Singapore’s Straits times on April 30th 2010 wrote in its online edition that Mr David Adelman, the new US ambassador to Singapore spent his first days mending fences with Singapore media on the comment that he made two months earlier on political freedom condition in Singapore that the newspaper claimed to have annoyed many.
First I would like to comment that Mr David Adelman wasn’t trying to mend the fences with the media as there’s no freedom of press in Harry Lee’s Singapore. The right words would be Mr David Adelman was trying to mend fences with Harry Lee and his regime as the media is nothing more than the mouthpiece of the government.
The second thing I would like to comment is that Straits times’ claim that the Ambassador’s comment that he made two months ago annoyed many in Singapore to be twisting the truth. One’s opinion is only judged and weighed with regard to Harry Lee standing on it. The Ambassador’s comment annoyed the dear leader and his corrupt regime that much is obvious but his remark probably encouraged many in the island to look upon the Ambassador( and America) as friend to many of Singapore’s population that’s more and more agitated and fed up with Harry Lee and his despotic ways.
Of course for the Ambassador to be effective he must place his home country’s interest above that of the country’s which he is posted in.That’s probably the reason why he’s softening his remark he had made earlier that called for more political freedom in Singapore that of which hurt the despot Harry Lee and his corrupt regime.
The Ambassador said that he made the remark as an expression of his pride to his country’s system a thing which is totally alien to Singaporeans. No Singaporean in a healthy mental capacity would feel proud of his country simply because common Singaporeans have no say whatsoever in the governance of their country. The very act of trying to express their differing opinion to that of the regime would mean prosecution, fine and jail or worse if they persist, defamed crazy and jailed in mental institution, held indefinitely without trial under ISA or even be killed outright. No sane Singaporean would be proud of their country. That much is obvious.
How can a population stifled with fear be a happy and extraordinary people that live their live with pride and dignity. Fear makes the smallest jail there is. It incapacitates a person and made him to always conform to the oppressor wishes despite what his aspirations, beliefs and conscience are telling him. It dwarvens a person robbing him of self esteem and his spirit making him effectively a zombie, a walking dead without his own mind. A sad existence. A subdued people.
No, Singaporeans know no pride. What they know is fear.
http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_520979.html
Singapore is a malignant cancer to the region and is definitely trying to spread it cankerous influence to other more democratic countries in the region simply because it could only exist around its neighbors with a similarly flawed or impotent and failing democracy.
Below is an informative clip explaining real Singapore and the despot Harry Lee in 45 minutes:
One nation under Lee
In response to Singapore Prime Minister video interview on Charlie Rose Show on his week long trip to USA I would like to comment on some of the things that the man said in that interview.
When asked what is it that the Chinese government see as a system in Singapore that they would like to have, the Prime Minister answered that the Chinese government sent many people to observe how the Singapore government do what they do and specifically they look at among other things Singapore’s water conservation, water recycle, financial system, housing, health care but most of all how the Singapore’s government run a system where the government can have legitimacy and there’s order and there’s continuity over long period of time and the system works and uncorrupted and there’s accountability. He also added that the Chinese thought it was a secret.
I can tell you why Singapore’s government appears to have legitimacy and there’s order, continuity over long period of time and the system works and appears uncorrupted and there’s appear to be accountability all while having a one party system just as China.
The answer is easy that they manage to did all that . . .
through intimidation, gagging of press and free speech, through abusing the law to make the government officials to appear without blemish, through destroying or in his words fixing the opposition figures and through building a culture to never question the government and through placing no venue for check and balance in the political arena. In other words through building a system of dictatorship that runs on systematic fraud relying on state propaganda and suing anyone that disagrees and thinks otherwise.
But the Prime Sinister I mean Minister is at least honest in his assessment that it is one thing to build a system relying on harsh intimidation and systematic fraud in a 3 million people city state but it’s another thing to try to implement the same scare tactic in a 1,300 million people country that represents a quarter of mankind population.
Another thing that’s worth noting in the interview is that the word existential seemed to be coming out often enough.
When asked about the North Korea regime the Prime Minister lamented that it’s an existential thing for the regime.
And when asked about the situation in Myanmar again the Prime Minister lamented that although the majority of every section of Myanmar society realized that the ongoing situation would bring them nowhere, he suspected that a few key people who make the decisions have decided that it is an existential thing for them. And that if they are out it’s not just the country and the government that has changed but where do they go and which jail will they be in and what would happen to their children, their jewels and their billions such that thus they are not likely to be persuaded by lectures.
