blasted away" on his blog.

Then came the Internet community's reaction.

"People started posting comments and made nasty remarks about me and my parents. I thought it was another blog war and I didn't really bother," he said.

"But the comments didn't stop."

Eventually realising what he had done, Koh locked his blog a week later to prevent anyone from posting comments and put up an apology.

It appeased some — but there were others who were still baying for blood.

At the end of June, plainclothes police officers went to his home to question him, after a female Malay blogger complained to the police.

"They asked if I belonged to any anti-Islam organisation," Koh said. "At that time, I knew I was in big trouble."

He was taken to the police station for questioning. On his second visit to the station, Koh was arrested, together with his best friend Nicholas Lim Yew, the other person to be convicted under the Sedition Act on Friday.

Unwanted attention

The two have been discussed by Ministers and the media alike. They've even joked with each other about their predicament.

"Look, we are even more famous than Xiaxue," said Koh, referring to one of Singapore's more prominent bloggers.

But, switching to a serious tone, he said he had not been eating and sleeping well. "Not when the whole of Singapore knows who you are," said Koh, who added that he was "just a normal person".

The past few weeks have been spent at his condominium in Katong with his family — his divorcee mother and 23-year-old brother. Koh plans to continue blogging when he is released a month later.

"I am hooked on blogging," he said.

"I have learnt not to generalise everything and not to shoot my mouth off just like that. That's a trait a lot of people found endearing and also one that people found irritating.

"I am so deeply sorry and I would not have blogged it down if I had known the consequences."

And I thought I should leave the last word to Carl Parkes of Friskodude.

Oh, just for the record. Malays are lazy and smell like dogs. Indians are lazy and smell like curry. Chinese are hard working but dishonest and selfish. Americans are arrogant and stupid. Indonesians are lazy and smell like kreteks. Filipinos are lazy and smell like adobo. Who did I miss? Friskodude

Panel to be set up to regulate NGOs

An inter-agency committee will be set up to review the regulatory framework for non-government organisations (NGOs), specifically charities, and the roles of related umbrella organisations such as the National Council of Social Service.

So much for saying that regulations would impede growth of charities.

The move comes after controversies at some charities. There were 1,400 charities in 2000 and 1,700 last year. In the same period, the number of volunteers rose by more than 60 per cent. Donations were also up. Last year, Institutions of a Public Character (IPCs) received almost half a billion dollars.

Controversies? Namely, the NKF saga, the SAVH incompetency, and the alleged (and quite probably untrue) AFA scandal.

What this means for charities in Singapore, is that they will have to buck up their practices. Organisations like the Singapore Red Cross Society already have existing practices of publishing a yearly expenditure report, in accordance with their principles of transparency and accountability to the donor. But that is not easy for smaller, less established NGOs, who don't have as extensive resources or skills.

On one hand, one hopes this panel will prevent the likes of the NKF scandal. But on the other hand, one cannot help wondering whether this move will only serve to stifle the civic sector. The outcome will have to be seen.

NGO

Two bloggers jailed for making racist remarks online

By Rita Zahara, Channel NewsAsia

SINGAPORE : For the first time, two Singaporeans have been sentenced to jail for posting racist remarks online.

28-year-old Benjamin Koh Seng Huat, a kennel keeper at an animal shelter, has been sentenced to one month's jail.

Separately, the court sentenced 25-year-old former assistant marketing manager, Nicholas Lim Yew, to serve one day in jail and a maximum fine of $5,000.

Koh walked into the court, accompanied by his lawyer and a friend Hisham Abu Bakar.

He pleaded guilty to making racist remarks on his web blog which sparked off more than 200 comments.

Lim, whose postings were regarded less serious than Koh's by the court, was also charged under the Sedition Act.

In passing sentences, Senior District Judge Richard Magnus said the two had crossed the red line by wantonly breaching the basic ground rules.

He said passing a deterrent sentence was necessary so that such offending acts are tackled early and contained.

The judge also said that young Singaporeans may have short memories that race and religion are sensitive issues.

He said callous and reckless remarks on racial or religious subjects had the potential to cause social disorder, regardless of which medium or forum they are expressed.

The judge added the right of one to propagate an opinion on the Internet is not and cannot be an unfettered right.

It is only appropriate social behaviour of every Singapore citizen and resident to respect the other races in view of Singapore's multi-racial society.

