Singapore has rejected a call by former political prisoners to scrap a British colonial law allowing detention without trial, saying it allows the government to fight serious security threats.
The Singaporean Ministry of Home Affairs said the former detainees were held under the Internal Security Act (ISA) for “subversive” activities and not for their political beliefs.
The ministry’s reaction, posted on its Web site on Friday, came after 16 former ISA detainees this month wrote a rare public message demanding the abolition of the law after Malaysia vowed to repeal similar legislation.
The ISA has been denounced by critics in Singapore and Malaysia as a tool to stifle dissent, but the city-state’s home ministry said the law was necessary to fight threats to national security.
One of the petitioners was Chia Thye Poh, who spent 26 years in detention and was one of the world’s longest-held political prisoners along with South African democracy icon and former president Nelson Mandela.
Chia was a socialist intellectual and opposition lawmaker in the 1960s who was accused of being a communist subversive, a charge he firmly denied.
“These 16 ex-detainees were not detained for their political beliefs, but because they had involved themselves in subversive activities which posed a threat to national security,” the ministry said.
Nine of them were “actively involved” in communist activities “committed to the violent overthrow of the constitutionally-elected governments in Singapore and Malaysia” in the 1960s and 1970s, the ministry said.
It said they infiltrated trade unions and student organizations and instigated labor strikes and demonstrations to create conditions necessary for a communist revolution.
Seven of them were involved in a “Marxist plot to subvert and destabilise Singapore” in the 1980s, the ministry added.
The ISA, first implemented by Britain after World War II to fight communist insurgents in colonies collectively known as Malaya, was retained by Singapore after it became independent from the Malaysian federation in 1965.
Calls for Singapore to abolish the ISA emerged after Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak announced earlier this month that his government would repeal it.
However, Singapore said the ISA remains relevant because of threats from extremist groups and “self-radicalised” individuals.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS