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From Asia Sentinel. Article by Ben Bland, freelance journalist who had his visa extension application rejected by the Singapore Government.
When I moved from London to Singapore last October to set up as a freelance journalist, I finally got to meet the two officials from the Ministry of Information who had helped me secure an employment visa.
Over a cup of coffee at their office in a former colonial police station – possibly the world’s most stylish propaganda ministry – they probed me politely about my background and intentions in Singapore. They were friendly but seemed perplexed about the concept of freelance journalism, even though it forms the backbone of much foreign reporting these days.
“If we have a problem with something that you’ve written, who can we speak to?”
Obviously, I told them, you can talk to the editor of whichever publication has commissioned any particular story.
“But what if we just don’t like what you’re writing in general?”
Then talk to me, I added.
They never did. Last month, after applying to renew my visa following a successful year in Singapore, I received a one-line letter informing me that my application had been rejected.
While the governments of Burma, China and Iran tend to arrest troublesome foreign reporters or expel them without delay, Singapore’s more media-savvy government prefers a subtler approach to repression. The non-renewal of a work visa is their preferred method for getting rid of foreigners with minimal fuss or attention. It was the fate suffered last year by a group of Burmese permanent residents who made the mistake of protesting in support of their countrymen during the Saffron uprising of September 2007. They knew why they were being forced to leave, having breached Singapore’s strict laws, which effectively proscribe public protest. I have no idea why I was ushered out.
Although the government likes to brag about the Lion City’s ultra-efficient civil service, as soon as I tried to find out why my visa application had been rejected, I ran up against a brick wall. Officials from the Ministry of Manpower stonewalled me day after day while my ‘friends’ from the Ministry of Information suddenly became a lot less helpful, insisting that they knew nothing about my case and refusing to assist me.
Eventually, after an intervention from the British High Commission, I was told that the government was not willing to disclose the reasons for turning down my application, despite the fact that I met all the criteria for renewal. I was told, in no uncertain terms, not to bother appealing.
Kept out of the loop by the government, like a growing number of Singaporeans, I turned to the uncensored space of the internet to find some clues.
On the popular ‘Sam’s Alfresco Coffee Shop’ message board, one user called ‘scroobal’ seemed better informed about my enforced departure than the witless bureaucrats, suggesting it was somehow related to my work for Asia Sentinel.
He described me as “one dumb and ignorant journalist” for “staying in Singapore and doing things for Asia Sentinel”. “Might as well pee in front of the Istana gates while old man drives by,” he said, using the term many Singaporeans prefer to describe Lee Kuan Yew, their founding Prime Minister and current Minister Mentor, in private.
Elaborating on this theory, he explained that Asia Sentinel was founded by “ex-editors of publications previously sued by the old man such as Far Eastern Economic Review and Asian Wall Street Journal” some of whom were “previously banned from Singapore”.
I don’t know whether my work for Asia Sentinel irked the government as much as the presence of its editor John Berthelsen, who was refused entry to the city-state earlier this year, 21 years after he was first forced out as a correspondent for the Asian Wall Street Journal in circumstances remarkably similar to my own.
Over the last year, I have reported for a wide range of serious publications in addition to the Asia Sentinel, including The Economist, The Daily Telegraph, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the British Medical Journal and even Singapore’s government-owned Straits Times and Business Times. I have covered some sensitive subjects in the tightly-controlled city-state such as rising crime, healthcare and ageing and business links with Burma.
However I steered clear of criticism of Singapore’s first family, knowing that any negative comments about Lee Kuan Yew, his son, the Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, and the PM’s wife Ho Ching, who heads Temasek, one of Singapore’s two sovereign wealth funds, would lead to a libel suit I had little chance of defending, let alone winning.
In recent years, the Lees have won libel cases against almost every major international news organization including The Economist, the International Herald Tribune, the Financial Times, Bloomberg and, most recently, the soon-to-be-closed Far Eastern Economic Review.
Combined with the government’s direct control over the domestic press, this leads to an insidious climate of self-censorship that cows both Singaporean and foreign journalists. Yet, ironically, the government still pursues its ambition of becoming a global “media hub” as it seeks to invigorate its export-dependent economy.
While I was packing my bags, the law minister, K Shanmugam, was insisting to a group of visiting American lawyers that Singapore’s perpetually low rankings in press freedom indices were “quite absurd and divorced from reality”.
“Our approach on press reporting is simple: The press can criticise us, our policies. We do not seek to proscribe that. But we demand the right of response, to be published in the journal that published the original article.”
I was desperate to speak out against such rank hypocrisy but had been effectively gagged when my work visa was cancelled, receiving a stern warning not to engage in any “business, profession or occupation” or any activities “detrimental to the security and well-being of Singapore”.
Some news organisations are put off by the government’s bipolar approach to the media. One leading international publication decided to set up its new Southeast Asian bureau in Bangkok rather than Singapore after learning how I had been treated.
But many are still attracted by the well-developed infrastructure, good transport connections and generous tax breaks and other financial inducements offered by Singapore’s inward investment agency, the Economic Development Board. Dow Jones, Reuters and BBC Worldwide, the commercial arm of the British state broadcaster, are among those with regional headquarters in Singapore, for whatever reasons.
It is a great testament to the unique brand of soft authoritarianism honed by Lee Kuan Yew and his People’s Action Party that they are able to convince so many journalists and media organisations to slip into voluntary restraints.