Lim's lawyer said there was a lesson to be learnt from the judgement.

Helen Chia, Lim's Lawyer, said: "He is sending out a signal to the public that this is a serious matter and everybody should take a second look at themselves."

Separately, a third blogger, 17-year-old Gan Huai Shi faces seven charges of posting racist remarks on his blog.

His case will be heard again on October 26.

2 Singaporeans jailed for posting racist remarks online
SINGAPORE, Oct. 7 (Xinhuanet) --

Two young Singaporeans were sentenced to jail Friday for making racist remarks online.

According to Channel News Asia reports on Friday night, Benjamin Koh Seng Huat, 28, was sentenced to one month's jail while 25-year-old Nicholas Lim Yew, former assistant marketing manager, was sentenced to one-day's jail and a maximum fine of 5,000 Singapore dollars (about 2976 US dollars).

Koh, a kennel keeper at an animal shelter, pleaded guilty to making racist remarks on his web blog which sparked off more than 200 comments.

Lim, whose postings were regarded less serious than Koh's by the court, was also charged under the Sedition Act.

Announcing the verdicts, Senior District Judge Richard Magnus said that the right of one to propagate an opinion on the Internet is not and cannot be an unfettered right.

Passing a deterrent sentence was necessary so that such offending acts are tackled early and contained, he added.

Meanwhile, 17-year-old Gan Huai Shi, the third bloggers, also faces seven charges of posting racist remarks on his blog, and his case will be heard again on October 26.

Related Links:
Reuters

Singaporeans say YES to liberal democracy in 2004.

by Charles Tan

If there is anything to be read in between the lines with regards to our Prime Minister’s interview and speech at the Foreign Correspondents Association lunch, we can only come to one conclusion – that the government’s calls for more changes and liberalization are hollow promises.

In a telephone survey done by the Political Development Feedback Group last November, results inferred that Singaporeans say YES to liberal democracy and not what Mr Lee claimed.

The research which was published by TODAY on 18 January 2005 revealed significant findings that contrasted with his opinions. In the survey, “forty per cent of the respondents felt citizens have little or no influence on national issues and policies”.

The same news article also reported that more than three in four respondents described the "opening up" of Singapore's political space as "below expectations" based on another separate straw poll among 59 working youth on Singapore's political system. The poll also revealed that 70 per cent of the respondents expressed their preference for a two- or multi-party system and felt that the opposition parties have not been given "a fair chance to establish themselves".

While detractors may argue that the small sample size is not indicative of popular sentiments, it nevertheless shows that a proportionate segment of concerned Singaporeans desire to see significant changes in the near future.

Henceforth, the government should devote more resources with regards to this issue. I propose funding an international and well-respected research organization to carry out a similar but more comprehensive and larger scale sample study for more conclusive findings.

It should study citizen’s opinions, as well as include feasible recommendations from internationally respected political observers and academics on steps to improving democracy in Singapore. This is in line with Singapore’s commitment to build a more progressive and open society.

In the luncheon, our Prime Minister also mentioned that Singapore does not believe in becoming a “Western democracy”. Our government has constantly used the term but never clearly defined what it means. If the PAP government believes that Singapore should adopt a unique form of democracy, they should make that ideology clear so that Singaporeans and academics can discuss and debate on it.

On the topic of gays in Singapore, the government needs to back up its claims that the majority of Singaporeans are unable to accept their gay counterparts.

The refusal to deny People Like Us (PLU) a sexual minority advocacy rights NGO in Singapore, its official registration as a society, is an infringement on citizens’ constitutional right to freedom of association.

While Mr Lee said that allowing gays to publicly display their “gayness” and fighting for their rights will create “polarisation and animosity”, the same can be said of sweeping the issue under the carpet.

Allowing PLU to become a legal society is a way of opening up society that the government has promised in recent years. The NGO can advance societal interests by acting as a catalyst of change and being an active civil society actor; in terms of bridging the gap between the sexual minority and conservative Singaporeans through inter-communication and educational campaign efforts. Such efforts will reduce societal tension as LGBTs (lesbian, gays, bisexuals and transgender) becomes more vocal and demand for more rights while more conservative Singaporeans who disapprove of homosexuality are educated to become more tolerant and accepting of sexual diversity.

