EDITORIAL: Jail serves as lone free

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Subject: EDITORIAL: Jail serves as lone free speech forum

Editorial & Opinion 
EDITORIAL: Jail serves as lone free speech forum

To be an opposition politician in Singapore can often be an act of
foolhardiness. Ask Chee Soon Juan. A neuropsychologist in the National
University of Singapore, he stood against the ruling People's Action Party in
the polls and was subsequently defeated. 

That was only the beginning of his problems. Soon he lost his job. When he
complained that his sacking was politically motivated, he was sued for
defamation. Not surprisingly, he lost the court case. And to pay the damages,
he ended up losing his house, too. 

Surely the Singaporean government has little to fear from Chee. After all,
Chee
is from the flyweight Singapore Democratic Party which lost all its seats at
the 1997 elections. Furthermore, with 81 of 83 MPs on its side, the government
has such a tight grip in Parliament that it had to offer a bonus seat to the
opposition. More recently, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew boasted that Singapore
is the ''most unshaken state in a region that has been struck by a typhoon''. 

So why the near-obsessive effort to gag Chee? 

Early this month, Chee was jailed for seven days when he refused to pay the
US$800 fine after he was found guilty for speaking in public in the heart of
Singapore's financial district last December. The activist has apparently
opted
for prison over the fine to hammer home that ''he has not done anything
wrong''. 

On Wednesday, Chee was again found guilty for another public speech he gave on
Jan 5. This time he was slapped with 12 days of imprisonment, or a $1,470 fine
-- a sentence that would automatically disqualify him from standing for
election for five years. 

Clearly, Chee has deliberately sought to test the limits of political
debate in
the tightly-ruled city-state. The government said under the law, anyone
holding
a public event for more than five people must apply for a police permit. To
this, Chee countered that the Public Entertainments Act of 1959 is not in
accordance with Singapore's constitution. The permit system, censorship laws
and state control of key media, said Chee, stifle debate and prevent the
opposition from being heard, forcing him to take to the streets and break
laws.

Indeed, the 1963 constitution guarantees freedom of speech, association and
assembly. However, there is a sub-clause which allows the government the right
to curtail free speech and association on grounds of ''national security''.
Put
simply, Singaporean have the right to free speech, but not freedom after
speech. 

The free speech trials are not the end of Chee's legal troubles. Next
month, he
is to answer a summons from, yes, the environment ministry for failing to
secure a permit to sell his book, ''To Be Free: Stories from Asia's Struggle
Against Oppression''. While the book was not banned, major bookstores have
refused to carry it. And when Chee tried to sell his book on the streets, he
was promptly charged for hawking without a licence. 
The book is about six Asian activists who have served as an inspiration for
Chee -- Taiwan's long-time dissident Shih Ming-teh; Burma's Nobel laureate
Aung
San Suu Kyi; assassinated Philippine politician Benigno Aquino; Indonesian
author Pramoedya Ananta Toer; South Korean President Kim Dae-jung; and Chia
Thye Poh, the longest-serving political prisoner in Singapore. 

No doubt, Chee's one-man campaign has drawn some sympathy, if not support,
from
many Singaporeans who for decades have known only fear. Elsewhere in the
region, the support for Chee is more emphatic. Taiwan's Shih, who is now a
prominent opposition legislator, was in court during Chee's second trial.
Other
backers include the Council of Asian Liberals and Democrats, an
organisation of
nine liberal democratic parties in Asia including Thailand's Democrats. 

Senior Minister Lee, however, appears to have nothing but contempt for
democrats such as Chee. Chee, he said, must have read about the turmoil and
agitation in neighbouring Malaysia and thinks he can be Anwar Ibrahim leading
the crowds in a reformasi movement in the island state. ''Well, let him try,''
he said. 

Interestingly, that was exactly what Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad
said of Anwar not so long ago. 

The Nation