And if you watched the Prime Minister hand gestures when saying all this you would note that one of his hands was suddenly moving pointing towards himself. This alone tells that it’s the very feeling that he feels about his own regime in Singapore. That though they have realized things couldn’t continue as they are for much longer it’s an existential thing for them. That is it has boiled down to preserving self interest at the cost of greater good.
When further asked what was his philosophy for the relevance of Singapore and its future the Prime Minister replied that if they wanted to make a living for themselves they would have to be extraordinary.
And with that as his reply I would like to ask any sane people what kind of people could prosper and develop fully to be respected, noble and able person under an oppressive regime that’s been reduced to an existential thing. No extraordinary person would ever be produced under a constant fear condition. NONE. How would one be extraordinary if he even worries all the time about his thoughts and are afraid to pursue what he really believes in because the government tolerate no contradictory views or even the slightest dissent.
The older generation which was less educated and simple minded may have tolerated the oppressive regime and permissive about violations to their civil rights but in the 21st century only the insane, the coward and the crook would be willing to tolerate a regime of oppression. And that is why many Singaporeans are leaving the country in numbers for good and many other share the sentiment and are awaiting the right time to emigrate when the chance is upon them.
It’s an existential thing for Singapore’s regime indeed!
The interview could be viewed from the following link
I posted in the first entry of my blog of my ordeal in Singapore and the persecution I’ve been enduring for years even in my home country Indonesia.
Many of you perhaps are wondering what could have caused my ordeal perhaps I’m a sort of trouble maker or a terrorist but their method clearly debunk any possibility that I was violating the law or be of any danger to the society. Had I been one I would have already been persecuted in the court room instead. So what could be the reason why I’m abused for years.
I’ve given some thoughts on this and honestly I couldn’t see any reason that could justify me being persecuted through the years.
Before the events that led me being toyed with in Singapore I fell in love with this girl that I usually see in the church every Saturday and I fell BIG(then again we never fall in love halfway don’t we). I have thought of the possibility that she was someone’s mistress so that could be a reason. I never knew the girl’s name and the last time I saw her she stared at me in a concerned look from a distance seemingly trying to convey a message and somehow I read her as ‘saying’ “Be strong”. And that was the very last time of me seeing her.
Another reason why they’ve been abusing me is that because I didn’t enjoy my stay in Singapore at all. If you thought what that had to do with abusing a person? Well I am convinced the people that abused and have been abusing me don’t use fair judgment and common sense because they HAD no reason to treat me the way they did and are. They are the kind of people that do just because they could and want to.
One thing for certain is that they keep me under pressure and in perpetual persecution now and then because I defied them by not cooperating.
The way that they put pressure on me is by spreading lies about me that I’m schizophrenic(complete with made up diagnosis to cover my ordeal in Singapore), or mentally ill or unstable, that I’m a smug and arrogant person, and that I’m lacking social graces. These are the lies that I’ve personally heard. Much of the pressure used to come from my own mother. Another way is that by putting me down as much as they could to erode me of my self confidence and self-worth. They did this by manipulating my grades, by making people to reject me(this includes: friends, lecturers, family members or people I hardly knew), by using ridicule from stranger or family members, by throwing insults as a response to my online posting, etc. They also have been using intimidation done mostly through strangers. For example a stranger I passed while jogging would show extreme hatred towards me by facial expression and would stare at me even when I was already past them. Or another when a certain neighbor’s driver I hardly knew did exactly that a few times when his car passed me by. And recently actually yesterday when I visited a church in Bandung a 140km trip from the capital Jakarta, a stranger stared at me with hatred in his facial expression from the distant as he walked and many other things they did either to provoke me or to agitate me. These things may look little to you but it’s annoying and disturbing nonetheless. And when trying to share this with my own mother she used to say it’s all in my head and that hurt a lot coming from the person that gave birth to you. They also targeted me in the internet forums that I frequently visit and I’ve received a few death threats through them too.
One thing for certain is that I’M NOT GUILTY OF ANY CRIME WHATSOEVER. The fault is not mine but those that persecuted me.
A lot of times now I gave thoughts about seeking asylum in other countries but who would believe me and what country would accept me, a nobody. It would be a lot easier if I was persecuted in the court and brought to jail. I long to live in a free atmosphere free from intimidation and rejection. As far as I see it I’m being punished for my stand and my idealism/principles alone. I’ve seen my own mother and family members turned from a faithful Christian to a secular person.