The government should put action into words when it says that Singapore should practice tolerance towards LGBT. They should take the important first step by decriminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults. This will send a signal to the world and Singaporeans that we are tolerant; and we do not treat gay Singaporeans as criminals.

With the elections predicted to be approaching, our Prime Minister also broached on the topic of Singapore’s free elections which he claimed, has worked well for us. However, we need to seriously re-examine if they are not only truly free; but also FAIR.

Free and Fair elections must be conducted and subject to international standards. They would include but not be limited to having an independent election commission, having a free media, proper campaign rules and regulations, accountability in political donations, drawing up electoral boundaries, as well as removing unreasonable barriers against Opposition. The PAP government’s monopoly since independence has created an uneven political playing field.

Politics in a democracy should be based on the competition of ideas from political parties’; not its size. In fact, the suggested survey which I proposed earlier could include recommendations on leveling the playing field and improving the transparency and accountability of our elections system.

Of what I have mentioned, it would be naivety on my part if I believe the government will seriously take those recommendations into consideration. After all, our Prime Minister’s message at the luncheon did not break new grounds as has been promised when he took over leadership last year. Our PAP authoritarian style government is intent on ruling for another 20 years.

Singaporeans and observers who thought the new leadership is different from its predecessors need to think twice. Democracy needs support and it calls for greater interest and active citizenship participation.


Unless we want the PAP government to rule for another 20 years.


http://sg.news.yahoo.com/051006/3/3vgt6.html
Singapore says no to liberal democracy for next 20 years

SINGAPORE, Oct 6 (Reuters) - Singapore will not adopt a Western liberal democracy with a multi-party system during the next 20 years, its prime minister said on Thursday.
The wealthy island at the southern tip of the Malaysian peninsula has been dominated by the People's Action Party of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong -- the son of founding father Lee Kuan Yew -- since independence in 1965. Only two of the 84 elected politicians in parliament are from the opposition.

When asked at a Foreign Correspondents Association lunch whether he expected Singapore to turn into a democracy in 20 years where parties compete for votes, Lee said: "I don't think that's likely to happen."

"I think in 20 years our society will change. I think the politics of it will change. But I do not see a Western model...as the target we want to aim for."

"We do not see (a Western democracy) as a model which would work well in Singapore. We have worked a system where there is parliamentary democracy, there are free elections and the electorate has given their confidence overwhelmingly to one party."

Singapore is a parliamentary republic and elections are held at regular, constitutionally mandated intervals, and some expect one in 2005 although it is not due until 2007. In the 2001 poll, Lee's predecessor Goh Chok Tong won 75 percent of the vote.

Opposition politicians have long complained the system is stacked against them and that frequent defamation suits by PAP officials stifles dissent. Opposition politician Joshua Jeyaretnam was bankrupted by libel suits brought by PAP leaders.

Lee, 53, took over from Goh last year after 14 years in office. Goh had taken over from Lee Kuan Yew, who founded the PAP and led Singapore as prime minister for 31 years.

Related Links:
abcnews
Channel News Asia
Singapore: Global city with its own political model

Livability Index

Hong Kong was ranked 41st while Seoul and Singapore tied for 54th place.

The EIU ranks our fine city a 54 in terms of livability.

Vancouver eclipsed 127 other cities in a new survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit, which looked at a wide range of criteria, including personal risk, healthcare, the availability of goods and services, and climate.

Now, most of us would agree the standards of living in Singapore are quite high, compared to the average Asian city. We are named one of the most wireless-network ready country in the world. Our streets are clean, our transportation world-class except for the ubiquitous morning rush. Our crime rate is one of the lowest in the world. And we certainly seem to fit the top niches of all the criterias mentioned.

So why are we at, pardon me, roughly somewhere at the bottom of the slag heap of the first world cities?

Perhaps it is the fact that the Singapore government's continual oppression of freedom of speech turns people off. Or maybe it is that our laws, antiquated in its colonial heritage, still bar a harmless human sex act - it is time for eyebrows to be raised when the government wants to control what happens in the bedroom. Maybe it is because we have little natural attractions besides our fabulously tall 166m Bukit Timah, right next to whom we have rifle ranges.

[about Vancouver, the number 1 city]The university has a nudist beach. Whistler mountain ski resort is a quick drive from downtown. The climate is mild in winter and sunny in summer.

Maybe it is none of the above, and the people who graded our city couldn't stand the hot weather.

