Speech by Dr James Gomez at Speaker’s Corner on 5 January 2010

EDITORS’ NOTE:

The following speech is reproduced with kind permission from Dr James Gomez

Dear friends,

Today we gather to commemorate JB Jeyaretnam and his political work which have become symbols for the principles of democracy in Singapore. Over the last 40 years, whether as an individual, a civil society group member or an opposition party politician one way or another we would all have come across or had some direct contact with JBJ if we had embarked on a democratic project. Now that JBJ is no longer with us, it is important that we consolidate and build on some of his achievements and plot new democratic opportunities as Singaporeans.

My first direct contact with JBJ was in 1988 when as President, of the Philosophy Society and a first year undergraduate at NUS, I invited him to speak on Political Freedoms in Singapore on campus – it was 21 years ago. NUS had a set of bureaucratic procedures that had to be negotiated if you wanted to invite opposition figures to speak on campus. These bureaucratic processes do not make inviting opposition parties representatives onto campus easy. At the same time, the main challenge was staff members and fellow undergraduates who practiced self-censorship and tried to undermine or withdraw support when inviting opposition figures on to campus to speak. Nevertheless the few of us involved in the organization of this talk succeeded, and JBJ spoke to a full house at Lecture Theatre 11 and the talk was reported on the front page of the NUS student union newspaper.

In the years following I had other contact occasions with JBJ. We had conversations over writing styles and article submissions to the Hammer at his office in the former Colombo Court building. I followed his campaign in the 1991 general elections attended his walkabout and rallies. In the later part of the 90s, like many Singaporeans, I too bought a book or two from him as he began his island-wide book selling effort to clear his bankruptcy arising from politics.

Seeing that this was a solitary effort, in 2001, I, through the Think Centre, had the opportunity to organize with several others the Save JBJ Rally. We had to navigate red tape at the various national licensing authorities and eventually managed to pull the event off. The challenges of organizing the Save JBJ Rally is a matter of public record as it was reported in the media and have since been analyzed in academic writings on Singapore politics. Because of the interaction with JBJ it was quite natural that several of us from the Think Centre trooped over to the Workers’ Party where he had been the Secretary-General for over 30 years.

Work abroad kept me away from Singapore but in 2003, it was my pleasure and privilege during one of my trips back home to prepare and deliver the citation for JBJ when he received the Think Centre’s Human Rights award. When JBJ passed on in late 2008, I was again abroad and like many others penned a tribute on my blog and joined the Facebook page set up to commemorate him.

Since JBJ’s passing, there have been several initiatives to commemorate him, institutionalize his democratic legacy and acknowledge his contribution to the democratic cause. These efforts are being undertaken by those who have known him and worked closely with him and also by others who find it symbolic to evoke his name as a democratic ideal.

At the same time, we have also begun to witness hurdles to efforts to commemorate JBJ institutionally while others try to cast aspersions on his political work. Given the nature of Singapore political system and its impact on political culture there will always be some who will try to cast JBJ and his democratic efforts in negative light.

The only way to combat this is to ensure democratic values, ideas, efforts and institutions are constituted in Singapore and to show up those who would paint democratic principles and democrats in unflattering ways. Seeing all of you here today, I am confident that institutionalizing JBJ as a democratic symbol in Singapore will not be a problem moving forward.

I want to end my tribute to JBJ today by sharing with you two updates. One, I like to inform you that I have chosen not to renew my Workers Party memberships which lapsed on 31 Dec 2009. Two, that some of us, inspired by JBJ, had submitted an application to the Registrar of Society in late April 2009 to set up a political association called Singaporeans for Democracy. It is approaching 9 months since we submitted our application and we are still waiting to hear from the Registrar about the outcome. Nevertheless we have been actively following up on our application in the last months by calling up the relevant officers at the Registrar for updates. In our last call to the Registrar office last week we were informed that the results of our application will be known in two weeks – that is mid January 2010. I hope to make more information publicly available as soon as we hear from the Registrar.

I was like many of you, saddened by JBJ’s demise. But I am also someone who prefers to look ahead. JBJ has done good political work and this is something we need to build on. More importantly the tone of the struggle needs to be borne in mind. If you want to take on the PAP, it should never be on a bended knee. That much I have learnt from JBJ.

(Adapted and developed from my tribute to JBJ written on 1 October 2008 and delivered as a speech on 5th January 2010 on JBJ’s birthday commemoration at Speakers Corner.)

