Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore: Ein Reich Ein Volk Ein Führer
I cannot avoid the striking similarities of Hitler's Nazi Germany and Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore's. Sure there are differences but they are in degree of severity only. But the fundamentals remain entirely the same.
In Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, the cry was Ein Reich Ein Volk Ein Führer, or One Country, One People, One Leader. There was no allowance for diversity. Germany was one for all and all for one. There was one people all in support of Hitler and Hitler alone. And there was only one leader for them, himself.
Anyone who was opposed was eliminated. There was no room for any other political philosophy, except for National Socialism. Staunch supporters and collaborators were rewarded. Opponents were murdered.
In Nazi Germany everyone knew which side the bread was buttered. If you wanted to progress join the party and work for them. If not, you are stupid and you will suffer. That was the thinking.
Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore of 2011 is no different. Lee too says if you want to progress join him. If you do, you will be rewarded with good jobs, business contracts. Milk and honey will flow for you and your family. Resist and you are a fool. You will be punished in more ways than one. Just look at Chee Soon Juan, late JB Jeyaretnam, Tang Lian Hong and now me. All sent to jail and publicly humiliated, because we did not have the good sense like his cronies to support him.
But there is one difference. The unfortunate thing for Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore is this. Nazi Germany on the one hand, although brutal and intolerant to the extreme, still had a clearly publicized doctrine and philosophy by which they justified themselves. The Treaty of Versailles of 1918, they said had been clearly unfair to their defeated Germany.
The terms of surrender was belittling of their pride, depriving them of their soverignity, making them forever slaves. This, according to Hitler was clearly unacceptable which demanded the breach of the Treaty to recover their position in the world of nations.
As for the Jewish question, they were a persecuted people anyway since the advent of Christianity and the discrimination against them was not something new. He of course went too far by murdering them.
Lee Kuan Yew's Singaporeans on the other hand are incapable of making any argument to justify their system of government. For instance what reasonable argument can they raise for permitting their ministers to pay themselves each several millions of dollars a year, which is theft any way you look at it? None.
What argument even remotely logical can they raise in bringing in ship loads of Chinese from mainland China to populate the island, as opposed to any other race, when the Constitution mandates equality between he races? None.
What reasonable argument can they raise to insist on 75% Chinese in each housing block when the Constitution allows Singaporeans to live anywhere in the island of their choosing? None. This is simply a forced dispersal of the races within the island, impermissible under the Constitution.
What reasonable argument can they raise in repeatedly suing JB Jeyaretnam in the courts and bankrupting him when an examination of what he had done shows just normal criticism. Absolutely none.
I think had I met an imaginary fervent Nazi supporter in 1935 Berlin, I would have had a harder time in proving he was wrong than if I would have today in Singapore with a PAP supporter. There is simply no way in the world for these Lee Kuan Yew thugs to justify themselves with any sensible argument. They would have none at all.
Which is why I believe that this present PAP administration under Lee Kuan Yew is resting on ice so thin, that anytime, there is the slightest change in circumstances, they would go tumbling down.
Every single Singaporean remaining in Singapore today is simply in a daze, confused and unable to articulate his position one way or another. Or they are thoroughly unconscionable characters who have sold their soul entirely for money; either way a second rate citizen, no country would like to have.
For instance any attempt anyone makes to ask a Singaporean lawyer as to what he thinks of all these defamation lawsuits against certain of Lee's political opponents will draw a blank. And the same with every other of these issues which are crying out for justice.
What it has boiled down to finally is this. Lee Kuan Yew is today's supreme leader of Singapore, just like Hitler was, and those who support him at the top do it for the money, large sums of it. And with his judges and his state controlled newspapers, he simply subjugates every single human being in the island. If you don't like it, you the choice of leaving if you can. If you stay back and challenge him, he will punish you. There is no longer any legal basis to anything he does. He simply does what he wants to you. Take it or leave it.
In the sense of at least having a reasonably arguable political philosophy, Hitler appears on stronger ground. In Lee Kuan Yew's case, he does not have any logical reasons for what he does. He simply does whatever he wants.
Singapore's Chief Justice speaks with forked tongue, once again
It is amazing how in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore men such as Lee Kuan Yew's Chief Justice, Chan Sek Keong, can say these blatant lies with a straight face. Singapore's state controlled newspaper the Straits Times of July 29, 2011 has the story "Chief Justice Chan on new lawyers' role in next 20 years" in which he says, believe it or not "lawyers are called up to be upholders of justice, said Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong on Friday".
The fact of the matter is, which he knows, as well as I know, as well as anyone else who has lived in Singapore knows is that if you did just what he is saying, you will be in serious trouble including being jailed and bankrupted.
Let me remind you once again who this man is. In 1997 he was Lee Kuan Yew's Attorney General, when Lee Kuan Yew, Goh Chock Tong and several other Lee Kuan Yew's people who were not contesting in the elections at Cheng San GRC, were found inside the polling station on polling day, which was a clear violation of the Parliamentary Elections Act which prohibited politicians not involved to stay away at least several hundred feet of the premises. You can understand the reasoning behind this criminal law surely. It is to prevent any undue influence by anyone to gain an unfair advantage through influencing voters coming to vote.
But when JB Jeyaretnam filed a criminal complaint against Lee Kuan Yew who had clearly committed a criminal offense and should have been prosecuted, this disgraceful man who was then Attorny General, replied for the government saying no offense was committed, believe it or not. His ingenious or rather disgraceful argument was that it was only a crime to come close to the polling station but not a crime to enter it!
If Singapore Chief Justice Chan Sek Kiong, could stoop so low to lick the boots of his master Lee Kuan Yew, how does he tell us that lawyers should uphold justice, just tell me that.
He is the head of a legal system in the island, where the Constitution is legally violated. No one is allowed to protest even alone, and even peacefully. There is no independent press because they are all state controlled. You are not allowed to congregate even peacefully even though the Constitution specifically guarantees it. And Singapore is the only country in the world whose lawyers are not allowed to comment on any laws of Singapore. They do this by the disgraceful expedient of enacting a law which states that the Singapore Law Society is allowed to comment on legislation if invited to do so, thereby making such comment without a request from the government illegal!
Chan Sek Kiong, Singapore's (or rather Lee Kuan Yew's) former Attorney General, is now the Chief Justice and head of a legal profession which has no more than 3,000 lawyers even though his country has 5 million people. Of these, believe it or not, no more than about 400 lawyers have more than 12 years of experience (these are figures released by the Singapore Law Society).
Singapore's legal profession continues to decline and despite all their efforts, are simply unable to attract students into the profession in sufficient numbers, the simple reason being that Singapore law, thanks to this Lee Kuan Yew bootlicker, has been thoroughly discredited.
Chan Sek Kiong has so successfully managed to discredit Singapore law, that it has completely lost it's reputation. Today it is seen as an organization merely to keep the Lee Kuan Yew family in power and destroy and remove anyone who is a political threat to him through the misuse of the law.
Chan Sek Kiong is a man who has spent an entire career, not to uphold justice in Singapore, but to uphold his master Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorial rule over his people, which he does shamelessly for payments of large sums of money.
Singapore's Chief Justice Chan Sek Kiong is the reason for Singapore's continual decline down the slippery slope. His abuse of the law to please his master Lee Kuan Yew is the reason why there is massive brain drain to the west, the continual fall of Singapore's birth rate, and the theft of millions of dollars by the Lee Kuan Yew family which they call, salaries.
Singapore's Chief Justice Chan Sek Kiong is the last person in the world who should be talking of "upholding the law".
Someone should ask him whether the repeated lawsuits against JB Jeyaretnam was upholding the law? Was the repeated defamation of character lawsuits against Chee Soon Juan and his bankruptcy and jail, upholding the law? Was the several million dollar libel award in favor of Lee Kuan Yew against Tang Lian Hong and his subsequent exile, upholding the law? If all these things are upholding the law, tell me, why do we need serial killers then?
In the movie Judgement at Nuremberg, Ernst Janning a Nazi judge, brilliantly portrayed by Burt Lancaster at his trial for war crimes confessed saying that the moment a judge deliberately abused his authority, he ceased to be a judge and became excrement.
I think he said it right. Chief Justice of Singapore Chan Sek Kiong had ceased to be a judge long ago. He has become excrement.
Attached below is Burt Lancaster's speech in the film, "Judgement at Nuremberg"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt4e9YvKwuc&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKcuMbQuYQ8&NR=1
Posted by Gopalan Nair at 11:45 PM 13 comments:
Singapore. Gopalan Nair makes headlines again.
I am not sure if Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore realizes this, but all this publicity for Gopalan Nair yesterday about his being disbarred from Singapore legal profession is actually doing him a mountain of good. Not the other way round.
In most other places, a lawyer being disbarred would not have made it to the newspapers, let alone headlines, since it is really not newsworthy. But in Singapore, it made headlines in their state controlled newspaper Straits Times which carried a color photo of myself. Several other state controlled news papers all carried the story prominently. (All Singapore media are state controlled, there is no independant press). Of course their intention was to give me a bad name as always, but really, is it achieving that purpose? I am not sure.
Since my entanglement with Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore in 2008 by my visit, which ended up a full six months with a 2 month jail portion, Gopalan Nair became a public figure in the island. My pictures were posted on several occasions over the 6 months while there, and Singaporeans knew me.
After my return to the US after being in Lee Kuan Yew's jail, I was again in the news there in Singapore, for defying their court order and for writing another blog critical of another of his judges, Judith Prakash which I did from the US.
Once again, some months ago, I was headline news again, when I deliberately wrote a factually untrue blog post about Lee Kuan Yew suffering a heart attack. There too Gopalan Nair was centre of attention among Singaporeans with newspapers splashing headlines across it. All TV and radio stations in the island reported on it. My action was even debated in Lee's Parliament. I did it only to prove that Singapore is so politically fragile that if Lee Kuan Yew were to die, the entire island will collapse, which was proved right.
And now this. Headline news about my disbarment in Singapore with my picture in the papers, with news of it also in all radio stations in all languages.
In a small crowded island like Singapore news naturally spreads island wide within minutes. So it is fair to say that the name Gopalan Nair or sometimes GN as some call it, is a household name.
Of course, Lee Kuan Yew's purpose of doing this is an attempt to discredit me and paint me as a criminal by thoroughly false or half truths. But I am not sure this is how Singaporeans are going to think of me.
Today across the island, Lee Kuan Yew and his government is disliked for their high handedness, nepotism and various other excesses of power. They know that their judges are all there to do Lee Kuan Yew's bidding and not a single person really believes that there is even a semblance of the rule of law.
In the case of Gopalan Nair, all he has alleged to have done is to criticize the judiciary. There is also the accusation that he shouted at policemen. Big deal. And for this he is disbarred for life? It is not a case of my committing murder or committing bank fraud. Unless he is insane, noone goes around criticizing judges for nothing.
So in this case, I don't believe that all this publicity is going to have the effect of Singaporeans believing Gopalan Nair as evil in any sense. It is more than likely that they will see this as another instance of Lee Kuan Yew and his government being particularly jittery of the effect his writings in Singapore Dissident may have on Singaporeans.
And furthermore, the good news is, it will have the effect of directing much more attention among Singaporeans to this blog Singapore Dissident, as those who may not have heard of it would look it up after hearing about Gopalan Nair in headline news.
