Reposted from YourSDP.org
Introduction
Schools teach our children that Lee Kuan Yew heroically delivered Singapore from the evil clutches of the communists and gave us what we have today.
Whether such an assertion is historically accurate or not, the Government seems intent to seal this version in the annals of Singapore. When filmmaker, Mr Martyn See, released Zahari's 17 Years in which Mr Said Zahari talked about his 17-year detention, the Government promptly banned it.
It, it stated, "will not allow people who had posed a security threat to the country in the past to exploit the use of films to purvey a false and distorted portrayal of their past actions and detention by the government."
Top-secret documents held by the British Government, now declassified, reveal some jaw-dropping facts about Lee Kuan Yew and how he came to power.
When Lim Chin Siong, another of Lee Kuan Yew's prisoners, died in 1996, the PAP was equally anxious to make sure that Lim's portrayal as a revolutionary communist remained etched in the minds of the people.
In response to a tribute that the SDP had written about Lim, the PAP through then MP Dr Ow Chin Hock, said that the Barisan Sosialis (Socilaist Front), of which Lim was its leader, fought the Government in 1966 "on the streets, according to the teachings of Mao Zedong in the Cultural Revolution."
It was a bald-faced lie. Lim was already in prison under ISA detention in 1966 and could not have led his party in anything.
This, it seems, was not the only untruth that the PAP has been telling us.
For example, Dr Ow pointed out that Lim was not fighting for a democratic Singapore (the cheek) but a communist one. Lim would have turned Singapore into "Mao's China or Ho Chi Minh's Vietnam", the PAP insisted.
Besides, it was the Internal Security Council (ISC) under the command of the British and not the PAP Government, who ordered the arrest and detention of Lim and colleagues.
This was because there were only three PAP representatives on the ISC and they were "outnumbered" by the other four members on the Council, three British and one Malaysian.
Nothing could be more untrue.
Top-secret documents held by the British Government, now declassified, reveal some jaw-dropping facts about Lee Kuan Yew and how he came to power.
Two history scholars studied these papers and presented their findings in the book Comet In Our Sky (available at Select Books at the Tanglin Shopping Centre).
The first is Tim Harper who teaches Southeast Asian history and the history of the British empire at the University of Cambridge in London.
The second is Greg Poulgrain, a professor at Griffiths University in Australia who has been researching Southeast Asian history for more than 20 years.
This SDP feature presents a summary of Dr Harper's and Dr Poulgrain's chapters. It contains some shocking archival material.
It also attempts to answer questions like who were people like Lim Chin Siong and Said Zahari? Did they really pose a security threat to the country? Were they communists hell-bent on undermining constitutional/democratic means of governance in Singapore? Was it really the ISC that was responsible for their arrest and imprisonment? Most important, is the PAP's version of history based on fact?
Remember, this narration is not the SDP's rendition of events past. It is a collective summary of the research done by two historians.
To ensure that this present essay remains faithful to Professors Harper's and Poulgrain's works, quotes from the historians' chapters are used liberally.
Still, don't take our word for it. Get a copy of Comet In Our Sky and read for yourself the real history of the PAP and Barisan Sosialis.
Why bother?
But why is this important? Why should Lim Chin Siong, a man who died more than ten years ago and who led a party which is now defunct, be relevant to the world in which we now live?
Hard, historical facts are the greatest antidote to fear mongering by the state and to the use of national security as a bogey to suppress freedom and democracy.
First, because those events are part of our history, and history defines who we are as a people and, more important, shapes the way we plan our future.
The textbooks that the Ministry of Education writes for our kids are not history but rather fables, starring Mr Lee Kuan Yew. We have a duty to teach our youths the truth.
Also, what happened in the 1950s and 60s continue to be relevant because many of Lim's colleagues are still alive and the sacrifices they made for the independence of Singapore have been all but erased. Their stories must be told and their honour restored.