 

Dr. James Gomez
Lecturer Communications, Public Relations & Writing
School of Humanities, Communications and Social Sciences
Monash University
Building B, 4th Floor, Room 55 (B4.55)
900 Dandenong Road, Caulfied East
Victoria 3145

Archbishop Slammed for Perceived Sermon Remarks

The Christian Post, 11 December 2009

The leader of the Singapore Anglican Church has been fiercely criticised by members of the public for some remarks he was perceived to have made in a sermon about family units with single, divorced or same-sex parents.

Archbishop John Chew, who was reported by an established mainstream newspaper as having urged Anglicans to unite against alternative values, such as non-traditional family units, has been accused of being ‘bigoted’ and causing emotional injury to those he was seen as having referred to at the recent Centenary celebrations of the Anglican Diocese of Singapore.

Some netizens even accused Archbishop Chew of attempting to mix religion with politics. A Facebook group was started to express disagreement with the archbishop’s views and has grown to 39 members as of the time of writing. One made accusatory remarks on his web log.

Many of those who read the report had the impression that the Anglican leader was denouncing single and divorced parents and homosexual persons and encouraging his parishioners to do the same.

However, the archbishop did not refer to any of the groups in his sermon to 10,000 Anglicans at the celebration services held Sunday, November 29 at Suntec City.

In his public speech, he described an ongoing global crisis in which the rise of ‘underground’, ‘alternative’, ‘fringe’ and ‘fundamentalistic’ cultures has been threatening mainstream values and culture, leading to the breaking down of family classical norms.

He did this to provide a backdrop for his subsequent appeal to the Anglican community to be a purifying and enlightening influence in society and to seek its common good.

Archbishop Chew, who is the head of the regional and local Anglican Churches and elected president of the Protestant National Council of Churches of Singapore, did not denounce any of the groups in his sermon, which was based on the entire 17th chapter of the Gospel of John.

The comments that drew a public uproar were mostly made in the context of an interview the mainline church leader granted the journalist after the service – during which the archbishop was apparently asked to clarify what he meant by the terms he used – rather than in public as his report properly noted.

The article did not mention the substance of the archbishop’s exhortation to his members. Many had the impression that the church leader was simply being critical of those in non-traditional family units and encouraging Anglicans to do the same.

In his sermon, Archbishop Chew called on his parishioners to pursue Christian compassion and morality, and to take up their social responsibility, and spiritual responsibility for one another in their grateful response to God for revealing Himself to them.

He exhorted Anglicans to watch their own lives and understand and take seriously God’s call for His people to resemble His gracious, merciful and moral character before seeking to make any contribution to society.

The archbishop urged them not to neglect their social responsibility at a time when it is easy to become ‘self-protective’ but to be willing to sacrifice, even endure pain and loss comparable with the crucifixion of Christ, and give of their very best to God and His purposes.

Christians are called to be “in the world [but] not of the world,” he reminded them using a well-known Scriptural verse.

Juxtaposing Moses and Christ, Archbishop Chew told Singapore Anglicans that it was not only important to live out God’s glory but that they should help one another do the same. This is not something that believers can achieve individually; they can only do so as a community.

In the end, believers will be anchored firmly, whether in perilous or prosperous times, when their only concern is for God to continue with them and they are willing to live their lives in total obedience to Him.

It is the privilege of Christians that God reveals who He is to them through the cross, the archbishop expressed. “Our response is to live in obedience,” he said.

In closing, Archbishop Chew urged Anglicans to ‘express’ the glory of God in their lives so that the younger generation will have an example to emulate. – The Christian Post

Republished from The Christian Post on 11 December 2009

Statement from the Singapore Anti-Death Penalty Campaign

(Article sent by posted by request of Ms Rachel Zeng)

We are very encouraged by the Court of Appeal’s grant of hearing and second stay of execution to Yong Vui Kong that was made on 8 Dec 2009. It is a heartening turn of events for us at the SADPC. We congratulate Yong and our co-campaigner M Ravi on their success.

Throughout our campaign for Yong, various groups of people came forward to lend their time and expertise. We are grateful to everyone now in close collaboration in our campaigning efforts, as well as those assisting Ravi in his legal work.

We wish to thank once again everyone who attended our event at Speakers’ Corner last Sunday, 6 December. We were greatly encouraged by the number of people who turned up in support of Yong at such short notice. (Read one report of the event by The Online Citizen here)

Your generous donations have gone a long way to provide financial assistance to Yong’s family and to help defray campaign costs. Without your contributions, Yong’s family could not have afforded filing fees (S$550 for an originating summons) and their stay in Singapore.