Maybe.


Related blogs and links:
Doubleyellow

EIU, Livability Index

Singapore says will not allow gay parades

Lee Hsien Loong states that Singaporeans are not homophobic but some are. It's like a sentence from Alice In Wonderland. He also says that "But I'm not sure if I want to do that in Singapore".

Now maybe I am being rather ingenious or possibly the original reporter was trying to be ambiguous because it implies that LHL would take part in Gay Pride Parades overseas. Is there something he wants to tell us?

Joking aside though, Lee Hsieng Loong doesn't seem to be very comfortable discussing homosexuality. And I have often noticed that I get extremely few comments on the topic. The reporter who asked the question appears to have really taken him by surprise.

Reuters

Oct 6, 2005 — SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore will not allow gay parades to be held in the city-state because it clashes with the views of many conservative Singaporeans, the prime minister said on Thursday.

Homosexuality is illegal in Singapore and the government has outlawed some gay events in the past, prompting activists to accuse the authorities of being homophobic.

"I don't think we're homophobic. I agree…that homosexuals are people like you and me. [That's nice of him isn't, you mean there are people who don't think gays are people] But there's some segment of Singaporeans who vehemently disagree with that and we have to be aware of that," Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said in response to a question at a Foreign Correspondents Association lunch.

Singapore has moved in recent years to shatter its prudish image, turning a blind eye to the growth of an entertainment industry catering for homosexuals and hosting a gay and lesbian festival that attracted about 6,000 people last year.

But Lee said he did not want to see gays parading on streets because it would offend conservative Singaporeans.

"Gay pride — well, you can do that in Sydney, in London, in San Francisco. But I'm not sure if I want to do that in Singapore.

"I think it would be offensive to a large number of Singaporeans and will be very divisive. And I think from a government's point of view therefore, it is not a wise thing to do."

In June, the authorities banned one of Asia's largest gay and lesbian festivals held annually in Singapore after deciding it was "contrary to public interest." A junior health minister said last year's festival may have led to a surge in the number of local AIDS cases, a remark that outraged gay activists.

Copyright 2005 Reuters News Service.

Lobby the Singaporean Government

I have had arather good suggestion from an anonymous poster. It relates not just to Martyn See's current situation regarding the Singapore Rebel but also the Films Act in general. Rather than call for an outright removal of the Films Act it seems to be aiming for a rather happy compromise. One that appeals to the government to treat adults as adults. It may not be a compromise that keeps everyone happy but isn't that what a mature compromise entails. I haven't had much time to work out how such an endeavour could be moved forward, and it isn't up to me to decide so what do you think? Is it time that the Film Act treated Singaporean Adults as Adults?

Hi Steve,

I've been following your blog and that of others too. Firstly, I want to say that I have been on your side since I was born. Hopefully that is enuff to clear that. I am also a Singaporean. I am fearful so I am using anonymous emailing but I thought it better to convey my idea by whatever means I feel secure in (I hope) than not at all...

Now, the reason that I am writing is this. Others might have thought of what I have in mind but if so I have not encountered it. What do you think of starting a movement that will culminate in the Singapore government being lobbied to take a controlled step towards opening up by allowing the screening of films deemed politically 'sensitive' - such as Martyn's - in cinemas under the RA rating? My argument is that if people choose to see it, and if they are old (and therefore mature) enough to qualify under the RA rating, then they should be allowed to. In other words, treat politically sensitive films like adult 'sexually sensitive' films and allow adults to view them.

I hope you will expand on this idea or at least allow it to have a chance of being seeded on the websphere.

I look forward to reading about this...

Regards,
nameless

Singapore to criminalise paid U-18 sex

The welcome change of attitude and criminalisation of paid sex with under 18's is a step in the right direction and seems to be the direct result of the US State Department report of 2004 which expressed its concern as follows;

Child prostitution occurred. Between January and November, approximately 1 percent of the 4,600 persons arrested for prostitution were found to be under age 18. In 2003, the Ministry of Home Affairs found 21 children under the age of 18 who it suspected were involved in prostitution; the figure for 2002 was 66. Sexual intercourse with girls under the age of 16 is illegal, but there is no legal prohibition on commercial sex with "consenting" partners aged 16 and 17. The authorities have the power to detain persons under the age of 21 who are believed to be engaged in prostitution, as well as to prosecute those who organize or profit from prostitution, who bring women or girls to the country for prostitution, or who coerce or deceive women or girls into prostitution. (US State Department Report on Human Rights in Singapore 2004)

REUTERS
Posted online: Tuesday, October 04, 2005 at 1059 hours IST

SINGAPORE, OCTOBER 4 : Anyone caught paying for sex with girls under 18 years of age in Singapore could be fined or jailed under proposed new laws, a newspaper said on Tuesday.