Third, and perhaps most important, not only is the PAP's cloroxed account used to mentally condition (brainwash, if you prefer) our children, it continues to be used as a weapon to intimidate and silence voices of dissent.
If Lee Kuan Yew can manipulate the security apparatus for his own political ends in the 1950s and 60 as you will note from Dr Harper's and Dr Poulgrain's revelations, what does that say about the present use of the ISD to detain other Singaporeans?
More ominously, what if the PAP feels sufficiently threatened politically and resorts to concocting another conspiracy to detain without trial more Singaporeans and opposition politicians like it did to a group of professionals in 1987?
Hard, historical facts are the greatest antidote to fear mongering by the state and to the use of national security as a bogey to suppress freedom and democracy.
Knowledgeable citizens with a keen sense of history are the best protection against acts of repression in the future.
So if you are a discerning Singaporean unwilling to let the authorities tell you what to think and how to think it, if you are one of those who don't want your mind raped, then introduce yourself to this four-part Special Feature and take part in the forum discussion.
Part II: Get him!
9 Jul 07
After securing control of the PAP with the aid of the British, Lee Kuan Yew was still left with the problem of the detained Lim Chin Siong and his supporters.
This was a source of embarrassment for him. Seeing this, Lee announced that he would secure the release of his party comrades before taking office if the PAP won the elections in 1959.
Behind the scenes, Lee negotiated and secured the private agreement of then British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan that the prisoners would be released by promising that he (Lee) would "move against them if they departed from the party line."
In return for promising to secure their release, Lee had secured Lim Chin Siong's and other detainees' pledges of allegiance to the party's manifesto.
Following PAP's victory in the 1959 election, Lim and six other detainees, were released.
Question: If Lim Chin Siong had really been the one who started the riots in 1956, shouldn't he have been charged and imprisoned, rather then released?
In truth the PAP and the British themselves were playing fast and loose with the law. The affair confirmed suspicions that all the backroom dealings was for political ends, not national security.
In any event, Lee assigned Lim – who, if not for all the machinations, would have been the leader of the PAP and prime minister – the post of political secretary in the ministry of finance, the Siberia of politics at that time.
In the meantime, detentions without trial continued under the new Lee government and the ISC continued to be used as a front for the PAP's acts.
An indecent proposal
Fed-up with Lee's autocratic style and the delay of releasing the remaining detainees, PAP MP and mayor Ong Eng Guan denounced the government for its dictatorial methods and moved a motion in the Legislative Assembly to abolish the ISC.
Harper wrote that because of the secrecy under which the ISC operated "not all members of Lee's cabinet were aware that the Singapore government had not pressed for the releases since early 1960."
In his memoirs, Lee wrote that "Lim Chin Siong wanted to eliminate the Internal Security Council because he knew that…if it ordered the arrest and detention of the communist leaders, the Singapore government could not be held responsible and be stigmatized a colonial stooge."
What the Minister Mentor did not say, but what Harper reveals in his chapter, is shockingly contradictory: "In mid-1961, therefore, to seek a way out, Lee suggested to the British that his government should order the release of all [the remaining] detainees, but then have that order countermanded in the ISC by Britain and Malaya."
Such a craven act was even rebuffed by the British. The acting Commissioner, Philip Moore, stated that the British should not be "party to a device for deliberatemisrepresentation of responsibility for continuing detentions in order to help the PAP government remain in power." (emphasis added)
Moore suggested that the best solution would be "to release all the detainees forthwith." Lee, however, "was unwilling to present the left with such a victory."
In a most damning indictment, Moore said that Lee "has lived a lie about the detainees for too long, giving the Party the impression that he was pressing for their release while, in fact, agreeing in the ISC that they should remain in detention."
And if one thought that Lee Kuan Yew could not sink any lower, he did. He turned to his saviours and warned that should he lose in an upcoming by-election, he would call for a general election, which he fully expected to lose.