Thank you for reading this.
Cameroon, Djibouti, Armenia, Jordan, Tajikistan, Moldova, Sierra Leone, Republic of Congo, Nepal, Angola, Bahrain and Bangladesh.
By now you must be wondering why do I just mentioned the above name of nations? What do they have in common?
They are some of the countries that are listed as having better press freedom condition than ALL but two ASEAN countries.
The list is published by reporters without borders(The complete list can be viewed from here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Press_Freedom_Index )
ASEAN membership includes(in no particular order): Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and VietNam.
ASEAN members’ press freedom 2009 ranking is as follow(from best to worst)
Note the list contains more than 175 countries in the world with small ones excluded into a 175 ranks in terms of the condition of their freedom of press.
So none of the ASEAN member countries is ranked in the upper half of the list(88 or lower) with Indonesia(at 100th) leading the press freedom condition by a large margin than even the second best ASEAN country ranking which is Cambodia at 117th.
And the star of this blog Singapore is at the lower half of the ASEAN ranking and only better than Brunei, Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.
Singapore is ranked at a pathetic 133th out of 175 countries in the whole world that’s worth listing. If you do a simple math 43/175 or 24.57% which means that Singapore is ranked at the lowest quarter of the whole world when in comes to freedom of press. Or in other words a little more than 75% of the whole world has a freer press than ones in Singapore. And I would call that a gagged press.
The funny thing is Singapore leadership has been making rhetoric that Singapore is a first world country. So let us examine whether it holds ground.And these days information is just a click away with the internet and so anyone could check what is meant by first world and whether Singapore is officially listed as one here http://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/first_world.htm
Thus Asian countries that are listed as being a first world nation are Japan Korea, . . . . . AND THAT”S ABOUT IT.
The top 10 first world countries by freedom of press as of 2009 are(from best to worst)
And Japan is ranked in terms of freedom of press at 17th which would place it respectably in the 11th first world countries by freedom of press while South Korea is ranked at 69th.
It DEFINITELY takes MORE than GDP per capita value to be considered a first world country.
And with several countries listed sharing some ranking thus Singapore could be worse off than being in the worst 25% of the world when it comes to freedom of press. Do you think civil liberty could grow in a gagged media environment such as Singapore. Do you believe that rule of law could prevail without the assurance of civil liberty?
I leave the thoughts to you.
Below I attach an open letter written by the Secretary General of Reporters without Borders which was written as a response to the habit of the Singapore’s Prime Minister and Mentor Minister(the only official title to have existed in the world) to sue the press(and genuine opposition figures) on defamation charges. Of course they won every single libel IN SINGAPORE. And they filed and won NONE outside Singapore.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong
Prime Minister’s Office
Orchard Road
Istana
Singapore 238823
Paris, 25 March 2010
Dear Prime Minister,
A foreign news organisation has yet again been forced to apologise to you and your father and pay you a large sum of money for publishing an article you did not like. This time it is the New York Times Co. that is a victim of this double punishment because of a compliant judicial system that always rules in favour of you and your family in all the lawsuits you bring against foreign news media.
Before the New York Times Co., you succeeded in punishing the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), FinanceAsia.com, The Economist, International Herald Tribune and Asian Wall Street Journal for their coverage of the political and economic situation in your country.
Threatened by a trial, the New York Times Co. apologised to you and your father, Lee Kuan Yew, for the article “All in the Family,” written by Philip Bowring and published in the 15 February issue of the International Herald Tribune. As well as an apology, this US media company had to pay 114,000 US dollars in damages.
Your lawyer, Davinder Singh, said Bowring’s article violated an “agreement” between your family and the International Herald Tribune, which was sentenced in 1994 to pay a large sum in damages for an article entitled “The claims about Asian values don’t usually bear scrutiny.”
The now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review agreed last November, after a long legal wrangle, to pay you and your father 290,000 US dollars in damages. Despite a lack of evidence, Singaporean judges ruled in favour of your family both in the original trial and on appeal without a thought for media freedom.
Reporters Without Borders condemns the judicial harassment which you and your father have practiced for years in order to prevent foreign news media from taking too close an interest in how you run your country. It does serious and lasting harm to press freedom in Singapore.