Under current laws, offenders face a jail term of up to five years and fines of S$10,000 ($5,910) if they have sex with those under 16.

The Ministry of Home Affairs, as part of its plans to reassess laws governing sexual offences, was also reviewing the Penal Code to allow for the prosecution of Singaporeans who have sex with minors overseas, the Straits Times reported.

The U.S. State Department report this year [unable to find 2005 report, 2004 report released Feb. 2005] said Singapore does not fully meet the minimum standards to stamp out the trafficking of women and girls for sex and had called for the government to reform its laws to criminalise the prostitution of 16- and 17-year-olds as a trafficking offence.

The report also called for the government to address child sex tourism by Singaporeans, particularly in the nearby Batam island of Indonesia.

The Singapore government refuted the report, saying that only four of the 34 claims of forced prostitution in the last three years had been substantiated.

Prostitution is legal in Singapore but soliciting is not. The government authorises the operation of brothels in red-light districts and does not criminalise the prostitution of 16- and 17- year-old minors.

According to the police, 38 of the 5,200 foreign sex workers arrested in 2004 were below 18 years of age. In the first half of this year, 22 out of the 1,700 illegal sex workers were under 18.

But experts and rights workers have said that the age of the sex workers, mostly from the villages of Thailand, Indonesia and Cambodia was difficult to track due to the lack of proper papers.

Related Links:
Conference on Tackling the Demand for Child Tourism and Sex Trafficking in East and Southeast Asia

Announcing a New Format

A small group of bloggers, myself included, intend to revamp Singabloodypore into a form of 'super-blog'. It will not simply be an aggregate blog but will receive contributions of essays and articles by the editors and myself. Hopefully over the next few coming weeks and months there will be contributions from other writers as well as myself.

The emphasis of the blog will continue to be social and political issues which have an effect on Singapore and Singaporeans. Contributions from those wishing to do so will also be respected and published after they have been moderated by one or more of the editors. I hope to set up a special submissions page soon. [temporary submission site available here]

The reason behind these changes from my personal perspective is that the job of dealing with issues effecting Singapore is becoming a task too great for one person. I will continue to post and host, but will give over much of the blog to others.

If there is an image of how I see the blog developing it will involve much more input from readers than merely posting comments to articles. All I ask is that in order to maintain a level of integrity that the suggested articles do not engage in 'hate-speech' or calls to violence against any person or organisation. I will also remove access to those involved in trying to waste my time and the time of the readers, by spamming, phishing or flaming.

Currently the only name associated with this blog is my own, and I have no intention of getting involved in cases of allegations of defamation in the Singaporean courts.

There are currently three or four individuals interested in publishing articles here and I strongly encourage others to approach me via email [stevenmcdermott'AT'gmail.com], anonymously if you like, in order to become a member of the group. Your political persuasion is irrelevant, in fact you can be completely against the current tone of posts here and you will be given access to post on this site. The idea is to create a space for open, and yes, mature discussion on issues relevant to Singapore and Singaporeans.

So for those of you interested, simply email me, letting me know of any sites you run or ideas you might have and I will forward access to you via email.

This revamp is at an experimental stage and I will proceed with caution.

Leninism, Asian Culture and Singapore

According to zzz4701 [anonymous submission] the following is an article explaining how Singapore works. A similar article relating Lee Kuan Yew with Leninism was posted on Singablodypore before and can be linked to here from Manuel Castells(End of Millennium, page 305-306).

Leninism, Asian Culture and Singapore
by Chung-Kwong Yuen originally published in Asian Profile, June 1999, and posted 27 Sept 1999 in response to Buruma & Mahbubani dialogue "Are Singaporeans Afraid to Think" in Straits Times.