This was because he was facing defections in the Legislative Assembly on his refusal to release the remaining detainees. And should he lose the elections, he warned the colonial masters, David Marshall, Ong Eng Guan and Lim Chin Siong would form the next government.
This, he calculated, would be so distasteful to the British that it would rally them to his side.
He presented the scheme at a dinner with Commissioner Lord Selkirk, Philip Moore (Selkirk's deputy), and Goh Keng Swee: Lee would order the release of the prisoners, the British would stop it through the ISC, and he would then announce a referendum on merger with Malaya (the story behind merger is explained below).
This would provoke opposition from his party mates as well as Lim's supporters whom he would then banish to Malaya.
A 1961 memo between the then Commission in Singapore and the Colonial Office in London revealed that Lee calculated that this move "would force Lim Chin Siong to reveal his hand completely and resort to direct action, in which event the Singapore Government would relinquish power and allow the British or the Federation to take over Singapore."
In short, Lee was willing to sacrifice the efforts to secure the independence of Singapore to achieve his own political ends!
As it turned out, Selkirk wanted to have nothing to do with the "unsavoury" proposal.
Merger – on one condition
At about this time, Malaya's Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman revived the idea of a federation of Malaysia consisting of the Borneo territories (now Sarawak, Sabah, and Brunei), Malaya (now peninsular Malaysia), and Singapore.
In exchange for territorial concessions in Borneo, the Tunku as the head of the federation would allow Britain to maintain a strategic presence in Singapore.
The proposal was put forward because the Tunku was having problems of his own with the left in Malaya. This was not helped by the strength of Lim Chin Siong's left in Singapore. Kuala Lumpur saw the necessity of crippling Lim's support and wanted Lee to be its hit-man.
For the British, the idea of a Malaysian federation was an acceptable compromise because it allowed London to maintain influence in the region while relinquishing its colony which it was going to lose anyway given the irresistible anti-colonial sentiment fanning the globe at that time.
As for Lee Kuan Yew, the idea was heaven sent. Harper documents that Lee saw the Tunku's concept of a "Malaysia" as crucial to his own political survival because of the growing strength of the left.
The left's strength was amply demonstrated when Lee's rightwing faction lost two by-elections in quick succession – the first to Ong Eng Guan in April 1961 (Hong Lim) and the second three months later to David Marshall (Anson).
Lee was rattled. Then PAP chairman, Toh Chin Chye, recalled: "He was quite shocked. He drew me aside after the results were announced and asked me what to do. I said, 'Hang on!'"
Toh also revealed that Lee had written to him that "the trade unions, the Middle Road crowd wanted him to resign" and that they wanted him to replace Lee as the prime minister.
Toh did not recommend Lee's resignation. But the reason he gave was that it "would divide the government and it would appear to the people of Singapore that we were being unsteady," hardly a ringing endorsement of Lee's leadership.
These developments precipitated an open split between Lee and Lim Chin Siong. Lim's group suspected – correctly – that Lee was up to no good in his pursuit of merger with Malaysia and they openly called for the abolition of the ISC.
In July 1961, legislative assemblymen, parliamentary/organising secretaries, and members of the PAP split from the party and formed the Barisan Sosialis. Lee's party was shaved to bare bones.
At the time, Harper writes, "there was an immense political momentum, a sense that the future lay with the Barisan Sosialis."
Even then, Lim Chin Siong never wavered in his commitment to governing Singapore in a democratic way when he wrote in a press statement that "any constitutional arrangement must not mean a setback for the people in terms of freedom and democracy."
This contrasts with the PAP's demonisation of Lim as a front for the communist out to destroy the democratic way.
Closing in on Lim
Meanwhile In Malaya the Tunku insisted that Lee re-arrest Lim Chin Siong before he would allow Singapore into the federation.
One of the reasons was because if the detention was conducted after merger, the Kuala Lumpur government would be responsible for it and it would be seen as cracking down on the Chinese in Singapore, increasing communal tensions.