On the whole, I would say, not a very smart move by Lee Kuan Yew and his PAP, this prosecution against Gopalan Nair. It advantages me more and not them. So a thank you, Lee Kuan Yew for all the trouble and expense.
Singapore Dissident will continue whether or not I am disbarred from practicing law in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore.
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew says he prefers strong goverments
Singapore' state controlled newspaper the Straits Times of July 27, 2011 has the story "Singapore will spiral down if government is weak". I think most Singaporeans know what he means by that.
He wants strong governments like his PAP that terrorizes it's citizens into submission through libel actions to silence detractors and jailing and disbarring bloggers like Gopalan Nair from practicing law in the island of Singapore to keep his seat.
Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore government is so strong that they have managed to put every single judge in their pocket, they can pay themselves millions or any other figure they want, they can monopolise the entire media and newspapers and completely destroy the free press, they can mess around with the Constitution and make free speech, right to assembly and association, all universal human rights all illegal and criminalized.
Only yesterday, I was disbarred for criticizing a judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean who shamelessly and disgracefully abused her position to favor him in the 2008 defamation case brought against Chee Soon Juan.
He and his government are so unbelievably strong that he can make sure that every single defamation case that he brings against his political opponents are all successful with million dollar awards against his victims. In fact he is so very strong that the moment he sues someone, we know the verdict even before he steps into the courtroom.
Hitler was strong too and he too had a strong government, so strong that if you criticized him he will kill you. Today we have our Singaporean Hitler who wields Hitlerian powers by the strength of himself and his government.
But look at what he and his superstrong government has achieved. Yes , Singapore is dotted with skyscrapers along the waterfront. But who are those who live there? Except for the ubiquitous Burmese drug lords who live in Singapore driving around in their Lamborghini, and the equally rich Indonesian bank crooks, the average Singaporean except for those connected in the right places are living hand to mouth their miserable existence. Those who cannot make it, take their own lives by jumping off high rise buildings.
The Singaporeans population continues to decline while foreign Chinese from China who have no skills and no English are brought in lowering the general class and position of the society, spitting and gesticulating at every corner.
Especially badly hit by his dictatorial rule, another way of saying strong government, is the legal system. Today in Singapore, the entire judiciary shamelessly abuse the law to keep Singaporeans in place. His judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean is deployed to bankrupt and impoverish his political opponent Chee Soon Juan. Only a few months ago, another recently appointed bootlicker of a judge Quentin Loh Sze Onn, a Singaporean Chinese with a fancy English name, was used to imprison a British author Alan Shadrake because he wrote a book not entirely flattering of these judges.
If this is what he means by strong governments, Singaporeans do not want it, thank you very much. If what he means by a weak government is one with the rule of law, an independent judiciary and a government of integrity, then give us a weak government anytime, not a government of thugs who deploy judges like this woman Belinda Ang Saw Ean who bankrupts innocent people just because they had exercised their Constitutional rights.
Singapore. My letter to the State Bar of California relating to my Singapore Disbarment
As you are aware, the Singapore Law Courts disbarred me from ever practicing law again in that island. As to whether it is going to be forever is something I am not very sure. From the looks of it, it doesn't look very good for them today. Which means if there is a change in government, I think there is a more than strong likelihood, that I will return. Can I quote General MacArthur and simply say "I shall return".
By the way, under California Business and Professions Code Section 6068 (o)(6), I have a duty to report any discipline against me imposed anywhere within 30 days. So I have written the following letter and enclosed the necessary form to the State Bar of California. I have taken the liberty of attaching my letter to this as this is now a matter of public interest.
Office of the Chief Trial Counsel, Intake
The State Bar of California
1149 S Hill Street
July 25, 2011 USPS Certified Mail
Ref: statebar.nair.singapore.07252011.doc
Introduction/ Singapore
Singapore is an island governed principally by keeping the people in fear of their government. Their principal tool to do this is through the misuse of the law and the courts. Singaporean judges routinely collaborate with the government to bend the law to silence dissent. Their policy is the Chinese theory of "Killing one chicken to frighten the monkeys", that is to say abuse the law to punish your critics so as to ensure that others would be dissuaded from doing the same. This is what is happening in these proceedings.
Disciplinary Proceedings in Singapore
Yesterday, July 25, 2011 (Singapore time) I was disbarred from practicing law in Singapore on 5 charges. Although I had left Singapore for good for the US in 1991, and have never practiced law there at all since then, I was still technically on the Rolls of lawyers in Singapore. All these charges are politically motivated and is a response to my continued and sustained political activism to bring about democratic change in Singapore. The events happened as far back as May 2008, when I was on a brief visit to Singapore to observe a politically motivated libel suit brought by the Singapore strongman, Lee Kuan Yew and his son against an opposition politician Dr. Chee Soon Juan.
In Absentia Proceedings
Although I was informed of these proceedings I did not attend any of the hearings in Singapore as well as the hearing on July 25, 2011. As I had been charged for writing blog posts critical of their judges and their government in my blog Singapore Dissident and since I had written further blog posts of similar nature since my return to the US after being deported from Singapore in November 2008, I will certainly be arrested and charged again for my writings in the US if I visited Singapore.
Secondly since one of the charges relate to my violating their court order not to criticize them, since I had done so after leaving Singapore, they would certainly arrest me again had I returned. Therefore I had written repeatedly to them for an assurance that they will not arrest me if I returned to Singapore. As they had not given that assurance I did not return to Singapore for my trial on July 25, 2011. They conducted the proceedings in absentia and disbarred me.
I was born and raised in Singapore and was a Singapore citizen. I am now an American citizen. I went to England to read law and was admitted to the English Bar in 1979 as a Barrister at law. I am still on the Rolls of Barristers in good standing in England and Wales. In late 1979, I returned to Singapore and was admitted as an Attorney (Advocate and Solicitor) in 1981.
Around 1985, I became politically active in Singapore and joined the Workers Party, an opposition party in Singapore. From that time on, the Singapore government controlled entirely by Lee Kuan Yew began harassing and persecuting me for my political activities.
I stood for parliamentary elections in Singapore as a candidate for the Workers party in 1988 and 1991. I lost both times.
In 1991, during elections, I had made a speech at an election rally. I had suggested that the appointment of judges in the Subordinate Courts be changed to make them look more independent. At that time judges were appointed by the Singapore Legal Service Commission which was directly controlled by the Attorney General. For this statement, I was charged and convicted of contempt of court and fined $8,000.00 dollars and ordered to pay the costs.
Also around 1991, I had written a letter to the Singapore Attorney General concerning his refusal to give JB Jeyaretnam, the head of the Workers Party who was exonerated of trumped up criminal charges by the Privy Council in England. He had been charged with check fraud and making a false Affidavit. The Attorney General of Singapore refused to give a pardon to Jeyaretanm because he claimed, among other things that he was not given an opportunity to appear in court in London, which was not true. For asking him to explain himself, I was charged with threatening him and falsely accusing him. I did not such thing. Nevertheless I was suspended from practicing law for 2 years in Singapore.
I had other problems with the Singapore government and their Law Society because of my continued involvement in opposition politics.
Coming to the USA and obtaining political asylum
In 1991 December, I left Singapore for good and arrived in San Francisco California. I obtained political asylum in 1995. I passed the California Bar in 1995 and was admitted in 1996. Since the Singapore Law Society had refused to give me a certificate of good standing in Singapore, I had to explain these circumstances to the State Bar of California. Please look at my admission file which gives details of my problems with the Singapore government and their legal system.
The present charges against me resulting in my disbarment.
Charge 1. I had travelled to Singapore and had landed there on May 26, 2008. I had travelled to observe the hearing on the question of damages that Chee Soon Juan had to pay Lee Kuan Yew who had earlier sued him for libel and won. The judge in the case was Belinda Ang Saw Ean.
The hearing took 3 days. Throughout the 3 days the judge together with Lee Kuan Yew, clearly refused to allow Dr. Chee Soon Juan any meaningful opportunity to defend himself by disallowing him to ask almost every single question.
Dr. Chee Soon Juan was unrepresented in court because no Singapore lawyer dares to defend a political opponent such as him for fear of reprisals from Lee Kuan Yew and his government.
After listening to this blatant abuse of her judicial office for 3 days from May 26, 2008 to May 28, 2008, I wrote a blog post in my blog Singapore Dissident www.singaporedissident.blogspot.com on May 29, 2008 titled "Singapore. Judge Belinda Ang's Kangaroo Court". A copy of the blog post is attached.
In particular the Singapore authorities take objection to the sentence in this blog post which reads "The judge Belinda Ang was throughout prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders."
I was arrested from my hotel by 5 plain clothes policemen on May 31, 2008 and subsequently charged with "insulting a civil servant", a provision under the Singapore Penal Code.
The word "prostituted" in every single English dictionary also refers to someone in authority who abuses it for personal gain. This is what I meant when I wrote the blog post.
I pleaded not guilty and went to trial on the charge. The trial went on for 8 days. The judge found me guilty of insulting the judge even though the words only appeared in my blog post and even though the words were a correct use of the English language to describe the actions of this judge. I was sentenced to 3 months jail which commenced in September 2008. I was released from jail in November 2008 and was immediately deported. I returned to US immediately.
When I had arrived in Singapore in May of 2008 and was arrested, my American passport was confiscated. The above trial only occurred in September 2008.
Immediately after arrest I was kept in solitary confinement at the police station for a week and interrogated day and night. They first accused me of sending Emails of this blog post to various important people including this judge.
I denied ever sending any Emails to anyone. I believe the Singapore government themselves arranged to send these Emails and confront me with it. The mistake they did was the Emails had my name as palllichadath.nair.gopalan@yahoo.com, instead of nair.gopalan@yahoo.com.
I had dropped the use of the name Pallichadath (full name Pallichadath Gopalan Nair) which was my first name at birth and changed it to Gopalan Nair when I got my American citizenship. Obviously Singapore's secret agents failed to notice this.
Even though I was arrested in May 2008 in Singapore, the Singapore Law Society did not commence any disciplinary proceedings against me, either then or even after I was jailed in September 2008. These disciplinary proceedings were commenced only in early September 2009, 1 year and 5 months after the incident.
The US State Department in their 2009 Singapore Country conditions report states that reliable sources believe that the reason for their commencing these disciplinary proceedings 1 ½ later was because I had withdrawn the apology I had given in the Singapore court and reneged on my promise not to attack their courts or their government. (Please see 2009 State Department Singapore Human Rights and Country Conditions Report released in 2010).
Charge 2 and 3: After I was arrested for Charge 1 above in May 2008 and while waiting for my trial in September of 2008, I was out on bail. I am sure they deliberately delayed the case with the intention of causing me severe financial hardship, having to be away from my home in California and my law practice for all this time. Financially I was ruined as I had to pay for accommodation while there with no income coming in. My law practice here was suffering and I was lucky I could recover after my return in November 2008.
Anyway, during this time, in July 4, 2008, American Independence Day, I was walking along a street in an area known as Little India in Singapore on a road called Race Course Road towards the Junction of Bukit Timah Road at about 8.30 pm.
At the junction of Bukit Timah Road I heard some people shouting at me from behind. Since it did not concern me I did not look back. Suddenly some 5 people in civilian clothes confronted me, shouting at me and asking me if I had knocked their police car.