Singapore is a place that arouses deeply divided feelings among observers. Economically, it is one of the great success stories of this century, but it is also widely seen as an authoritarian state that limits freedom of speech and political rights. Even more importantly, its leader Lee Kuan Yew has set himself up as the proponent of an alternative model of economic and political development for the poorer nations, one that rejects western decadence while incorporating "Asian" values of studiousness, achievement through hard work, and deference to authority and group. That is, instead of humbly pleading guilty to liberal charges of sacrificing human rights for the sake of prosperity, he claims to have invented a superior ideology more applicable to the less developed part of the world than what North America and Europe wish to export. This elevates the polemic to a higher level of controversy, with western journalists constantly carping on Lee's speeches and the actions of the Singapore government, hoping to detect chinks in their armours, while they answer in kind through their various public relations channels. In the end, neither side has been able to strike a knockout blow, and a standoff has ensured.

This is not a simple standoff between good and bad; between democracy and dictatorship; not even between east and west. Lee's stance is discomfiting to the western liberals precisely because it cannot be neatly labelled and then dismissed. If he were just an ignorant Asian dictator, on route to his inevitable downfall like, say, Ferdinand Marcos, then his ideas would pose no threat to the orthodoxy of the western nations. The fact is however that his policies achieve economic prosperity while ignoring many of the sacred cows of standard political thinking, a situation that cannot be taken in without a serious and painful reassessment of one's basic tenets; in fact, something that threatens the currently fashionable ideological paradigm. Considering that the great Soviet Union has collapsed like good old capitalists said it would, is little Singapore going to defy the most well proven liberal thinking?

But what exactly is Lee's so successful ideology? There is nothing special about a belief in education, hard work, family, social hierarchy, and so on. These are not the particular inventions of Lee Kuan Yew, or even particularly Asian. Lee's invention is much more original. It is a unique combination of Leninist organizational tactics with capitalist industrial and commercial technology implemented among a population with an Asian social background, resulting in a strictly controlled and paternalistic corporate entity that has delivered material wealth to its members. In this article, I wish to analytically examine the various facets of this structure.

2. Lenin

Few people would profess to be communists today. As everyone knows, communism brutalized and impoverished nations; perhaps even more importantly as no one likes to fail, it failed. Yet, we would do well to remember that the idea once attracted some of the best and the brightest, both in the East and the West. For example, Anthony Blunt and Kim Philby, both highly intelligent and capable members of the British aristocracy, took up communism at Cambridge and willingly spied for the Soviet Union over several decades.

To both radical intellectuals and disadvantaged classes, communism offered Marx's highly seductive and supposedly scientific analyses of the shortcomings of capitalist societies, promising the inevitable arrival of the proletariat utopia in which money and exploitation will be unknown. With such ideological inspiration, and with highly effective organizational techniques initiated by Lenin, communist parties triumphed, however briefly, in Russia the largest country in the world, and China the most populous, despite the backward development of capitalism in these countries and their weak working classes, while failing to make headway in the more mature capitalist economies that are supposedly more ready to move to the next stage.

The cases of Russia and China demonstrate that, for the purpose of achieving power, the political economy of communism is less important than its organizational technique. If you do the second well, you can succeed despite the low applicability of the first. For over half a century Communism was the favoured ideology of all revolutionary leaders, most of them of middleclass rather than proletariat background, because it provided a ready-made set of propaganda and organizational tools. Communism might die, but Leninism lives on. The ideological buzzwords change, and photos of Yeltsin replace those of Gorbachev, but the same machinery of control can remain in operation.

Lenin's revolutionary machinery, the Bolshevik party, was a network of individuals whose total loyalty was devoted to the organization: personal feelings and common humanity were not only secondary, they were suspect and dangerous. Given such an "iron discipline" organization, the trusted individuals were placed into all the important parts of the society. Army units had their political commissars, and civil service units, collective farms, factories, schools, trade unions and sports clubs all had their party secretariats. Among other things, the party achieved control over all parts of the economy; hence, private ownership of property ceased to exist, and a nominally Communist society came into being. Since all aspects of life were under control, moulding a new man fit for the communist utopia was realistic to contemplate. This seemed to be a very attractive scheme to highly power-conscious revolutionaries out to make a better world. The only drawback is: it did not work.

But perhaps the failure was simply due to its trying to achieve too much? The communist utopia envisaged a society of selfless individuals, who do not own and do not desire private property, and who, without coercion, would work to their best abilities and take only enough that satisfies their needs. The concept of economic incentive is eliminated. The consequence was that, with the suppression of market forces and individual initiatives that encourage the production of food and consumer goods, the old Russia and old China found themselves unable to deliver material wealth to its populace, and hence, unable to provide adequate rewards to enforce conformity.