One veteran foreign correspondent in Singapore went so far as to advise me not to talk about my situation lest the government bar me from returning in future, thereby limiting my career prospects in Southeast Asia.
If self-censorship is rife among foreign reporters, who can simply leave the Lion City when they fall foul of the authorities, imagine the predicament faced by Singaporean journalists.
Even if they cross the unwritten line of acceptability unwittingly, they are subject to a form of internal exile, forced out of their jobs and made to somehow conjure up an alternative career if they are to feed and house their families.
It is little wonder that the sage advice of one professor of journalism at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University to an eager student reporter was: “If you want to do journalism, don’t do it in Singapore.”
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Ben Bland is a freelance journalist. He was based in Singapore between October 2008 and October 2009. He blogs at Asia File.
Read also: Singapore refuses to renew foreign journalist’s visa.
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I spoke in plain and simple English; which part of it do you not understand?
Where is the mystery to what I have just shared here? There is nothing to be specific about when one looks for a needle in a haystack, that is the nature of the thing.
Just as there no logic to the man who only knows how to use a hammer to solve all the problems of the world; is it such a wonder all he sees in the world is nails and nothing else?
This I think most people can understand without too much difficulty what I am saying here.
SD
Why should I tell you what they are talking about? Tell me if a man and woman makes love in the privacy of their room; are you suggesting that I film them and post it here?
That I think is a private matter; if they want to share it here; they can do so on their own steam; as for me, my lips are sealed – I am a man who simply respects the privacy of others – surely even you can understand why I cannot be specific abt such things.
maybe the man who only knows how to use the hammer and nothing else will have more luck in answering your questions? But he first needs to learn to use something beside the hammer? That may be a problem.
SD
(Internet Liaison officer of the brotherhood)
I saw this article from the Asia Sentient in 2008, no wonder you got boot out for reporting it in detail and truthfully.
http://yoursdp.org/index.php/news/singapore/1048-singapore-goes-after-dow-jones-again-
The island republic’s attorney general files contempt charges against the Wall Street Journal Asia for unfavorable editorials
In January of 1984, JB Jeyaretnam, Singapore’s then-lone opposition member of parliament, and mortal enemy of then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, was acquitted by Senior District Judge Michael Khoo in a Singapore court of making a false declaration about the accounts of his Workers’ Party.
Shortly after that, Senior District Judge Khoo lost his job and was unceremoniously moved to the attorney-general’s chambers, widely considered to be a much lower posting. The Jeyaretnam episode is the last time on record that a high-profile case ever went against any members of Singapore’s ruling Lee family or the government.
Given this unbroken record of legal victories, the Singapore government looks set to attempt to improve on it, filing contempt of court charges against the Wall Street Journal Asia for three articles published in June and July that “impugn the impartiality, integrity and independence of the Singapore judiciary,” according to the complaint. “These allegations and insinuations are unwarranted.”
One of the editorials concerned a 72-page report by the International Bar Association that has become an embarrassment both to the government and the Lee family. In a court case against the embattled opposition leader Chee Soon Juan, Lee Kuan Yew testified under oath that the Singapore Law Society had received a laudatory letter from the association, praising Singapore’s judicial system. Instead, the 72-page report, titled “Prosperity versus individual rights? Human rights, democracy and the rule of law in Singapore,” makes 18 recommendations which the association urges the Singapore government to implement as a matter of priority.
Singapore’s government, the report continues, “is currently failing to meet established international standards in these areas.” Reports of opposition candidates being targeted for criticizing the government, it says, “are of significant concern and threaten democracy and the rule of law in Singapore.” It describes an “apparent climate of fear and self-censorship surrounding the press in Singapore,” and that the “increasing tendency for high profile and respected publications to pay large out-of-court settlements to avoid litigation with PAP officials and the continued run of success within in-court claims is worrying.”
The Journal’s editorial called the report a ‘good primer’ on Singapore’s use of defamation suits against opposition politicians and the foreign press.
Christine Glancey, the managing editor of the newspaper, now owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., said she would have no comment and referred all questions to Robert Christie, Dow Jones corporate spokesman in New York. The contempt charges, and another case hanging fire in Singapore against the Far Eastern Economic Review, another Dow Jones publication, are rapidly becoming a test of News Corp’s nerve. It is the first time News Corp, which in the past has shown little stomach for taking on governments, has come up against the immovable object that is the Singapore regime, as other publishers have, usually to their sorrow.
The decision to file contempt charges comes a few days after another Singapore judge, Justice Woo Bih Li encouraged lawyers for the Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, to amend their defamation petition against the Far Eastern Economic Review to make sure they included Woo’s own more defamatory reading of an article about the two ministers. Woo’s ruling, two years after the filing of the original charges, appeared to be unprecedented.
Singapore and the Lee family have long been famous for suing journalists, both foreign and domestic – and they have never lost a suit in Singapore. The Far Eastern Economic Review was a favorite target. The media watchdog organization Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore 140th out of 167 countries surveyed in terms of freedom of the press. The country has been kicking foreign journalists out for writing critical articles about the republic since the early 1970s.
An official enquiry requested by Jeyaretnam into allegations of executive interference in judiciary appointments in the wake of Khoo’s demotion found that there was no truth to the claims. In fact, Justice T S Sinnathuray, the sole commissioner who examined the case, said: “The wholly unfounded allegations of Mr Jeyaretnam (of executive interference) were scandalous statements that should never have been made.”