We continue to appeal to the legal community to come forward and work with us. We also extend our call to lawyers dealing with capital offences to approach us so that we may render them any support that they need.

Singapore Anti Death Penalty Campaign (SADPC)
Our current working email address is sgantideathpenalty@gmail.com

Singapore: censorship city

By Ben Bland for Index on Censorship

When Reporters without Borders released its annual press freedom index last month, the Singapore government was not best pleased to find the city-state ranked 133rd out of 175 countries, below the likes of Kenya and Congo.

Singapore’s law minister, K Shanmugam, dismissed the low ranking as “quite absurd and divorced from reality”, insisting to a group of visiting American lawyers that Singapore is not “a repressive state” and does not “unfairly target the press”.

“Our approach on press reporting is simple: The press can criticise us, our policies. We do not seek to condemn that,” he said.

While reading his comments in the state-controlled Straits Times newspaper, I was busy packing my suitcase as I’d recently found out that I had become “the latest on a long list of foreign journalists who have been targeted by the government for their news coverage”, in the words of the Committee to Protect Journalists.

After a year as a freelance journalist in Singapore, contributing to publications such as The Economist, the Daily Telegraph and the British Medical Journal, my application to renew my work visa was rejected without warning, explanation or right of appeal.

The law minister’s comments might have appeared hypocritical to most people but if I had written as much while still in Singapore, I would have landed myself with a ruinous defamation suit.
As well as forcing out foreign correspondents, destroying the careers of local journalists and maintaining ownership over all the domestic newspapers and news broadcasters, the Singapore government is fond of using its stringent libel laws to further restrict the freedom of the press.

Two weeks ago, the soon-to-close Far Eastern Economic Review was forced to pay S$405,000 (£177,000) in damages and costs to the prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, and his father, Singapore’s founding father, Lee Kuan Yew, after being found guilty of defaming the Lees in a 2006 article based on an interview with Chee Soon Juan, an opposition politician.

Rupert Murdoch’s Dow Jones, which owns the publication, denied any wrongdoing but said it was paying up to avoid a protracted legal battle.

Dow Jones, which has chosen to locate the Southeast Asian headquarters of its newswire division in the tightly-controlled city-state, said that the ruling would not deter it from its core mission “to provide fair and timely reporting and commentary on matters of importance from around the world, including in Singapore”.

However, most working journalists in Singapore agree that the government’s persistent use of libel suits against global news organisations such as The Economist, the International Herald Tribune, the Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg has had a chilling effect on press freedom.

Such a heavy-handed approach may mean that the government loses the battle in the short term, coming under fire for showing such intolerance toward mild criticism from reputable publications.

However, the government has won the war because international news organisations have, by and large, been silenced by the threat of having to pay substantial damages or having their access to the lucrative Singapore market curtailed.

Stories that quote an opposition politician or civil society expert are few and far between, while hard-hitting investigative journalism is virtually non-existent.

The real victims of this repression are not foreign correspondents like myself, who can re-locate, or large news organisations such as Dow Jones, which can afford to bear the costs of an occasional libel suit, but Singaporeans.

For the inevitable result of the government’s regular attacks on the foreign press and its exercise of direct control over the domestic media is that a corrosive atmosphere of self-censorship is all-pervasive.

In researching this story, I spoke to many Singaporean and foreign journalists, trying to find someone who had a more positive view of the government’s approach to the press. But even those who support some of the government’s restrictions were not willing to comment on the record for fear of somehow upsetting the powers-that-be and jeopardising their livelihood.

Although I wrote about some sensitive topics in Singapore such as rising crime and the challenges of an ageing population, I always believed that I was operating within the bounds of what was acceptable.

However, the ruling People’s Action Party, which has maintained a vice-like grip on power since independence from Britain in 1959, deliberately refuses to clarify what journalists can and cannot write about.

By keeping the boundaries of what is permissible opaque, the government ensures that most journalists and other commentators err on the side of caution — especially Singaporeans, who have much more to lose than their foreign counterparts if they fall foul of the authorities.

This self-censorship is, in the words of Milos Forman, the Czech film director who lived under the yoke of the Nazis and the Communists, “the worst evil…because that twists spines, that destroys my character because I have to think something else and say something else, I have to always control myself.” – Index on Censorship

Republished from Index on Censorship on 30 November 2009
Ben Bland is a freelance journalist. He was based in Singapore between October 2008 and October 2009. He blogs at http://www.asiancorrespondent.com/the-asia-file