I had seen a police car some 100 or 200 feet behind me while walking. I denied doing any such thing, after which they began to ask me who I was and for my identification. Since I did not know who they were I simply refused.
The next minute I was tackled to the floor by a Malay man who used great force and pinned my face to the floor, damaging my spectacles and causing me injuries. I was arrested and taken away in the police car.
Subsequently I was charges with shouting obscenities at the men, who it turned out happened to be policemen and the second charge was the accusation that I had behaved in a disorderly manner.
The case went on for 18 days during which time I cross examined the police men. The only witnesses in court were all the police officers, who repeated parrot fashion, what the earlier one had said.
When I had asked the police officer what he meant by saying that I was disorderly and asked for a demonstration, he gently waved his hands up and down.
There was a Singapore newspaper report the next day (all Singapore newspapers are state controlled) which claimed that there were at least 25 bystanders who witnessed my arrest as it was in a public place. The government did not produce a single one of them as witness at trial.
I was found guilty on both charges and given the maximum punishment of $2,000 for the yelling at policemen charge and $1,000 for the disorderly behavior charge, making it $3,000.00 in all. I paid the fine
I have denied doing any of this.
Charge 4: While I was in jail in relation to charge 1 above, I was due to be released on September 26, 2008. Around September 12, 2008, while I was in jail and about 1 week to go before my release, I was visited by police officers.
They told me that I am being charged now for contempt of court. They told me that the accusations were that during my trial in Charge 2 and 3 above; I had made some statements that were contemptuous of the court.
It is true that I had told the judge in open court that these proceedings were politically motivated, that I had no confidence in the fairness or impartiality of the court and that these proceedings were being brought against me just because I am Gopalan Nair and a Lee Kuan Yew government critic.
During the trial itself, the judge did not find me in contempt of anything. However for the first time, after the proceedings were over and I had paid the fine, while I was in jail and waiting to be released a week later, they accuse me of being in contempt of court at this earlier trial.
I was taken to court in chains and shackles from the prison. I knew that if I contested these new charges of contempt, there was a strong likelihood that my imprisonment would be lengthened and I would not get out in a week.
So I apologized. The prosecutor asked me to read out the apology in the way they wanted which I did. Another condition of the court was that I was never to attack the Singapore judiciary again, which I agreed. I had earlier written 2 blog posts in my blog about my proceedings in court while in Singapore, relating to this matter.
The prosecutor wanted me to delete them as a condition for their lenient. I agreed. Upon my accepting these conditions and unconditionally apologizing in Court in the way they wanted, the court did not impose any more jail time and just gave me a warning.
I believe the judge said that I did the right thing. Frankly I had no intention of keeping my promise. This was not a court of law, it was a political lynching.
The moment I returned to California after I was deported in late November 2008, I wrote a blog post withdrawing my apology and reposting the 2 blog posts that I had taken down under duress while in a Singapore prison.
This charge relates to contempt of court for their court order by my withdrawing the apology given to the court and re-posting the 2 blog posts.
Charge 5 : During May of 2008, while the case of Defamation lawsuit Lee Kuan Yew vs Chee Soon Juan was going on in the High Court, the police discovered 3 men, who were members or supporters of Chee Soon Juan's political party, the Singapore Democratic Party wearing T-shirts with pictures of Kangaroos in judicial robes. I believe they tried to enter the courtroom but were refused by police officers.
Even though they were not even within the court premises of Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean's court which was hearing the case, they were all arrested for contempt of court merely for wearing T-shirts with pictures of kangaroos in judicial robes.
After their arrest and long periods of interrogation, they were eventually brought to trial in November 2008. I attended their trial. The judge this time was Judith Prakash. The judge sent them to jail for about a week each just for wearing these T-shirts. This is all they did, just wearing the T-shirts.
This was patently unjust.
Immediately after I retuned to the US in November 2008, I wrote a blog post titled "Singapore's High Court Judge Judith Parkas shamelessly abuses the law in the Kangaroo T shirt trial" dated Feb 26, 2009. In it I used almost the same words I used in the Charge 1 case above. This last charge refers to my writing this blog post. A copy of it is attached.
The reasons for all these cases
The Singapore government and their Law Society which is an integral part of the government has brought all these disciplinary charges nearly 1 ½ years after the incident in May 2008. And after they commenced the cases in September 2009, it took them another 1 year and 10 months after that to bring it to trial.
These charges were initiated and I have been punished because of who I am, not what I did.
The Singapore government under Lee Kuan Yew rules the island of 5 million people through fear. Anyone who dared to challenge them are to be punished and forever hounded and persecuted. I have been one of his well known critics and they have to silence me. I have been writing my blog from the US since 1996 but when I stepped into Singapore in 2008 and wrote from there, they had arrested me. I suppose they are trying to silence me and in the process use it as a warning to others not to criticize.
The above is a short explanation of the events. If there is a need to elaborate more or if any further information is needed, please let me know.
My arrest in Singapore and these proceedings are now a matter of public interest and followed by many around the world. Therefore I have taken the liberty to publish this letter in my blog Singapore Dissident, www.singaporedissident.blogspot.com. I hope I have your permission to do this.
The following people are the interested parties in this matter:
1. The law Society of Singapore
www.lawsociety.org.sg
39 South Bridge Road
2. Attorney Generals Chambers Singapore
1 Coleman Street
3. Minister for Law
K Shanmugam
100 High Street, #18-02
Email: contact@mlaw.gov.sg
4. The Judges who heard the case on July 25, 2011 and disbarred me: Lee Seiu Kin, Tan Lee Meng, Tay Yoong Kwang
All of Singapore High Court, 1 Supreme Court Lane, Singapore 178879 Tel: (65) 6337 8191
Lastly I would be happy to provide any further evidence or information on this matter.
Executed by Me, Gopalan Nair, under penalty of perjury this 25th day of July 2011, in Fremont, California.
Signed Gopalan Nair
Singapore. Gopalan Nair, disbarred from practicing law in Singapore, and none the worse for it! Cheers!
Singapore's state controlled newspaper, the Straits Times of July 25, 2011, just a few minutes ago, reports in it's headlines, "Lawyer gets life-time ban for "scandalizing the courts"". I have just had the honor of never ever practicing law, in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore courts.
Ordinarily, this news would have occasioned some sadness, that is, if one were to be punished this way by an ordinarily respectable legal system. But it is different here.
This is the same legal system that had disbarred the late respected lawyer JB Jeyaretnam, not because he did anything wrong, but because he had the temerity in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore to criticize him or the government.
It is also the same legal system that awarded Lee Kuan Yew and his family several million, repeat several million dollars in libel award against Tang Liang Hong, just because he criticized the same individual at an election rally in 1997 in Singapore. Tang had since fled the island and now lives in exile in Australia, beyond the clutches of Lee Kuan Yew.
And this same court that has come down with a life time disbarment against me is the same one that has repeatedly awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars against Dr. Chee Soon Juan resulting in his bankruptcy and loss of employment all because he too had the courage to stand against this same man, Lee Kuan Yew.
If one really thought about it, this puts me among great men, JB Jeyaretnam, Chee Soon Juan and Tang, all heroes and martyrs because they too were all punished just as I am today for speaking against this dictatorship which has hijacked the law courts and everything else there.
And as expected of any banana republic such as this that governs by intimidating it's citizens with only the compliant lot left intact in the island, while those with any self respect have all cleared off to Australia and elsewhere, this newspaper report is riddled with lies and half truths.
It says the disbarment was for "scandalizing the (Singapore) courts and conduct not befitting a lawyer". But it does not say that the "scandalizing" as they call it, was a blog post in this blog about the disgraceful conduct of one of their judges Belinda Ang Saw Ean titled "Singapore. Judge Belinda Ang's Kangaroo Court" dated May 29, 2008.
Read the blog post yourself. Every single sentence written there is correct and I stand by it. And as for the words used "prostituting oneself" every single dictionary gives the meaning of the words as someone who abuses her authority or office for an improper purpose. There this judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean misused and defiled her office of a judge, to grant the decision to Lee Kuan Yew against Chee Soon Juan.
As for conduct not befitting a lawyer, they clearly avoid any details. Very convenient. I will tell you what they are. In one case I was accosted by some Lee Kuan Yew's thugs in plain clothes and claiming to be police officers claiming that I had knocked on their police car, and wanted to know who I was. Upon my refusal to cooperate, they arrest me causing me injuries, and charge me with hurling obscenities at them and behaving in a disorderly fashion, which the police officer at trial demonstrated as waving my arms! If you believe all that nonsense.
The other matters were another blog post written about another one of their Kangaroo Judges, Judith Prakash who coincidentally sends 3 young men to jail for wearing Tshirts with pictures of kangaroos on them (please see my earlier blogs on them) and for deliberately defying their court order not to criticize them anymore, as if such a court order demands any respect.
The this state controlled newspaper report says that I "was not present (in the Singapore court) even though he had been invited to defend himself". I am afraid once again they are conveniently hiding the truth. At present, there are many more events for which I could be arrested if I returned to Singapore. For one, I could be charged for contempt of court for deliberately defying their court order not to criticize after my return to the US. Second, I could be charged for writing the blog post about Judge Judtih Prakash which I wrote from the US. And third I had written countless blog posts criticizing their kangaroo judges and their legal system from the US.
This means of course that the moment I step into Singapore, I will be arrested again and charged with all these cases, thrown in jail and the key thrown away as well. You can appreciate that anyone with a head on his shoulders would not want to invite such an adventure.
If in fact they were serious of letting me defend myself in this case in Singapore, they would have given me the guarantee of safe passage in and out of Singapore which I had requested repeatedly from the Attorney general, Singapore Police, Minister for Law and the Singapore Law Society. If in fact they were concerned of this case being seen to be done fairly, the proper thing to do would have been to give me the guarantee that I had asked. They never replied to any of my letters.
You can see why anyone in their right minds would have avoided ever returning to Singapore under these circumstances.
And then they get their facts wrong too. They say I was sentenced to 3 months jail for "contempt of court". That is not correct. The sentence was for "insulting a judge", a law in their Penal Code, in this case Belinda Ang Saw Ean in my blog. Whether it is an insult or whether it is an accurate account of what happened is something you can judge for yourself.
As for my leaving Singapore for the US, they write "although he has stopped practicing here, he has remained on the rolls". This implies that I had deliberately maintained my status in Singapore. This again is another half truth. If one leaves the country or stops practicing, your name remains on the rolls in Singapore by default. I did nothing to facilitate it.
Then it says "he had also in 1992 been suspended from practicing law for 2 years for remarks about former attorney general Tan Boon Teik". Again another half truth. I had written 2 letters to him for an explanation relating to JB Jeyaretnam's request for a pardon. Nothing wrong in that, for which I was suspended for 2 years. The real reason for suspending me was of course to silence me and to destroy my career and remove me from politics. Please see my recent blog post here of July 23, 2011, titled "Law Society of Singapore vs Gopalan Nair, a demand for harsher punishment on July 25, 2011 trial because I continue to criticize" on the details of that matter.
Lastly the title itself is incorrect when it says "Lawyer gets life time ban for "scandalizing the courts"". This statement is true only as long as Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorship which uses the law as a political tool remains in power. From the way things are going in the island, I don't think it is going to take long before these Singaporean kangaroo judges are kicked out or Lee Kuan Yew and his government say by bye for good.