As for Lee's part, he saw the detention of Lim as his trump card and wanted to secure the merger first before he moved against the Barisan leader; Abdul Rahman would have no incentive to proceed with merger once the threat of Lim was removed.
But the Tunku was firm: No detention of Lim, no merger. Lee knew he had to act.
And so a two-part plan was hatched to bait Lim and colleagues: "In the first phase, the Barisan would be harassed by the police and the government. This was designed to provoke it into unconstitutional action, which would initiate a second phase of detentions, restrictions and other actions to be sanctioned by the ISC."
Lim's opposition of allowing the British to retain powers of detention during the constitutional talks in 1956 rang truer than ever and Marshall's colourful description of "Christmas pudding and arsenic sauce" were beginning to sound very apt.
The diabolical scheme was vehemently opposed by the British Commission in Singapore. Lord Selkirk told his superiors in London that "in fact I believe that both of them (Abdul Rahman and Lee Kuan Yew) wish to arrest the effective political opposition and blame us for doing so."
In the months leading up to Lim's arrest, Selkirk wrote to his superiors in London again, imploring them not to cooperate with Lee:
"Lee is probably very much attracted to the idea of destroying his political opponents. It should be remembered that there is behind all this a very personal aspect…he claims he wishes to put back in detention the very people who were released at his insistence – people who are intimate acquaintances, who have served in his government, and with whom there is a strong sense of political rivalry which transcends ideological differences."
Contrast this to what Lee wrote in his memoirs in 1998: "Lim Chin Siong…knew that if he went beyond certain limits, [the ISC] would act…"
Lim need not have gone "beyond certain limits" as declassified documents now reveal, Lee was determined to put him in prison, communist or not, limits or no.
More shamefully, Lee will not admit that he was the one who had pushed for Lim's detention.
Selkirk's deputy, Philip Moore, reviewed intelligence reports and concluded that there were no security reasons to detain Lim Chin Siong: "Lim is working very much on his own and that his primary objective is not the Communist millennium but to obtain control of the constitutional government of Singapore."
But London was determined not to allow democratic scruples from getting in the way of its strategic presence in Southeast Asia. It acquiesced to Lee's plan.
Part III: The end of Lim Chin Siong
The next instalment will examine the treatment of Lim Chin Siong in Lee Kuan Yew's hands. More evidence of Lim's persecution.
Part III: The end of Lim Chin Siong
9 Jul 07
In February 1963 the ISC, under the direction of Lee, ordered Operation Coldstore where 113 opposition leaders, trade unionists, journalists, and student leaders who supported the left were arrested. Top of the list was, of course, Lim Chin Siong.
Historian Matthew Jones recorded that the arrests "primarily reflected the imperative felt by the decision-makers in London to respond to the needs and demands of the nationalist elites."
Not for the first time, the British had come to the rescue of Lee Kuan Yew.
Behind bars, torture and psychological abuse were meted out in liberal doses. Amnesty International documented much of this in a report in 1981.
The state of Lim Chin Siong under detention makes for sordid reading. According to (the late) Dennis Bloodworth, Lim came close to taking his own life while in detention. He had gone into depression. In 1965, when he was at the Singapore General Hospital Lim tried to hang himself from a pipe in the toilet. He was rescued just in time. After he recovered he was sent back to prison.
Four years later, he penned a letter to his former comrade-turned-arch-enemy and capitulated, saying that he had "finally come to the conclusion to give up politics for good" and repudiated the "international communist movement."
Even then, Lee banished Lim to London in 1969 and allowed him to return to Singapore only ten years later.
What kind of treatment Lim received at the hands of his foes that turned him from a spirited and charismatic national leader who walked tall among his people into a forlorn political non-entity, Singaporeans can only imagine.
For Lim is not talking, he passed away in February 1996, forever carrying his secrets with him to his grave.
It was not Britain's finest hour. Far from the honest-broker that everyone had expected Britain to be, the UK Government had actively engineered Lim's downfall and Lee Kuan Yew's capture of the prime ministership.