Your government has repeatedly displayed a disturbing inability to tolerate foreign journalists. Last October, for example, Benjamin Bland, a British freelancer who strings for The Economist and The Daily Telegraph, was denied a visa and permission to cover an APEC summit in Singapore. “I was forced to leave Singapore after the government refused to renew my work visa without any explanation,” Bland told Reporters Without Borders.
But the censorship has above all affected local media and local artistic production. In October 2009, for example, the ministry of information, communication and arts upheld a ban on a documentary by Singaporean filmmaker Martyn See about government opponent Said Zahari.
In response to the publication of the Reporters Without Borders 2009 press freedom index, in which Singapore was ranked 133rd out of 175 countries, your law minister, K. Shanmugam, described it as “absurd” and “disconnected from reality.”
Unfortunately, the facts show that we are right.
In the six years since you became prime minister and said you favoured an “open” society, we have seen very few improvements in the situation of free speech.
We therefore think your government should take the following measures as a matter of urgency:
1. Put a stop to the libel actions which you and your relatives have been bringing against Singaporean and foreign media that cover Singaporean developments in an independent manner. As the UN special rapporteur for freedom of expression recently said, the prime minister, his minister and high officials must refrain from suing journalists over their articles and comments.
2. Amend the criminal code so as to abolish prison sentences for press offences.
3. Amend the press law, especially the articles concerning the granting of publication licences. The current restrictions are preventing the emergence of independent media. The film law should also be relaxed.
4. Reform the national security law so as to abolish administrative detention, which allows the authorities to imprison people because of what they think.
5. Reform the Media Development Authority so that it is no longer able to censor and can solely make recommendations about TV programmes and films.
6. Allow government opponents and civil society representatives unrestricted access to the public media.
7. Guarantee the editorial independence of all the media owned by Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) and Media Corporation of Singapore (Mediacorp).
8. Transfer the money that your family has obtained in damages from foreign and Singaporean news media to a support fund for imprisoned journalists that Reporters Without Borders proposes to set up.
We regret that you, the members of your government and your father keep citing the need to guarantee Singapore’s stability as grounds for controlling the media and maintaining its draconian laws. Countries that show the most respect for press freedom, such as Finland and Norway, are peaceful and prosperous democracies. Freedom of expression is not a source of political unrest. Quite the contrary.
You have perpetuated your father’s legacy by continuing to harass and intimidate news media. As a result, aside from a few websites specialising in Singapore, no news outlet can publish independent news and information about issues affecting the political situation in your country.
We would be very honoured to be able to meet with you in order to talk about our observations and our proposals for guaranteeing press freedom in Singapore in person.
Respectfully,
Jean-François Julliard
Secretary-General
For those of you who read my first blog entry you might be wondering and taken by surprise. Most people I assume only hear good things about Singapore. For instance most people do not know or realize that Singapore is considered a one party state regime. While it is true that they may have a few political parties, the only reason of the other parties existence is merely to give legitimacy and to suspend a false sense of belief that Singapore is a democracy. The only party that runs Singapore has always been the People Action Party(PAP) which brought Singapore’s strongman and despot Harry Lee to power. Over the years this regime has grown oppressive and to make my point clear let me quote from another blog which article is titled Righting a wrong. It’s a first hand experience of a Singaporean citizen and mother dealing with the oppressive system of the regime.
Monday, January 19, 2009
Prof Lee Wei Ling’s article on ‘Righting a wrong comes from the heart’ (The Sunday Times 18th Jan 2009) seems to talk about me. haha….
If I know there is something wrong, I will try to set it right whether or not it is my business to do so. At my age, I have not lost the fire in my belly. But such a busybody trait has got me into a lot of trouble because I’m not Prof Lee Wei Ling, who is the daughter of MM Lee Kuan Yew and sister of PM Lee Hsien Loong.
I was threatened to shut up. My son’s life will be in danger if I continue to set things right. My son has a hard time in schools.
I have many personal experiences with MOE, which is very guilty of not setting things right. They allow teachers and principals to abuse students. Their educators cheat, lie but such cases were covered up. MOE condone wrong doings of their staff. One of their PR officers even threatened an editor against pursuing a case I was complaining.
I have an extremely hard time with the Immigration and Checkpoint Authority (ICA) recently. I find the officers very KL, making things more difficult for me after I complained to Minister Wong Kan Seng. Many people said I deserve it. For setting things right?
Even in a government hospital, my son and I were not spared. I wrote to Minister of Health Khaw Boon Wan but sigh…… Luckily, I would be meeting Prof Lee Wei Ling. She has agreed to see my son.