However, there is no reason why a Leninist control structure cannot be imposed on a capitalist society that fully accommodates market forces and individual economic initiatives: you can still build up a network of trusted individuals and place them in the key positions of all organizations. It simply takes a higher and more refined level of knowledge and skill to carry this out, instead of the crude and brutal methods used by the communists. This was successfully achieved in Singapore, a success which many other nations, whether communist, feudal, colonial or already capitalist, seriously admire and are keen to emulate.

To continue reading click here.

Porn? No, Blogs Bug Me More

If by mainstream publications Carl Skadian is referring to the Straits Jacket, he has got to be joking. As a blogger I am naturally worried by anyone who writes for the PAP controlled media in Singapore and dares to use the term 'journalist'.

Singapore's press freedom has been ranked 147th by Reporters Without Borders and Amnesty International and the US State Department have consistently questioned Singaporean Laws that undermine freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Singapore. Now if you would like to check these 'facts' simply google them in the right hand corner of this blog.

The past few weeks have thrown up another worry about children and the Internet, as if parents don't have enough on their hands.

I'm talking about blogs.

As a journalist, I'm naturally wary of blogs already, mainly because bloggers are wont to throw accuracy out the window.

That's because checking facts seems to be the last thing on bloggers' minds unlike, say, mainstream publications which, for the most part, do their darnedest to make sure what they publish is accurate.

For bloggers, saying what they feel like saying seems to be de rigueur, consequences be damned.

Now, blogs have generated much controversy, but what happened here about two weeks ago takes the cake.

Just in case you missed it: Three people were charged with making racist comments in their blogs. They allegedly made seditious and inflammatory remarks about Malays and Muslims.

In one particularly galling incident, one among the three allegedly admitted to being "extremely racist" in one of his entries online.

That just about did it for me and blogs.

I'm glad the authorities hauled the trio to court. Hopefully, doing so will send a message to like-minded folk in cyberspace that they'd better start putting the brain before the mouse.

As far as I'm concerned, blogs are possibly the worst things about the Internet. Sure, pornography and other stuff rightly furrow the brows of parents, but the things some bloggers say go far beyond the pale.

I have read some of these comments, chiefly because some sane members of the public occasionally e-mail such views to us, to raise a red flag about what goes on out there.

Frankly, some of the blog entries just beggar belief. The amount of vitriol being spewed by some of these chaps will leave you speechless. And all the talk about self-regulating is just so much bull to me. You read about cases where people are forced to shut down their blogs because they get a stream of invective from folks who don't agree with what they say.

But there are many more blogs which encourage like-minded people to come forward and pour petrol on the fire.

Then there's the curiosity factor. The Sarong Party Girl blogger was one. She might have toiled in relative obscurity for a while, but once the word got out, the hits just kept on coming.

In the case of the three charged under the Sedition Act, there was worse to come.

After news of the charges broke, some members of the blogging community made comments that seemed far from the realm of common sense to me.

Here were three people charged with making inflammatory statements--in a society where being tolerant is constantly drummed into us, no less--and other bloggers were worried about what the incidents bode for freedom of speech.

They were alarmed that the arrests meant there was some campaign afoot to curtail what one could say online.

They had got to be joking. I wonder where it says that freedom of speech means one can go around irresponsibly taking potshots at everyone one dislikes, with a medium which has probably the widest reach of all.

Sure, you might have the freedom to say what you want, but it comes with responsibility and accountability. Many of the bloggers I have come across have neither.

As I said, blogging, to me, is the biggest danger out there. It's also given me more work to do when it comes to my children.

Now, I have to find a way to keep my kids from believing what they read when they come across such blogs.

My children are part Chinese, part Indian and part Eurasian. Plus, they have relatives whose faiths are a whole spectrum, from Roman Catholic to Muslim.

Already, they're asking some hard questions about the state of the world today, especially when it comes to acts of terrorism that have been committed since 9/11.

Sometimes, without thinking, they mouth certain things after reading or watching a news item that I then have to catch.

With all these influences around them these days, irresponsible blogs are not going to help.

By Carl Skadian
The Straits Times/ANN

Human Rights