As it is, the historic account is hardly a heroic tale of the PAP's courageous triumph over the Barisan, as official accounts would have us believe.
Instead, declassified documents now show that it was a sad tale of private dealings and cowardly machinations for the attainment of power.
At his funeral which overflowed with his former Barisan comrades and supporters, eulogies recounting Lim's selfless dedication to a free and democratic Singapore were read. As his casket was pushed into the furnace, a thunderous and defiant applause resounded.
Referendum: To merger or to merge?
After having fulfilled his promise to Tunku Abdul Rahman to arrest Lim Chin Siong before merger, Lee set his sights on taking Singapore into Malaysia. He called for a referendum to obtain the people's mandate for the move, a decision that Britain and the Tunku objected to.
A referendum was hardly necessary as Lim and other Barisan leaders were behind bars. One suspects that a vote was needed to give the PAP the mandate to move in this direction.
Indeed Lee, with not little false bravado, wrote in his memoirs: "I remained determined that there should be referendum."
Democratic? Hardly. Instead of asking Singaporeans to vote for ‘yes' or ‘no' to merger, Lee proposed a ballot that allowed the people to vote only for merger under three options:
Do you want merger?
A. in accordance with the white paper, or
B. on the basis of Singapore as a constituent state of the Federation of Malaya, or
C. on terms no less favourable than those given to the three Borneo territories?And so after the referendum in September 1962, Singapore moved one step closer to becoming a part of an independent Malaysia.
Regrettable but necessary?
Lee Kuan Yew, would have us believe as he wrote in his memoirs, that the use of detention without trial was "most regrettable but, from my personal knowledge of the communists, absolutely necessary."
Harper dismisses this argument: "It was…inadmissible to argue, as Lee Kuan Yew did, that the exercise of these powers was ‘regrettable', but dictated by historical necessity."
The truth is that "through this adversity…the Barisan Sosialis still adhered to constitutional tactics."
Indeed, in the entire campaign to cripple the opposition, Lee Kuan Yew and his rightwing PAP faction has repeatedly resorted to using desperate measures of detention without trial, brazenly accusing his opponents of being a front for the communists.
Harper makes it even more explicit:
"After 1959, Lee Kuan Yew had urged the necessity of defeating the radical left through open democratic argument, whilst trying to provoke them into extra-legal action. The left, however, had not been deflected from constitutional struggle. Therefore, from mid-1962 at least, Lee concluded that this confrontation could only be resolved by resort to special powers that lay beyond the democratic process. This merely exposed the extent to which the crisis, as the British argued, a political one, and not a security one."
The last chapter
Lim Chin Siong's fight for Singapore may have come to a close, but another one is just beginning – the fight for history to be written the way it should be.
Declassified secret papers are beginning to provide a glimpse into what really took place during the 1950s and 60s, especially in the behind-the-scenes dealings.
Beginning with Comet In Our Sky more will be revealed. But as Harper tells us "many files remain closed and many files that have been released have had key documents ‘retained' by the original government department." These include key documents on Lim Chin Siong's detention in Operation Coldstore in 1963.
As the real story emerges, the Singapore Democrats will play our part to urge this process along – in cyberspace – thus ensuring that the memory of Lim Chin Siong and what he and his Barisan colleagues did for Singapore will forever remain with us.
This is crucial as our past is still our present. Lim had argued that arbitrary powers of detention without trial, in whoever's hands be they white or yellow, will continue to make Singapore unfree and our struggle for independence elusive.
"The people ask for fundamental democratic rights," he argued, "but what have they got? They have only got freedom of firecrackers after seven o'clock in the evening. The people ask for bread and they have been given stones instead."
More than half a century later, can any Singaporeans say with hand on heart that Lim Chin Siong was not right?
Part IV (final): What they teach in school
Read what they're teaching our children in school. To be posted tomorrow.