The Associated Press
Published: September 14, 2006
SINGAPORE Singapore's prime minister and his father, who founded the modern city-state and holds a Cabinet position, have filed a defamation suit against the publisher and editor of the Far Eastern Economic Review.
Citing court documents, Dow Jones Newswires reported Thursday that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Lee Kuan Yew, filed the suit on Aug. 22 against Hong Kong-based Review Publishing Company Ltd. and FEER editor Hugo Restall. FEER is owned by Dow Jones & Co. Inc.
The lawsuit centers on an article published in July about Chee Soon Juan, an opposition politician in Singapore.
Restall wrote about Chee's campaign for more democratic freedoms in the tightly controlled city-state and how the ruling People's Action Party has sued a number of opposition politicians. The article also criticized the government's handling of a corruption scandal at a charity, the National Kidney Foundation.
Chee, an outspoken critic of Singapore's government, was bankrupted in February and barred from standing in elections after failing to pay former prime ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong some 500,000 Singapore dollars in libel damages for comments he made during the 2001 elections. In March, he was jailed for eight days for questioning the independence of Singapore's judiciary.
FEER's publisher and Restall have until Sept. 25 to appear at Singapore's High Court to respond to the suit, Dow Jones Newswires reported.
A FEER spokesman declined to comment.
Before filing the suit, the Lees sent a letter to Review Publishing demanding that it remove the interview from the magazine's Web site, issue an apology and pay compensation.
Review Publishing proposed publishing the Lees' letter on its Web site and asked for an interview with Lee Kuan Yew, who ran the city-state from 1965, after it separated from a short-lived federation with Malaysia, to 1990. His son took over in 2004 from Goh, though the elder Lee retains the Cabinet title of Minister Mentor.
Ruling party leaders have successfully sued several opposition politicians and journalists for defamation over the years. They say they sue to protect their reputations.
Domestic and international critics, including the U.S. State Department and London-based rights group Amnesty International, have accused Singapore's rulers of using defamation lawsuits to stifle opponents.
Oh man, are the courts going to be busy.
ReplyDeleteSome lawyers in this town will do very well.
Time to order some new cars, girls and boys! Business is looking waaaayyyy good!
Akan datang: Spectacular courtroom action, for the world to enjoy!
o this is such a bore; do they ever think of something new to do?
ReplyDeleteCan any lawyer enligthten me. I know that our great men will only protect their honour in out own courts but why must any organisation want to answer their suit. Can't they counter sue in Hong Kong where FER is based. Can't they ask for the case to be be heard in HK or other country?
ReplyDeleteWho is the happiest Singh in the whole world?
ReplyDeleteThe "win" the Singh
Just one Singh.
ReplyDeleteplease stop the sikh joke
ReplyDeleteWhy the racist jokes about the minorities !!!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteIgnorance ? or Bigotry ? Jealousy ?
Sense of Insecurity or Inferiority Complex?
It was acknowledged that this is a product of the previous education system and other policies and it is getting worse.
Sports in schools played with not much racial mingling those years.
(getting better these years though. Not sure how much improvement ?) Why the belated move when the leaders have been told of these problems for many years. Of course, better late than never and be forever ignorant.
Nowadays we have Racial Harmony day - which is ONCE a year.
What about the REST of the year ?
We have institutionalsied racism in employment; in more liberal immigration policies for certain countries; while certain other countries are classified as 'NON-TRADITIONAL COUNTRIES'; groups here speaking in their own tongues disregarding others who are in their groups and even in offices and official meetings, and this even being encouraged here. How do you expect real racial mingling and cross-cultural understanding ?
This is worse these days, even though most people here can speak English.
Where the hell do our administrators think the other races come from? Many of whom have been here as 3rd or 4th generation..more 'Singaporean' and more loyal than the recent immigrants from so-called Traditional countries. (These 'older' immigrants incl the Peranakans, the Malacca Chetties, etc...).
So, if there is institutionised racism, what do we expect from other ignorant people.
And the irony is that they cry foul when they get the same treatment when they are overseas.