When that happens, I not only expect to be reinstated to the Rolls of Singapore lawyers, I would expect the new democratic government of the country to offer me honorary Singapore citizenship for the work I have done for the cause of freedom there.
And lastly, I have to thank Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore for taking all this trouble to have me disbarred. It is already headlines in the state controlled newspapers there, and this news will be reported in all radio and TV stations. This keeps the actions of Gopalan Nair against the Lee Kuan Yew government alive in the island. This helps to keep Gopalan Nair and my activism always fresh in the minds of Singaporeans. I may be an American citizen now, but I can assure you I will continue agitating for the cause of freedom in the island.
Singapore. Running a country on false pretences
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew is simply running a country on false pretences. It may have worked when Singapore was an island backwater before the days of the Internet. But today this sort of thing, trying to fool locals as well at foreigners into thinking it is something else simply does not work.
Consider the effects of disbarring me from practicing law in Singapore because I criticized his judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean in 2008. In this blog since then till now, it cannot be any clearer the disgrace that she was up to in court. I know it, anyone in Singapore or the rest of the world who wants to know it, knows it, which is why their actions look very silly. Which by the way has painful consequences to their governance. A government needs respect, not fear from it's people. Here, Singapore's courts lose respect, and by extension their government loses respect.
And in my case, what is even worse for them is the fact that anything they do in Singapore cannot affect me one bit. I practice law in California, USA, where the US Constitution is enforced to the letter.
Every single aspect of their government is simply put, fraud. They claim they have the rule of law. Yet they routinely use their courts to sue and punish their critics.
They claim to have a free press. Yet their entire media is state controlled.
They claim to have racial equality. Yet Malays and Indians are discriminated in housing, jobs and in business, while ethnic Chinese are preferred.
They claim they have equal opportunity. Yet those connected to the government ruling party are preferred while those unconnected are neglected.
They claim there is no corruption. Yet the most blatantly shameless corrupted individuals are the leaders themselves, who earn a salary of $3.7 million each a year. On top of that, they conceal government accounting figures and routinely siphon off millions. If anyone criticizes, they are sued and bankrupted and even sent to jail.
They claim they have freedom of speech and expression. Yet anyone who does any of these things is jailed and harassed for life.
They claim that Lee Kuan Yew has stepped down and his son runs the show. Does anyone believe that? I don't think so.
I can go on. You get the picture by now. The entire island is one big rip off, and the poor Singaporeans who are well aware of this are kept in check through fear. Once in a while they get a victim such as Gopalan Nair who criticizes them who is then immediately charged and punished. These actions are not just intended to silence the individual but much more to send a message to others not to do what I did.
They call it the deterrent. But a more accurate description for it is the exercise of instilling fear in Singaporeans. Fear is the principle tool that enables Lee Kuan Yew and his family and friends to pay themselves millions of dollars of tax payers money and get away with it.
But this is where the problem lies for Lee Kuan Yew and his sort. Twenty years ago, when there was no Internet, he could have done all these things to me, and accused me of being a serial killer and people would have believed it. Since the newspapers are all controlled, there would have been no way for me to tell my side of the story. But today all that is different. Each time they tell a lie, there will be a response, which will be read by those who care to know. Dictatorships do not have it their way anymore.
Let me tell this tin pot dictatorship this. Truth is the truth today. It cannot be manufactured. And the second universal truth is, that most human beings anywhere in the world are principally made good, not bad. You may have a few out there who would grovel at your feet, like the disgraceful judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean because there is money in it, by prostituting her office for personal gain. But by and large, human beings will not be prepared to live like that.
That is why today, partly assisted by these disbarment proceedings against me, thank you very much, thousands and thousands of educated skilled Singaporeans are saying bye bye to Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore for settlement in the West.
That is why despite every single effort made by the government, the people are not having enough babies. And neither are they marrying. And with already a tiny neglible population, there is not going to be anyone left, except of course for Chinese human imports from mainland China.
That is why hordes of Chinese from mainland China are being brought in, uneducated peasants, who walk around Singapore spitting and gesticulating like beggars, because they simply cannot find capable cultured people to come to an island such as this, which stands disgraced as a puny tin pot dictatorship.
That is why the government has to squeeze every single penny from Singaporeans in all sorts of taxes because they have run out of profitable industry, leaving only gambling and profits from selling landed property to millionaire Indonesian bank cheats and Burmese drug lords.
What any country needs are the people to do the work and manage the country. They unfortunately are the very ones leaving in droves and simply importing mainland Mandarin speaking peasants is not going to do the trick.
Of course if I stop writing this and if everyone else does so, the world and the locals as well may be kept in the dark like how it was in the bygone days. But since I am determined to continue writing as is everyone else, I can only say Lee Kuan Yew and company are living in denial.
I would tell them that this is not the way. But I don't think they are going to listen.
Law Society of Singapore vs Gopalan Nair, a demand for harsher punishment on July 25, 2011 trial because I continue to criticize
I have just received an Email with court documents from Singapore Law Society titled very appropriately "Plaintiff's skeletal submissions". If they carry on in this manner making a fool of themselves in these proceedings, they will in deed turn into skeletons.
Their legal profession has been reduced to less than 3,500 lawyers or so, caused by resignations en masse because anyone with any self respect wants nothing to do with a profession that is used as Lee Kuian Yew's political weapon.
The island itself is turning into a skeleton, as far as it's valuable skilled citizenry goes, as mounting emigration has turned into a flood for Australia and the West. The vacuum is being filled by Chinese peasants from China who have no knowledge of English, let alone any skills.
The Law Society of Singapore which is in effect an arm of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore government, asks that I be disbarred from practicing law in the island for the following reasons:
1. It says the 1992 order against me, of suspension from practicing law in Singapore for 2 years appears to have no deterrent effect upon me.
As a recap this is what happened in the 1992 case. Recall JB Jeyaretnam was found guilty and struck off the Singapore Bar on Lee's trumped up charges, namely check fraud and making a false affidavit relating to it. When JB Jeyaretnam appealed his striking off to the appeal court in London, the House of Lords, they not only categorically stated that JB Jeyaretanm was not guilty of anything, they also said Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore government was guilty of deliberately misusing the law to hound harass and punish an innocent man who was not guilty of anything. You can call it a slap right across the face of Lee Kuan Yew and his so called Rule of Law.
When JB Jeyaretnam landed at Changi Airport jubilant on his return from London, London's Privy Council judgement in hand, there was a crowd including me ready to welcome him. Immediately, since the highest court of the land had declared him innocent, he wrote an appeal to the President of Singapore for a pardon.
The Attorney General of Singapore then, Tan Boon Teck, on behalf of the Singapore President refused the pardon, stating among other things that Jeyaretnam had committed serious offenses, even though just a few days ago, the London Appeal court had declared him innocent! Furthermore another reason for his refusal of a pardon was because Jeyaretnam had not shown "remorse, contrition or repentance for the crimes he had committed" although it beats me how someone could show any of these emotions for crimes he never committed!
Another of this reasons for the pardon refusal, was that he was "not given an opportunity to appear" at the London hearing. This statement was patently false. One of the judges at the appeal in London, I believe it was Lord Bridge, had specifically asked the lawyer for the Singapore Law Society in court whether the Singapore Attorney General was aware of the proceedings and whether he had applied to intervene. Only after the lawyer had specifically stated that they were aware and had not made any application to intervene, did the court proceed in their absence. In the light of these facts, it was impossible for Singapore attorney General to say "he was not given an opportunity to appear".
I read these ridiculous reasons for the Attorney Generals refusal of the pardon in the Straits Times, a Singapore state controlled newspaper.
I wrote a letter to the Attorney General asking that he explain his claim that he was not given an opportunity to appear. His reply was that he was not a party to the case, and that if I wanted any information, I should write to Jeyaretnam himself. Not satisfied with this answer, I wrote again to him that I demanded a proper answer within 14 days, and failing that I will distribute this correspondence between him and me to the entire Singapore legal profession.
His response was that I had falsely accused him, that I had "threatened" him and therefore he was reporting me to the Law Society for discipline. I understand that the Law Society had themselves decided that I had not committed any wrongdoing but as there was a procedure in place where the Attorney General could insist on proceedings regardless of the Law Society's findings, that is what he did.
The proceedings against me commenced in 1989 or 1990. The disciplinary proceedings was heard by the late retired judge Choor Singh who was willing to bend over backwards or even forwards if it pleases Lee Kuan Yew. The hearing itself was interesting. The late Jeyaretnam was my counsel. Madan Assomull who was clearly working in tandem with the judge was, expectedly, getting his way over everything. In fact the case turned out as a battle between JB Jeyaretanm and his arch enemy the Attorney General who was the principle witness for the prosecution, much less about me, which by the way I did not mind at all.
There was one hilarious moment which I will never forget. One of our main witnesses at trial was Martin Thomas QC, who practices in London, JB Jeyaretnam's lawyer at his London appeal who was kind enough to appear at my Singapore trial, as he happened to be in the vicinity by chance, either on his way or returning from vacation at Tioman Island, Malaysia.
Thomas told the court that the London judges had asked counsel for the Singapore law Society whether "the Singapore authorities" were aware of the proceedings, not specifically whether the Singapore Attorney General was aware. Pouncing on this as an opportunity, Assomull began repeatedly asking Thomas QC, whether the Judges could have meant someone other than the Singapore Attorney General, since after all they used the words "Singapore authorities", not "Singapore Attorney General".
After a point Thomas had had enough. He replied "Of course the judges meant the Singapore Attorney General when they said Singapore Authorities. I don't think they were interested to know whether the Hong Kong Fire Brigade were interested in these proceedings"! That was the end of this line of questioning for Assomull!
In any case the Law Society found me guilty, in 1991. At that time I had decided I wanted nothing more to do with a legal profession such as this, and packed my bags and left for San Francisco, California in December 1991. While I was already in the USA, in 1992, this case went before the High Court of Singapore in absentia, which confirmed the judgement. Judges Yong Pong Howe, G Pannirselvam and another Chinese judge, whose name I cannot remember, ordered that I be suspended from practicing law for 2 years. This suspension really did not effect me, since I was already in the USA. At the time I was also a member of the English Bar up till now in good standing.
Coming back to the present case against me, the Singapore Law Society states that one reason why I should be disbarred from Singapore is because "the previous order of suspension in 1992 had no deterrent effect on me as seen from my further blog posts".
Let me remind the Singapore government that a man will be deterred by punishment only if he knows that he did something wrong. Since I did no wrong in the 1992 matter, I see no reason why I should be deterred. They further say "the Defendant had shown no remorse (the 1992 matter) for his misconduct". True I have no remorse. It is an oxymoron to demand remorse for completely lawful, nay admirable conduct.
2. In another part, they say it is necessary to have me disbarred "to protect the good name of the Singapore profession". I am not sure how many ordinary people out there would agree that the Singapore legal profession has any name at all, let alone a good name.
3. There are various other portions where it states such things as "using offensive language is unbecoming" which I have denied ever using at anyone (I believe they are referring to the yelling at policemen charge), and that according to them I lack the qualities of a lawyer.
4. As an authority to disbar me for contempt of court, they refer to the 2006 case of Chee Soon Juan, Herzberg Daniel in 2009 (I don't know who he is) and the recent case of Alan Shadrake who was sent to jail for 6 weeks. I would have thought that if these are the only cases they rely on, Chee Soon Juan and Alan Shadrake, both well respected men of principle, morals and courage, I should be applauded, not punished. Of course this is not how a morally bankrupt country is expected to behave or think.