It’s our duty to right a wrong when we see one……. and you don’t have to be MM Lee’s daughter to do that.
End
Taken from
http://topmleehsienloong.blogspot.com/2009/01/righting-wrong.html
So I ask you the readers what kind of regime would threaten a mother and the life of her son?
Do you also not know that Singapore is the only country in the whole world to have come up with official office title of Senior Minister and Mentor Minister? Do you know that Singapore’s Prime Minister is paid roughly 6 times the salary of the president of the United States. That’s a daylight robbery and getting away with it by calling it salary.
Lee Kuan Yew aka Harry Lee once orally revealed this statement: “This is not an administration doing its job this is an entrepreneurship on the political stage on a national scale”
And for that let me quote Benito Mussolini a WWII Italian fascist and dictator “Fascism is the convergence of governmental and corporate powers”
My ordeal in Singapore and the abuse I’ve been enduring ever since.
I would like to urge everyone to stay away from Singapore especially those who are thinking to emigrate, work or study there. It is a country which doesn’t respect human rights.
I was starved in their hospital intentionally for three days for reason they put as simply as wanting to play with me. These people used a a remote viewer like ability to terrorize me. I know mentioning this would risk me being pointed as nuts but that is what happened. They also sent me an evil spirit too which fled as soon as I cried out to God.
They starved me in the hospital for three days until I was so thin and starving. I was in their hospital because I jumped off the train platform because I was in terror and sustained injury to my spine and completely shattered my left wrist among other fractures in my legs.
In the ambulance I recalled that someone asked whether I remember everything and through the ambulance radio I heard a typically Singaporean accent of a male voice saying they just wanted to play with me.
In the hospital my repeated requests to make phone call was ignored(they finally gave me a phone without line) and only gave me food when I was fed up with them that is after they starved me there for three full days.
I’ve also been defamed schizophrenic which I’m most definitely not. This I prove by without taking medication AT ALL and without seeing psychiatry AT ALL I finished a 7 semester tertiary degree and I proceeded to have hobbies such as model kit building which a schizophrenic would never be able to do let alone finish including one which took me 6 weeks, a Revell 1:72 VIIC/41 U-boat which is a relatively large model about a meter long.
Singapore sent me a fake letter in which they claimed that my doctor has declared me fit again to resume my study several years after I began my study elsewhere since they knew their cover was not going to hold if I ever finished my study elsewhere while being deemed schizophrenic by them. But that doctor must have been invisible or the alternative made up by them.
I’ve been psychologically abused, harassed, persecuted and discriminated against because I have not been cooperative with their cover up of me. So I urge anyone to STAY OUT OF SINGAPORE. Singapore is a fraud. It’s a country run by tyrant.
Concerning my online activities I’ve received 5 death threats through various forum that I frequent through private messaging system by people who registered only to send me those threats.
Even talking about the ordeal to anyone else my family members and relatives would be making faces, telling the person I talk to to best ignore me and speaking in dialect which I don’t quite understand basically saying I talk too much and even cutting my conversation and ignoring me and or laughing at me outright. So you see even my own family wouldn’t help me and try to put me down. My mother once said to me when I was back from my ordeal in Singapore you’re in trouble you’re all alone. She later also said “You could be a destitute”. She said that when I was still doing my tertiary degree in Indonesia. Of course she denied ever saying those things even to the point of swearing.
Even my grades suffered unjustly. I’ve become like the worst criminal to many people even though I’ve done NOTHING wrong. Some people will be outright hostile(showing outright hatred) towards me WITHOUT REASON even when I barely knew them.
My health has deteriorated much especially my kidneys due to the psychological abuse and mental torture I’m subjected to for years. A couple check to the doctor would reveal nothing until I gave up seeing doctor altogether. If they could defame me crazy while I’m not they could also falsify my health diagnosis. Now my focus is to recover my health and for that reason I’m forced not to look for a job or a career yet.
I’m trying to expose a regime of evil less trying to get sympathy.
The last thing I want is another me. Last time I learned from national news all over these people killed another foreign student named David Widjaja and typically the victim got the blame for it for trying to attack his professor with a knife and then committing suicide. Obvious autopsy analysis proved that he was brutally murdered then thrown up from heights(as aired on the local Kick Andy show). He was already unable to stand when he supposedly made the jump and before he hit the ground and died of his wounds.
