The following is a review of the book, That We May Dream Again, by Ms Chee Siok Chin in March 2009. The book is a collection of writings by several former Internal Security Act detainees, including some of those who were detained in 1987, about their time during detention.
That We May Dream Again. That’s the title of a collection of brief accounts written by ex-detainees of the Marxist arrests in 1987 by the Internal Security Department.
It is a thin book that one should be able to finish reading in a couple of hours. However, it took me three days to complete it. It wasn’t that I had to plod through it and it certainly was not that the accounts were dull.
It was more because after almost each chapter, I found it difficult to move on for the experiences suffered by the detainees were heart-wrenching. It was not easy to read about how some of my fellow Singaporeans were used, bullied and persecuted by our own Government.
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These extracts may be frightening to those who are already afraid. But for those who are tired of the bullying and the lies perpetuated by this Government, this compressed book offers us hope and encouragement to stand up to injustice and oppression in our own country.
Read the full review here on the Singapore Democratic Party website.
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Abolish ISA
re Peter Sellers,
on its own ISA should be kept, but it should not be the end all tool to silence dissent, used with political gains.
maybe it should be answerable only to a truely people elected president, free from any links to party politics. as now a pro party tool, not pro S’pore organisation. reduced to a political tool, its very morale & public perception suffer. there are far reaching implications to itself, for such an important organisation it should not be taken lightly.
Referring to the PIAK, PIAK, may the ISD officer offer his regret and repentence or be ready to face his comeuppance.
God has the final say, S K Tan.
to 2)mice is nice… there is so much probability that the Peoples Authoritarian Party will use the ISA on its political opponents when it feels threatened enough.
And with the current system in place and how everything is controlled by one man and his party, there is no way you or anyone else can hold them (ISA) accountable and prevent it from being abused.
Do not take the PAP organization lightly, they will do whatever it takes :)
You cannot detain people without a trial.
I have been saying this in so many threads that maybe TOC should do a separate article on this subject, so all the nuances can be explained in detail.
Many people do not understand the full implications of ISA. Most Singaporeans have grown up believing it is a good thing and that it is the norm. It is not. I don’t think any other developed country has a law that allows the government to detain people without allowing them to defend themselves, without charging them in a court of law and without any limit to the length of time they can be held. This is not normal, in fact, it is highly abnormal. It is a barbaric law that has no place in modern society.
In 1987, the law was used by the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a brilliant Cambridge educated lawyer and his Home Affairs Minister and Second Minister for Law, S Jayakumar, former dean of the law faculty of NUS, against these 22 people. Neither can plead ignorance about the due process of law. Whether they did it for defensive political reasons, to propagate PAP rule or because they genuinely believed it was necessary for nation building is irrelevant.
The point is, they were wrong to imprison these 22 people who were and are innocent as they have not been proven guilty in a court of law to this day.
The law cannot be administered by any individual or group or individuals. Only a court of law can do it. Mice is Nice, are you suggesting our current President, a former head of ISD, can administer it? It will be like having a tiger guarding your house. He will eat you up, instead!
Where are the torturers now?
Living very quiet lives and fearing that they may be spotted by ex-detainees.
I was tortured but not by the ISD fellas but their peers.
I am looking for them.
You know what.
They disappeared into thin air.
This was part of their pre-retirement training.
Taught to parachute into a closed world.
You know in the case of the Khmer Rouge, there were cases of revenge torture and killing on them by those who had suffered so much and this happened after the KR regimewas militarily defeated by the Vietnamese Armed Forces in 1979.
But, many of them just disappeared into thin air to save their skin.
So, my thesis is torturers disappeared into thin air when they retired.
This applies to Nazis, Khmer Rouge, Japanese Kempetai and all the other notorious torture organizations.
However, let us sing the songs from all over the world to honour our heroes like Teo Soo Lung and others.
Let us do the South Pacific war dances to frighten the torturers and so our collective spiritts or phi are stronger than theirs and so we can strike strike them down.
Kamate kamate kia ora kia ora
tenei tangata puhuru puhuru
nama kiti kei
whaka fetei
tangata muria mai
PAP is utterly out of the world.
They maintain good relationship with China.
They offered as a middle man during the China-Taiwan saga (Thus inviting protest from Taiwanese, and singapore was infamously nicknamed as pee-sai).
Now in our own backyard, they lock up so called Marxists. Disgraceful.
hi D,
i know ISD as it is now. who’s the ultimate boss. but i am saying it should be managed indipendantly. no doubt too much power (not just ISD) is too centralised, for the worst.
but that should not automatically mean that ISA should be disbanded. while they should work with the governing party they should not be made to report to the same party.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
hi Peter Sellers,
i agree that nobody should be detained without trial.
let me clarify that a people elected president, more in the line of OTC? should oversee ISD operations not the ruling party. & that no ruling party should be above the President, status should be on par if not above it, complimenting the governing party. for they play very different roles.
*ISD used be used to refer to the organisation, not ISA. i realised my mistake.
Just a bit of reality in this discussion. During my time in prison, I was told that isd is the government and the government is isd!
Hi Peter Sellers,
I have already written a review of the Internal Security Act.
I think you just have to wait for it.
Btw the Police can detain people without trial up to 28 days in the UK.
The Patriot Act also allows detention without trial in the USA.
Just FYI.
Thank you Donaldson for your FYI, I do also know that people can be detained without trial up to 28 days in the UK, but that is only 28 days, can it compare at all to the 32 years Chia Thye Poh spent in detention without trial?
But I’d also like to note that unlike Singapore, the US and UK do have prohibitions for civil society activists and citizens to advocate, organise and demonstrate in far more liberal ways than Singapore does.
Some of you, go on, justify the ISA all you want. One day you’ll see it abused for political reasons again when the local activists get popular and effective enough. Just wait and see, tigers don’t change their stripes :)
Donaldson,
I am aware of it.
Look forward to seeing your article.
Can somebody tell me that is the below really written by our President Devan Nair, who was a PAP founding member?
“I had once publicly supported the need for the Internal Security Act when the democratically elected PAP Government was engaged in the life and death struggle against a murderous communist united front movement, committed to the violent overthrow of constitutional government. In subsequent years, I had continued to believe that the Act was justified given the volatile geopolitical milieu in which Singapore had to survive. Never had it occurred to me that the PAP government was capable of the gross abuse of the draconian powers conferred by the Act. And never was I more wholly wrong, and my conscience so grievously misplaced.”
Yes, at page xxiv of the forward to Francis Seow’s “To Catch a Tartar” published by Yale University South East Asia Studies in 1994.
I would like to read a copy of “that we may
dream again”.Where can I get it?
You can order it online from ethos books in singapore ($10.00).
http://www.ethosbooks.com.sg/store/mli_viewItem.asp?idProduct=223