5. Another reason they say that I should be disbarred is the fact that I was sent to jail for 3 months for criticizing Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean! You can see for yourself here whether I should have been jailed for having written what I did about Belinda Ang Saw Ean.
6. Further, they rehash want has been said so far, that a) I had repeatedly committed contempt of court 2) that I had undermined the judiciary on 3 different occasions in 6 months 3) that I had breached the undertaking I had given to the Singapore judge 4)that my "cavalier" attitude can be seen from my blog posts 5) that I persist in undermining the Singapore judiciary in my blog posts.
7. They attach with their document my recent blog post dated July 16, 2011, "Law Society of Singapore vs Gopalan Nair, trial date July 25, 2011. A brief rehash of what it's about"
From these proceedings, I am not sure whether Singapore is aware of whom they are dealing with or are they deliberately trying to pretend not to know who I am. I would like to tell them this. They are dealing with a man who is not prepared to live a life in submission to Lee Kuan Yew because I really do not have to. I live in a free country and practice in a jurisdiction where there is the rule of law, where I do not have to live my life saying one thing in public and another in private. And there is no need for me to pretend that Singapore has the rule of law when it has none, and neither can anyone force me to do it.
Another thing they fail to understand that not every lawyer in the world are the sort you find in Singapore. No lawyer from any other democracy will be prepared to submit to a jurisdiction such as this and respect it when it has no integrity whatsoever.
Your Singapore courts can do and say anything you want. I am judged not by you, whose judgements don't mean a thing but by the real courts of the world, such as those in the USA and the UK.
And finally, since the bad guys, according to the Singapore government in their submission, are Alan Shadrake, JB Jeyaretnam and Chee Soon Juan whose cases are used to justify disbarring me from Singapore law practice, I should have no complaints whatsoever, as I would be among such illustrious men; heroes such as this. Tell me how many of you out there can claim to be compared to Chee Soon Juan, JB Jeyaretnam or Alan Shadrake? I should be proud. Very proud indeed.
I am writing this at 6.40 pm on Saturday, July 23, 2011, which is 9.40am Sunday morning July 24, 2011. My case will be heard in the High Court Singapore on Monday morning Singapore time tomorrow. I have an airline ticket departing tonight midnight San Francisco, which I am still contemplating using, which will take me into Singapore early morning Monday the day of the hearing.
I am toying with the idea of whether to come. It is only a short 30 minute drive to San Francisco Airport's long term parking along 880 North Freeway, San Mateo Bridge, 101 North Freeway, past San Carlos Airport and into San Francisco Airport, park and into the International Terminal. I may or may not come. If I do, I will walk into the courtroom precisely 5 minutes before 10 am.
As the Singapore government appears to read every word written here, they have been warned.
The Asia Sentinel on the disgraced Rupert Murdoch and his praise of Singapore
I append below, courtesy of the Asia Sentinel, a report criticizing Rupert Murdoch's praise of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore as a paragon of good government.
Singapore: Murdochian Democracy?
Tag it:Written by John Berthelsen
Rupert says the lion city is his version of utopia
Probably the most telling statement the press baron Rupert Murdoch made during his abject mea culpa before the UK Parliament Tuesday was his praise of Singapore, saying "the most open and clear society in the world... is Singapore -- the cleanest society you can find anywhere -- as every minister is paid at least one million dollars a year and has no temptation to transgress."
What that statement betrays is that Rupert Murdoch appears to have no basic understanding of either independent journalism or democracy itself.
Transparency International's Corruption Index ties Denmark and New Zealand with Singapore at the very top of its corruption perceptions index. Leave aside the question of what the lawmakers of Denmark and Sweden are paid to maintain their integrity – a fraction of what Singapore ministers get.
What keeps Singapore's ministers in line is not those million-dollar paychecks but the fact that they are scared to death of Lee Kuan Yew, who has shown no compunction whatsoever in jailing the odd minister who does stick his hand in somebody else's pockets. In 1986, Teh Cheang Wan, one of Kuan Yew's best friends, a co-founder of the state and the head of the country's national development ministry, committed suicide rather than face corruption charges that Kuan Yew was intent on bringing against him. Also leave aside the fact that the PAP has historically delivered a supine parliament mostly via gerrymandering and intimidating the opposition.
The leader of the world's most powerful news organization, who presumably ought to believe in the independence and freedom of the press, was praising a country that most recently jailed the author Alan Shadrake for pointing out that Singapore's criminal justice system is skewed towards hanging the poor and finding ways to excuse the wealthy and expatriates. Singapore has the highest per-capita rate of executions in the world.
It seems odd that Murdoch didn't notice that Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore at 140th of 167 countries in terms of press freedom, or that Time Magazine, Asiaweek, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, The Economist, Bloomberg News Service and other publications have been cowed into submission through libel suits, contempt of court action and gazetting to limit their circulation. It is especially odd that Murdoch owned two of them – the Far Eastern Economic Review, before it closed, and the Wall Street Journal/ Asia. Those that haven't been sued or otherwise attack have learned their lesson and simply don't report critically on the country.
The country's own media dare not report what happens in Singapore beyond what the leaders want to see in print. And what has happened, considering the practice of democracy and free elections, is nothing short of appalling.
According a chronology compiled by the website New Asia Republic, since 1994, in addition to suing newspapers on the thinnest of pretexts and winning all of its cases in its own courts, police have raided private homes and arrested members of churches it doesn't like.
Former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong once threatened to turn constituencies into slums if they didn't vote for the ruling People's Action Party. Both opposition leaders Chee Soon Juan and the late JB Jeyaretnam have been sued, charged with perjury and defamation and hounded with a variety of other offenses in an effort to drive them out of politics. Opposition leaders' homes and offices have been stormed by Inland Revenue officials who carted away tons of documents and articles to seek to make cases for tax evasion.
According to the US State Department's human rights report on Singapore, it is "widely believed that the authorities routinely conduct surveillance on some opposition politicians and other critics of the government." The same report also stated that the Internal Security Department is believed to run a network of part-time informants in the US, Australia and other countries.
Political films and videos have been banned. Foreign television stations and networks have been asked to restrict covering of small political parties and warned against critical reporting of the country. The police have been given lawful access to data and encrypted material. CD-ROMs have been added to the Undesirable publications Act.
In 1999, the Home Affairs Ministry admitted that it had secretly scanned the computers of more than 200,000 Internet users. Even women's magazines have been warned not to get involved in partisan matters. Public rallies by the opposition have been banned repeatedly. Falun Gong members have been arrested.
In 2001, the Parliament passed a law that allows punishment of foreign news broadcasters deemed to be "engaging in the domestic politics of Singapore." Political campaigning has been restricted on the Internet. Election time for campaigning has been as short as 17 days. Police have raided Internet critics' homes and confiscated their computers. In 2002, the supposedly independent courts ruled that there would be no trial for defamation suits brought by Goh Chok Tong and Lee Kuan Yew against opposition leader Chee Soon Juan. He was found guilty by summary judgment.
Nor does Murdoch appear to have noticed that Singapore, this paragon of integrity, is home to vast amounts of the stolen wealth of both Burma and Indonesia. Some 18,000 Indonesians described as "rich" were living in Singapore in 2007, according to Tempo Magazine, worth a combined total of US86 billion. Some US$13.5 billion of that alone was looted from the Indonesian central bank's recapitalization lifeline to 48 ailing banks during the 1997-1998 Asian Financial Crisis.
Burma's generals, who have beggared their country and savagely repressed their citizenry, are believed to have transferred nearly US$5 billion into two Singapore banks from the sale of gas since 2000, according to Earth Rights International. One of their generals has even had a rose named after him in the Singapore Botanical Gardens.
Aside from whether the old lizard was crying crocodile tears in his testimony when he said he and his top executives knew nothing of the fact that his employees had hacked into hundreds of voicemails up to and including the royal family, his apparent admiration of Singapore speaks volumes about his own corporate empire.
If this is what he believes about the foundations of democracy – that mere money will bribe politicians to stay out of trouble – then there are few moral imperatives that guide his stewardship of the press. It is okay for Fox News in the United States to hire Republican presidential candidates and give them a nationwide forum while – in Fox's famous slogan – they report, the viewers decide. It is okay for a putatively neutral news organization to virtually dictate who will be in power in the UK.
It was okay for him to make a fire-breathing speech in 1993 to London advertising executives that communications technology would allow dissidents to bypass state controlled media and that satellite broadcasting would make it possible "for information-hungry residents of many closed societies to bypass state-controlled television channels. … The Bosnian Serbs can't hide their atrocities from the probing eyes of BBC, CNN and Sky News cameras … the extraordinary living standards produced by free-enterprise capitalism cannot be kept secret."
But it also appears to have been okay to cravenly back away from that statement when it appeared that it enraged the Chinese authorities who had direct control over his Star TV footprint in Asia, and to court them in every way possible. He dropped the BBC from programming after he heard that BBC news offended the Chinese government, then tried to claim it was a business decision. A Murdoch subsidiary purchased the rights to a book by Deng Xiaoping's youngest daughter her father.
None of it worked. The Chinese figured that out.
It would be inimical – unthinkable -- for any government to order the divestment of any enterprise having to do with a free press, no matter how odious, and a lot of Murdoch's various media enterprises are odious in that they have interfered with the free and fair operation of democracy in at least three countries by scandalous and biased reporting designed to further his business interests. But maybe it is time for the heretofore toothless board of directors of News International to take a look at where he has got them. That is what boards of directors are for.
The boring spiritless, dull and compliant Singaporean.
Have you wondered why a so called English educated people (now increasingly Mandarin educated), the inhabitants of the island of Singapore never make any news at all? Singaporeans does not have an All Blacks rugby team, not a single one is an adventurer, not one has challenged the ruing PAP or their government except today's Dr. Chee Soon Juan; in fact Singaporeans haven't done a thing that is noteworthy or something to speak about.
Singapore does not have any leaders. Lee Kuan Yew's politicians are all hand picked bureaucrats who do what they are told, nothing more. As for the opposition, except for Chee Soon Juan, it too suffers from a total lack of leadership. James Gomez, the SDP's Australian resident has made his rounds during the recent elections, lost and just like the others, has totally disappeared. And while we thought, at least for a moment, that Dr. Chee's party the SDP was in fact a political party like what you see anywhere else, I am afraid it has returned to the one man show that it was before the elections. True, they have a blog and put out learned dissertations about matters of the world, but there may be only one man behind the whole thing, Dr. Chee himself. All the others have long gone, cleared out, after the elections.
As for Kenneth Jeyaretnam's party, the Reform Party, it is even worse. The entire party including it's boss, the late Jeyaretnam's son have gone into total hibernation.
The other party the NSP is even worse. Noone knows what has happened to them.
The one thing that this tells us is, that Singapore does not produce any leaders. There is noone there with any passion and the courage behind it to change society. It can only mean one thing, that Singaporeans on the whole are not people of any individual beliefs, no beliefs, no creativity, no passion, no nothing. Living under Lee Kuan Yew for this many years, it appears has completely destroyed their spirit, and made them into the lifeless humourless boring automatons that they are today.
I believe the main reason for this sort of a life is because they no longer have any confidence in themselves. They fear Lee Kuan Yew and his government while at the same time they underestimate their own strength.
When I was living in Singapore, and today while in the US, I had never had any respect for Lee Kuan Yew and his ilk. I feel, only a coward feels it necessary to punish his critics like Lee Kuan Yew does and noone respects a coward. Which is why, while in Singapore I openly joined the opposition, openly contested elections, which of course attracted his cowardly vindictiveness.
Having come to the USA for a better life, which by the way is infinitely better than anything in Singapore, I continue to provoke Lee Kuan Yew and his friends there to embark on even more stupidity to silence me, one of which is the impending proceedings to have me disbarred in that island.
Had I been in Singapore and not left, I can assure you I would be doing the same thing in Singapore, and being arrested again and again for it, which as you know would hurt him and his friends much more than it ever would me.
I am sure noone can call me a dull boring spiritless character, but frankly, I am no different from anyone else in the rest of the world, only that compared to the ordinary Singaporean, I am world's apart.
Just look at it, the Arab spring has come and gone except for Syria, but Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew continues to pay himself several millions of dollars belonging to you, but you have done nothing. He continues to deny your rights but you continue to stand there and do nothing.
In fact, in recent history, I have been fighting for the cause of Singapore's freedom much more than any one of you Singaporeans have, even though I am not even officially Singaporean but American. In 2008 I got arrested for speaking my mind in this blog against Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean's corrupt practices in court, and went to jail. After returning to the US I continued my criticism resulting in their commencing disciplinary proceedings against me to have me disbarred from practicing law in Singapore, which will be heard in the Singapore High Court on July 25, 2011, this Monday. Also I wrote a hoax blog post on the serious illness of Lee Kuan Yew to test Singapore's resilience as a state, for which they had to criticize me in the island's Parliament. I have told them that my criticisms will continue even after my disbarment from the Singapore courts. This defiance by me is making them fuming mad.
I want to tell Singaporeans this once again. Lee Kuan Yew and his friends who rule over you are nothing. If you did challenge him, he would probably throw you in jail. But the moment you hold your ground and remained defiant, he will back off as he always does, just like any other coward behaves.
There is no point in coming back in the year 2016 and make speeches at election rallies because noone will respect you. They would if you agitate now, through public protests and civil disobedience because for the first time, Lee and Company would have to pay attention. Otherwise there is going to be nothing but the same old boring existences that you are very accustomed to.
Ethnic cleansing, Singapore style
Singapore's Constitution clearly mandates equality of religion, and races in the island. But Singapore strongman Lee Kuan Yew, just as he ignores any law as he pleases, blatantly ignores the Constitution, and deliberately and systematically diminishes the population of Malays, Indians and other races while continually increasing the Chinese population, his preferred race, within the island, he himself being of Chinese descent.
This long standing policy of ethnic cleansing against the Malays and Indians has gone on for so long that they are now very small minorities within the island and if Lee Kuan Yew's determination to eliminate the Malays and Indians goes on unchecked, before long there won't be any minorities left in the island, and it would be entirely Chinese.
In the 1930s and earlier, when my father first settled in Singapore from his native India, the Chinese in Singapore only formed about 50% of the population, the other 50% being made up almost equally between the Malays, who were there before anyone else, the Indians and Eurasians.
Although the Chinese population had increased with an increase in childbirth over the years, so did the Malays and Indians. But for decades now, the Chinese fertility rate has dropped to less than even the replacement level, while the Malays and to a lesser extent, the Indians reproduction rate were proportionately greater. Therefore if things were left as they were, the Malay population and the Indian would have increased further while the Chinese population would have shrunk.
But whether the Chinese or Malay or Indian population increases at a faster or slower rate is something which has to be left alone, as they are all Singapore citizens and no particular race should have an advantage over the rest. Of course that is what we would expect in a free and fair democracy with the rule of law, but Singapore is not a democracy but a dictatorship with Lee Kuan Yew strutting around giving the orders.
If you did not know already, this is what has been happening for decades. Lee Kuan Yew's government has plucked out a number from thin air and declared that whether anyone likes it or not, Singapore's population should henceforth always comprise 75% ethnic Chinese, some 15% Malays and the rest Indian.
So since the Chinese are not producing babies fast enough to maintain their 75% majority, what do he do? You guessed it. Lee's government brings in shiploads of ethnic Chinese from Communist China to boost their population. And that is why anyone going to Singapore sees only Chinese faces, because most of them are recent imports from China, thanks to Lee Kuan Yew's policy of ethnic cleansing.
Had this happened in any other country in the world, the Malays and Indians would have been up in arms and there would have been island wide riots and mayhem. But Lee Kuan Yew has managed to keep every single Singaporean in so much fear of him that the Malays and Indians appear unwilling to complain at all, and stand idly by while their population disappears entirely while Chinese Singapore, like an eclipse in progress, completely turns Singapore into a rouge Chinese port as Gough Whitlam of Australia had called it not too long ago.
And I want this to be a stark reminder to every single Malay and Indian in Singapore. Your Singapore as your home, is going to disappear. In fact it is being pulled out under your very noses for the last 20 years or so and the Lee Kuan Yew family, a family that has no respect for the rule of law has been responsible for this disaster.
My job here is merely to alert the world as to what is happening. It is the Singaporean Malay and Singaporean Indian upon whose shoulders the responsibility to stop this slide into oblivion lies.
Singapore Malays should work with their Malaysian brothers, shoulder to shoulder to campaign against this, and so should the Singaporean Indian with the help of the Tamil Nadu government and do the same.
These reports that I write greatly angers the Singapore government of course, but I can assure you they will continue while I hope it has stirred your emotions and your indignation to do something real to stop the rot.
And it has been a pleasure for me to write about it.
Singapore. Living in fear stunts achievement
Everyone in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore knows where he stands. Lee and his government are boss. The citizen on the other hand is expected to know his place. And this inferiority stifles progress, stifles achievement or spontaneity; where every action is calculated and checked to see to it that Lee is not displeased.
For one, the Singapore courts are not there to serve the people. Most legal work in the island happens in the Subordinate Court, where people are arrested charged and punished in busloads for breaking Lee Kuan Yew's laws.
Civil law on the other hand is almost non existent. The High Court in Singapore is almost a ghost house where there are hardly any cases, and if any case was ever heard there, it has to be some millionaire woman or other suing her doctor for $60 million for a botched medical procedure. It is as you guessed, primarily the forum for the rich and connected and usually the one who is more connected wins over the less connected.
There are several reasons for the law being almost beyond the reach of the lesser ordinary citizen whom Lee has called mere "digits". For one you almost need to be a millionaire to bring a law suit there, where filing fees and court fees run into several thousand dollars each day. Then there is the English practice where the loser has to pay the winner legal costs, which again will run into several thousands of dollars, making litigation a very risky proposition, especially when Lee Kuan Yew controls his judges.
And third, there are really no laws to speak of when it comes to administrative injustices. For instance, the state controlled Housing Agency, the HDB, in whose apartments almost every single Singaporean lives does not really have any grievance procedure. If you were unjustly passed over for an apartment which was given to a Lee Kuan Yew cronie, there is nothing much you can do. You can write a letter of complaint if you want, but there is nothing else you could do if it ended up in the thrash can, other than banging your head against the wall.
It is the same as far as grievances against any state agency. The idea is, take it or leave it. It is simply, Lee Kuan Yew's rules in Lee Kuan Yew's island. He builds the apartments with your money and lets you take a flat of his choosing. Either take it or leave it. Most importantly shut your trap and behave.
And this philosophy of my way or the highway runs across his entire government. There are many who suffer silently from injustices suffered from the Department of Motor Vehicles, the Department of Health and every other government agency you can think of. It really does not matter to his government whether any individuals rights have been violated or anyone has been unjustly discriminated. Lee's idea appears to be that he has a system of government set up where the average citizen is provided with the bare minimum of housing and bare minimum of essentials to survive. And that is as far as it goes.
And the ones who make decisions as to what you should have and what you should not are Lee Kuan Yew's chosen elite. These are the government scholars, given government scholarships abroad who return to serve his government. These are the ones who literally decide how you should live, what apartments to build and how many, and how much taxes you should pay.
The difficulty of using Lee Kuan Yew's courts is not because of chance, it is by design. Lee does not want an atmosphere where you feel you have any individual rights, because it tends to weaken his ability to rule. A population that feels helpless is much more readily controlled, instead of one which thinks they have rights. In Lee's Singapore, if someone feels they have been unjustly treated, the proper thing to do is to stand in line outside your Member of Parliament's office (which happens to be a member of Lee's government) and beg for help. If you are lucky, you will get it, if not hard luck. The idea is to instill in you the realization that you are nothing, Lee Kuan Yew and his government is everything.
And I was going to say, this sort of a controlled life lived in fear of Lee Kuan Yew and what he could do to you if you crossed him, produces a type of second rate individual who never achieved any success. The reasons are many. Firstly the average Singaporean unlike Lee Kuan Yew's elite feels neglected and ignored, which makes him bitter and hate his government. He realises he is nothing but dirt, in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore where his chosen few live like Gods. They live lives of luxury and security, protected by Lee Kuan Yew and his government. He on the other hand is nothing but a "digit".
In an unjust scenario such as this, he has nothing to look forward to. His country has neglected him and he has no concern for his country. All his life is spent just keeping his job, making sure that he does not trample on any one's toes and to continue the remainder of his life as peacefully as possible. In his life there is no challenge, no purpose but just a dull existence, not only for him but also for his family, keeping clear of Lee Kuan Yew and what he can do to you.
An existence such as this never achieved greatness, never achieved spontaneity nor any geniuses. It simply will not where the average Singaporean has no interest whatsoever in his country and his country has no interest whatsoever in him.
In the US it is very different. The laws in the US not only exist in the books, it is actively exercised. There are grievance procedures set up in every department. If you are denied a drivers license, you have a grievance procedure to help you. Denied housing? There is a grievance procedure for this too. Every single infringement of your rights allows you to challenge it. And if there was still no satisfaction, you have legal redress in court before an impartial judge who delivers justice regardless of whether Obama likes it or not.
And it is not just the avenues of justice available, we make sure it is readily and cheaply available to everyone. The court filing fee for an entire law suit in the Superior Court of California costs no more than about $300.00. And we don't have the practice of making the loser pay the winner's costs of litigation, which therefore reduces the uncertainty of huge losses just for suing someone.
Every single tribunal in California is full of litigants of one sort or another, all seeking justice where they feel denied. And every single citizen lives his life, free and with the firm belief that this is a country of laws and his rights would always be protected.
And that is why America continues to be the most attractive country in the world where the whole world wants to come and live, a place which continues to produce greatness and where the people respect their government as their government respects them, not just the rich and connected but even the lowest of the low.
Today the US is one of the few among the developed countries of the world whose population is increasing and not decreasing, like that of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore. And that should be no surprise to anyone.
Lee should realize that merely writing in his state controlled press that Singaporeans are happy is not enough. They should really be happy.
Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew makes you a deal, you simply cannot accept.
If you live in Singapore or if you are found within Singapore, this is what Lee Kuan Yew's deal is for you. If you ever criticize him, his courts or his government, he will use the law any way he wants to silence you. Although you are on the receiving end of his abuse and misuse of the law, you are supposed to quietly accept it. If ever you dare to criticize his actions, or those of his judges, he will sue you or charge you and send you to jail or even better, order you to pay thousands or millions and if you did not, bankrupt you.
For Lee Kuan Yew, his judges who are his principle weapon to remain in power. If you try to discredit his judges, you are attacking his principal weapon against his opponents and therefore it simply will not be tolerated, as his power stands in grave danger of being weakened.
Every single Singaporean lives under this ever present fear. That is why no matter how much Lee Kuan Yew's judges misuse the law, there is really noone willing to stand up and criticize them.
Recently Alan Shadrake was sent to jail for writing a book critical of Lee Kuan Yew's judges for being lenient towards those with power and not against ordinary Singaporeans without connections in high places.
Even though Lee's Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean shamelessly abused her power as a judge in punishing Chee Soon Juan in his 2008 defamation actiion brought by Lee Kuan Yew, not a single Singaporean so far has had the courage to condemn her actions. That is what I did in this blog which resulted in my having to go to jail for 3 months in Singapore. Now they are going to disbar me for refusing to stop criticizing her for her shameful dishonesty and that of his other judges.
Singaporeans on the other hand live their lives in fear of Lee Kuan Yew perhaps because they have nowhere to go and would rather not go to jail in Singapore.
But for others such as me, Lee Kuan Yew's offer is one which I simply cannot accept. While his government and his judges continue to deny the rights of his citizens, I will continue to condemn him and his corrupt kangaroo judiciary. That is something I think he understands by now.
Posted by Gopalan Nair at 11:07 PM 1 comment:
Law Society of Singapore vs Gopalan Nair, trial date July 25, 2011. A brief rehash of what it's about.
Singapore's Law Society's case against me to have me disbarred from practicing law in Singapore will be heard in Singapore High Court on July 25, 2011. Although I have stated here the details of the case, I am going to give you a brief reminder once again. I don't intend to waste your time on this Singaporean nonsense.
The first charge is for writing a blog post here on May 29, 2008 criticising Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean for misusing the law as a judge to punish the well known Lee Kuan Yew critic Dr. Chee Soon Juan.
I am reproducing the blog post below. The government takes umbrage to the words in the blog "The judge Belinda Ang was throughout prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders".
The government claims that I insulted the judge by the aforesaid words that she had prostituted herself as a judge. However every English language dictionary defines the words "prostituting oneself" as one who dishonestly misuses her authority. In this case the words were accurate to describe what she did. There was no insult at all. I have my freedom of speech.
Singapore. Judge Belinda Ang's Kangaroo Court
This is Gopalan Nair in Singapore today, May 29, 2008. I have been in Singapore since May 25, 2008, and staying now at Broadway Hotel, Room 708, 195 Serangoon Road, Singapore 218067.
I am deliberately stating my identity and my present exact location for a definite purpose. On day 2 of the trial in Singapore, day before yesterday, in the Lee Kuan Yew and son verses Dr. Chee Soon Juan case, Lee senior had said in answer to a question by Dr. Chee, that if he, Lee Kuan Yew, knew the identity of bloggers in cyberspace who defamed him (defamation being used of course in the Singaporean sense), he will sue and bankrupt them.
He had earlier sidestepped the question by saying, that he had difficulty suing critics of his in the Internet because their identities were not usually known. When pressed, he categorically and deliberately stated that he will sue if they made known their identities.
Well, what you are going to read should be without question defamatory of Mr. Lee and his son, that is in the warped and hare brained Alice in Wonderland meaning of the word "defamation". It will be interesting to see if this Singapore strongman, Lee Kuan Yew and son, who strut around the small island of Singapore bullying everyone who so much as criticized, will sue me now for calling him nothing more than a small time street bully; since now, we have myself Gopalan Nair who has the temerity to identify himself and state his presence with full address in Singapore.
Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, see here. I am now within the jurisdiction of your courts; I repeat, "the jurisdiction of your courts" because literally they are your courts, willing to commit any crime or injustice you will demand of them.
During the last 3 days of the court hearing, up till yesterday, in the High Court, before your stooge of a judge, Belinda Ang in Court 4, you and your Prime Minister son conducted yourselves as expected, no better than cowards hiding behind the coat tails of your equally cowardly counsel doubling up as a PAP politician in court; who managed with the full co-operation of the said judge to ensure that you came to court merely for form, refusing to answer almost all questions that went directly to your integrity or rather the lack of it.
After the end of the 3 days in court, it left no doubt in my mind that you and your son are indeed what international human rights organizations say you are, nothing more than tin pot tyrants who remain in power by abusing the courts to eliminate your political opponents. You are clearly corrupt, as is your government, because paying yourself $3.7 million is corruption pure and simple and in the end you have lost all credibility and moral authority to govern Singapore.
The following transpired during the last 3 days in court. The judge Belinda Ang was throughout prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders. There was murder, the rule of law being the repeated victim.
The issue in the said court was the determination of the quantum of damages payable by the innocent victim, Dr. Chee Soon Juan who had earlier been found liable by this judge for defamation of character of Mr. Lee and son, where the law was once again abused through the contrivance of a process known as summary proceedings, thereby disallowing Dr. Chee to produce any witnesses or to cross-examine those of Mr. Lee because there were none.
The said 3 day of hearing before the court was nothing more than a mockery of justice; a charade, a make believe that appeared right out of the pages of Alice in Wonderland with Belinda Ang playing the role of the Queen of Hearts before the trial of the Mouse who stole the Tarts very well indeed. It almost appeared that she was going to dispense with all testimony and come straight to the verdict of guilty so as not to waste her valuable time!
It would be fair to say, in fact an understatement, that in effect she disallowed Dr. Chee any effective cross examination of either the father Lee Kuan Yew or the son, as Mr. Singh, their counsel was almost having a workout like in a gym; standing up to object, and sitting down after almost each and every question that Dr. Chee put to his father and son clients. In fact Singh was popping up and down almost without let up during the several hours of the hearing so much so, that someone suggested to me that it would have been a good idea if he remained standing throughout the case to facilitate his expected objections at each and every question of Dr. Chee.
If Dr. Chee did manage to ask even one question, it was because he went ahead and asked it despite the objection of both Mr. Singh and the judge because if he did not, he would not have been able to ask any questions at all!
Dr. Chee has asked Lee's son how much he was being paid, that is $3.7 million, 6 times what George Bush is paid! Question disallowed and the son shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks whether it is just for him to corruptly steal this amount of taxpayer's money while the poor in the 1 room flats starve without any financial assistance! Question disallowed and the son shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks why the GIC and HDB function under a shroud of secrecy without any transparency, when the moneys in them is taxpayers money? Question disallowed and the son shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks whether he knew that those who read the Internet overwhelmingly hated him as a tyrant and a bully and the only ones singing praises in his name are the Singapore state owned and controlled media? Question disallowed and the son shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks whether the international community looks at him no better than a despot and a father's son? Question disallowed and the son shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee had asked this Lee Kuan Yew's son why he said in the 2006 elections that " if there were more opposition candidates at elections, he will have to "fix" them and bribe his voters to win elections"? Question disallowed and the son shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
There were many more questions put to him just as the above questions, all very relevant, which, had they been answered, would have shown that he had no integrity or reputation whatsoever, and since integrity and reputation are the issues in deciding quantum of damages, Lee Kuan Yew's son should have been awarded no damages at all; that is provided we have an independent judiciary, which we have not.
Any honest spectator in the court's gallery would have come away with one opinion alone, that is, this man is Prime Minister only because he happens to be the son of his father. If he really wanted to show that he was in fact in control, he could have easily told his lawyer to stop being the Jack in the Box and stop popping up and down with his objections and let him handle the questions. At each question, he was looking meekly at his counsel to see whether he has to answer it. If I could put it in a simple way, he was nothing more than a helpless boy.
The following refer to Lee Kuan Yew's testimony or rather the lack of it.
Chee asked him whether he came to power through unfair means in 1959, as shown by declassified British Colonial Office documents in London? Question disallowed and the father shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks about his throwing Lim Chin Siong, his political compatriot, in jail under the ISA in solitary confinement for several years in the 1960s and whether this was a sign of a man with a reputation and integrity? Question disallowed and the father shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks about the Operation Cold Store in the 1960s where he jails political opponents because he fears he might be overthrown? Question disallowed and the father shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks about Chia Thye Poh, Zaid Zakaharia and Lim Hock Siew, his political opponents whom he imprisons without cause for many many years? Question disallowed and the father shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Chee asks whether the only people who have a good opinion of him are his state owned and controlled Singapore press, whereas everyone else in Singapore as well as the entire list of respectable foreign organizations and countries including the entire European Union consider him as a thug and small time street bully? Question disallowed and the father shamefully just sits there, protected by his counsel Mr. Singh and the kangaroo judge.
Other than the dubious Transparency International Kula Lumpur Chapter (not to be confused with Transparency International of Berlin Germany) he was asked whether anyone else considered him in high regard other than the local press which he controls? His answer was that PERC and a Swiss organization, both of whom cater for businessmen thought highly of him. But when asked whether highly respected Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Lawyers Without Borders, Reporters without Borders, ILRW and several other international bodies considered him a crook; he had nothing to say, because as usual the Jack Rabbit Davinder Singh stood up once again to object and the judge obediently sustained the objection.
Then Lee Kuan Yew went on to insult Dr. Chee with impunity, that he is a liar, a cheat a charlatan, a criminal and what not. Of course the judge permitted these insults, since after all Lee Kuan Yew and his son owned the courts and the judge as well.
These court proceeding were nothing more than a sham, a charade and a mockery of justice. It was very clear that both father and son had no integrity or credibility whatsoever. They were ruling Singapore through fear and those who are able to leave the country leave it in droves, only to be replaced by Mandarin speaking immigrants from the Peoples Republic of China who speak no English at all.
If there was one result of these proceedings it was this. Dr. Chee' impeccable reputation was vindicated. He came out of these proceedings truly as the statesman that he is, and he demolished these two petty thugs Lee and his son, perhaps not in this Singapore kangaroo court, but truly in the court of truth and conscience.
And in fact despite the objection of Mr. Singh and Belinda Ang, Dr. Chee Soon Juan did manage to say to both father and son, that regardless of what the court decides, in the court of natural justice, in the court of truth and in the court of moral conscience, they had that day lost all moral authority to govern Singapore.
I believe, not only me, but every single person who walked away from that courthouse yesterday came away with that same judgment.
As the Lees know, I am a lawyer practicing in Fremont California and a member of the California Bar. My question to Lee Kuan Yew and his son is this. Are you going to stand by your threat and sue me for defamation as well? I am presently physically within your jurisdiction and the jurisdiction of your kangaroo courts. Are you going to going to send your process server to me with your writ of summons? Or are you, as expected, all talk and no action, when you meet those not afraid of you, just as how a petty street thug would behave?
Broadway Hotel,
Serangoon Road, Singaproe
The second and third charges refers to an incident on July 4th 2008 along Race Course Road and Bukit Timah Road junction near Little India Singapore. Some people in civilian clothes accosted me and accused me of knocking on a Singapore police car which was some 300 feet away from where I was. I refused to co-operate with them when they used forced to pin me to the ground, causing me injuries and and handcuffed me. I was charged with using bad language against them and shouting at them and behaving in an unruly fashion, all of which I have denied. Even if I did all of the above, which I did not, no lawyer should be disbarred from practicing law for this.
The fourth charge deals with what happened at my trial for the above yelling at policemen case. During the case, I had told the judge, something to the effect that I had no respect for the judge nor the court, because it was entirely politically motivated and that I am being charged just because I am a critic of Lee Kuan Yew and his Singapore dictatorship. I had made a number of statements in court to this effect. To backtrack, as regards the first Belinda Ang Saw Ean charge, I was sent to jail for 3 months in September 2008. One week before I was to be released, which was supposed to be on November 26, 2008, I was taken to court once again from prison and this time charged for contempt of court for making these statements at my "yelling at policemen" trial. If I denied the charge and went to trial, it was almost certain that I would have to spend more time in jail. As my law practice was being neglected very badly in California, I had to go home to USA soon. So to avoid the danger of this I pleaded guilty. As a condition of their not extending my jail term further I had agreed to take down 2 other blog posts which referred to the "yelling at policemen" trial, apologized and promised not to attack Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore or their judges anymore. The moment I returned to the US, I wrote in this blog that I refuse to apologize, put up those 2 blog posts that were taken down and continued my criticism of Lee Kuan Yew, his dictatorship and their boot licking judges. For doing this I am being charged in these proceedings.
The fifth charge deals with a blog post here which I wrote about Singapore judge Judith Prakash for sending 3 men to jail merely because they wore Tshirts with the picture of a Kangaroo in judge's robes. They were seen and arrested by the police outside Judge Belinda Ang Saw Ean's court in the 2008 defamation trial against Dr. Chee Soon Juan. They are charging me for using the same "prostituting " comment against this judge. These words were a correct use of the English language as the Judge was clearly being dishonest and misusing her authority by sending the men to jail merely for wearing Kangaroo pictured T shirts. I am appending the case below again for your reading.
Justice Judith Prakash. Another Kangaroo Judge.
After my imprisonment in Singapore for 60 days, thanks to Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, I was let off for 5 days so as to get my things in order before I was banished forever from Singapore on November 26, 2008. The 5 days enabled me to attend the case in the High Court, generally known as the Kangaroo Court T shirt case. On Monday 24, 2008, the Singapore judge Justice Judith Prakash found all 3 defendants guilty as expected. The sentence was to be delivered on Thursday November 27, 2008 which I could not observe, as I was deported on Wednesday the 26th. There was jail terms for all 3 Defendants, with Mr. Tan having to serve 15 days, and the other 2 Isrizal and Shafi, 7 days each. In addition they were each ordered to pay the government costs of $5,000.00 each.
The facts are that these 3 wore T shirts with the image of a kangaroo in judicial robes, (which means that the court is not impartial but corrupt), to the hearing before Justice Belinda Ang, (which by the way, was the same judge whom I was accused of insulting, resulting in my 3 month imprisonment), from May 26 to May 28 2008 at the Supreme Court Singapore. As you will recall, the case before Judge Ang was for assessment of damages that Dr. Chee and company have to pay Lee Kuan Yew in his successful defamation action brought by Lee against Dr. Chee. For wearing these T shirts to Judge Ang's court, Justice Prakash found them all guilty and the resultant severe penalties.
None of the 3 deserved any punishment. The Singapore constitution allows every citizen the freedom of speech and expression. And wearing T shirts with the image of a Kangaroo is the exercise of that freedom which the Constitution guarantees. Secondly it cannot amount to a contempt to say something which is true.
Everyone knows that the Singapore judiciary is complaint to the wishes of Lee Kuan Yew and his government as can be seen from the series of politically motivated court cases from as early as the 1960s up till today against the late JB Jeyaretnam to Dr. Chee Soon Juan, Lee's victims, who have been imprisoned and impoverished. How then can saying something that is true, that the Singapore courts are kangaroo courts and Singapore judges' kangaroo judges, amount to contempt of court?
Justice Judith Prakash just as all her fellow judges in Singapore has once again disgraced herself, her office as judge and let down Singapore by shamelessly doing the bidding of her master Lee Kuan Yew by convicting and punishing these brave young men, who are in fact the pride of Singapore. They unlike the masses who live in fear of Lee Kuan Yew, had the courage to speak the truth and do what had to be done, which is to stand up to their convictions and say what has to be said, come what may.
These politically motivated cases, intended to break the will of good upstanding men and women of Singapore is difficult to endure. The jail terms of 15 days and 7 days is bad enough but endurable. But what is crippling is not the jail terms. It is the court costs of $5,000.00 (about US$4,000.00) each that they have to pay. This is a huge crippling amount of money for an average wage earner in Singapore.
If they find the money to pay, it will be a lesson to them never to criticize Lee's courts again. On the other hand, if they cannot pay, they would be made bankrupt, which means they cannot travel outside Singapore and the requirement that they report each month to the Bankruptcy office to explain their financial standing. Either way it is a debilitating crippling punishment, intended to send a clear signal both to them and everyone else that they should not, ever, dare to criticize Lee Kuan Yew or his courts, regardless of whatever dishonesty he or his courts perpetrate.
And if they ever do what they did again, they will be sent to jail for longer periods as well as suffer even heavier financial burdens.
With Lee Kuan Yew abusing the law courts to stay in power, and with unprincipled shameless judges such as Judith Prakash, what then is the answer to make this fascist dictatorship of Lee Kuan Yew accountable to the people? It is easy for me to say from the safety of the United States that more and more Singaporeans should pick up the courage that these 3 admirable young patriots had, and do what is right.
But that is easier said than done. During my 6 months forced stay in Singapore, with my passport held by Singapore police, waiting for my trial 4 months later, I had ample time to meet many Singaporeans. Each time I told Singaporeans to stand up to this dictatorship by open protest, I have always been faced with the same expected answer.
They tell me that they are all ready to speak up against the dictatorship, but they cannot because they would lose their jobs and their children would suffer; they and their families would be ruined financially at the hands of these corrupt compliant judges. This, you would well see, is a hopeless situation, forcing them to suffer in silence in fear of Lee Kuan Yew and his courts.
I do not have an answer to this question. Dr. Chee Soon Juan and his sister Chee Siok Chin have paid gravely to stand up to their convictions. Dr. Chee has lost everything and so has his sister. In history, there are only a handful of men like Dr. Chee, like Nelson Mandela and Gandhi. It is unreasonable to expect ordinary people to be martyrs like them.
Lee Kuan Yew as you can see has a grip on power. And his principle instrument to stay in power is his law courts with his compliant judges which he uses to destroy and demolish his opponents, by bending and breaking the law outright when necessary.
But I know certain truths painful about the country. One is that it is imposable to change this government through parliamentary elections. The Singapore Parliament is nothing more than a rubber stamp. As Christopher Lingle, the NUS professor who was charged with contempt of court and managed to flee the country had written, "Singapore is a one party Leninist state".
Although outwardly Lee Kuan Yew portrays Singapore as a Parliamentary democracy, nothing is further from the truth. It is Lee Kuan Yew, the 86 year old dictator who controls everything, the courts, the trade unions, the media, everything. Parliament has no powers at all. Members of Parliament are mere stooges who would be quite prepared to say 2 plus 2 is 27 or any number Lee Kuan Yew wishes, to take the example of Orwell's 1984.
Therefore the only way to change this government and to make it accountable is for people to be able to say that 2 and 2 are 4 and not any other number of Lee's choosing. And the way to do this is not through the elections of 2010, the next general elections in Singapore, but through peaceful protest on the street.
But peaceful protest means unbearable hardship to the protestors. It would mean 15 days jail and $5,000.00 court costs liability, if not more, to take the recent example of the Kangaroo T shirt case.
With the crippling and terminal nature of these punishments, who among Singaporeans will be prepared to embark on this dangerous adventure? George Orwell in 1984, said correctly that the proletariat will not be the ones with the daring to do it; because they do not understand the need for such abstract values such as freedom and democracy, being content with the hope of getting a an extra $1,000.00 in pay or a better TV set. Neither will members of the elite with the knowledge of such values as freedom; the Inner or Outer Party in his novel 1984, be prepared for that sacrifice, as they would have too much to lose financially.
The answer lies with the young men and women with a tertiary education, citizens who are armed with a good English education, who know that they can succeed anywhere in the world, who would care 2 hoots to what Lee Kuan Yew can do to them. If they protest and get arrested, so what? They can take the next flight out to Australia where they will be welcomed with open arms, where they and their families can live as free men and women, able to speak their minds without fear of Lee Kuan Yew or anyone else.
It is these young men and women who should take courage and join Dr. Chee Soon Juan and his noble fight to seek freedom for his people. And I call upon them not to remain silent and do what is right and noble. Stand up for Singapore and stand up for the truth. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain.
Leaving Singapore for a life overseas is itself the greatest form of protest against Lee Kuan Yew and his politically motivated courts. In effect, by leaving, you are telling Lee Kuan Yew that you are not prepared to live as a slave in his island and the ability to live a free man is worth more than any amount of riches that corrupt judges such as Judge Judith Prakash can earn in her entire lifetime by playing second fiddle to Lee Kuan Yew, her master.
At present, I understand that as many as 1000 Singaporeans emigrate from Singapore's shores annually for countries such as Australia. I have read that Lee Kuan Yew himself has gone to cities such as Melbourne begging overseas Singaporeans to return with no success whatsoever. Why should they return to a fear infested island where the slightest criticism of Lee or his courts will result in crippling financial ruin! By the way, I understand that the numbers of those leaving has been steadily increasing above 1000 each year!
As for the likes of Justice Judith Prakash, she will continue to live her life in luxury for the dirty work she does to please her master Lee Kuan Yew. Her income for being an agent for Lee Kuan Yew to silence and destroy his critics, I understand is several millions of dollars a year.
But I am sure that she loathes each time that she has to look at herself in the mirror, because what she sees is the face of a dishonorable unconscionable and unprincipled human being who lives by prostituting her position as a judge to please her master Lee Kuan Yew, who finds no other way to stay in power other than abusing the law to silence his critics.
May I say the same thing that I said about her fellow Singapore judge, Judge Belinda Ang, which landed me in prison for 2 months? Judge Judith Prakash of the Supreme Court Singapore has prostituted herself in her capacity as a judge hearing the Kangaroo T shirt case on November 24, 2008 by being nothing more than an employee of Lee Kuan Yew and his son, whom he appointed Prime Minister. By her actions in sending these young men to prison and making them pay crippling court costs of $5,000.00 each, she has shamelessly disgraced herself, her office of a judge, disgraced the Singapore Constitution and disgraced Singapore.
Shame on you, woman.
Fax: 510 657 6914 Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
I have no doubt I will be disbarred from practicing law in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore courts. It is one of their principle ways to ensure that no one else criticizes them and a chill tricles down the spine of every single person in the island to keep them in line as demanded. As for me, once they do this, I will have another oppurtunity to prove that Singapore law is nothing but Lee Kuan Yew's personal set of rules to keep him, his family and his cronies in power. I hope this will have an even more damaging effect of the credibility of the administration of law in Singapore. As it is, there are only 3847 lawyers practicing there in that island of a full 5 million people, a very unsatisfactory number. It is hoped that even more lawyers would be persuded not to have anything more to do with a legal system such as this. Each one of these actions by this administration helps to hammer in one more nail into the coffin of their total decline.
The writings in this blog will continue.
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