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International Bar Association draws fire for choosing the rigid
city state as the venue for its annual conference
The little publicized decision of the International Bar
Association, perhaps the world’s pre-eminent legal confederation, to hold its
2007 annual convention in Singapore is drawing fire from critics who say the
island state’s courts are among the least independent in the world.
In a Feb. 13 letter protesting the IBA’s decision to take its
convention to Singapore, Chee Soon Juan, the head of the opposition Singapore
Democratic Party , who has been repeatedly sued for defamation, bankrupted and
driven from politics by former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong
in the Singapore courts, quoted Subhas Anand, the president of the Association
of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore, as saying that “he would represent murderers,
thieves and even terror suspects but would avoid acting for dissidents in
Singapore.”
On its website, the bar association says it “believes in the
fundamental right of the world’s citizens to have disputes heard and determined
by an independent judiciary and for judges and lawyers to practice freely and
without interference.” The IBA’s Human Rights Institute was established under
the honorary presidency of former South African President Nelson Mandela, once
the world’s longest-serving political prisoner.
Chee added that “scores of (members of) opposition parties,
trade unions, universities and media were…locked up for various periods, many
for as long as 15 to 20 years and were, according to Amnesty International,
tortured and abused.”
The Lee family and other officials have repeatedly used the Singapore
courts to go after political opponents and the international press in cases
that most observers believe would be laughed out of almost any other court in
the free world.
“I can’t believe these people could be going there,” said
Basil Fernando, the Hong Kong-based executive director of the Asian Human Right
Commission, noting in an interview the worrying fact that increasing numbers of
countries across Asia are taking their cues from Singapore to sue reporters for
defamation in an attempt to prevent them from reporting independently.
The IBA represents some 30,000 individual lawyers and more
than 195 Bar Associations through a dual membership structure. It professes to
“influence the development of international law reform and shapes the future of
the legal profession,” according to its website.
It has also undertaken advocacy missions including one to Malaysia in 1997 in which it investigated
threats to the “independence of the judiciary,” the web site says. In a 2000
report on Malaysia
available on its website, the IBA criticizes that country’s use of defamation
suits to restrict free speech. “We recommend that courts should not allow
claims for or awards of damages in defamation cases to be of such magnitude so
as to be a means of stifling free speech and expression,” states the report,
titled “Justice in Jeopardy.”
Romana St. Matthew-Daniel, a spokeswoman for the IBA in London, first appeared unaware of the repressive nature of
Singapore’s
courts in a brief telephone exchange. Then she said bringing a large number of
the world’s lawyers to Singapore
would serve to highlight the government’s shortcomings. St. Matthew-Daniel said
she would provide a further response later, but didn’t do so.
“That is an absurdity,” said Fernando, who is also a lawyer
and former law professor. “There is no independence of any sort in this court.
There is a long history. This is a country where there is no separation of
powers. Singapore in fact
has been used as a model in places like Sri Lanka to amend their
constitution to undermine the independence of their judiciary.”
Some 3,000 lawyers are expected to attend the conference,
with as many as 150 working sessions. On its website, the association said it
is “delighted to announce Singapore
as the destination of its Annual Conference 2007. Singapore is a unique and dynamic
city, filled with culture and brimming with energy and finesse. It is where
urban meets traditional offering the modern and cosmopolitan whilst retaining
its local flavor. Voted 5th best business meeting city, it offers the perfect
opportunity for both business and pleasure.”
Singapore is one of the region’s most energetic governments at
luring conferences, conventions and trade shows ‑ everything from the Asia
Apparel Machinery & Accessories Exhibition to the International Conference on the
Computer Processing of Oriental Languages to the World Bank/International
Monetary Fund annual board of governors meetings held there in September, which
drew 6,000 delegates. The city-state is regularly named the top convention city
in Asia and one of the top ones in the world.
The government considers the number of conventions and
conferences held on the city-state’s soil to be a vindication of its
strait-laced policies towards the press and protesters. That backfired when the government’s crackdown
on demonstrators at the World Bank/IMF meetings was so complete that officials
of the two organizations had to demand that officials lighten up and allow some
protesters at the meetings.
The projected visit of the world’s lawyers also comes as Singapore
for the first time in 22 years is revamping its penal code to stiffen its
already draconian laws against protest. Any proposed Singapore government revamp of laws
is tantamount to passage, since there is virtually no opposition party.
Among other things is a series of proposals to provide much
harsher penalties for what the government regards as offences governing the
internet and public gatherings. The government would have broader authority to
prosecute offenders and punish them with higher fines, increasing the
imprisonment term for 109 offences. The definition of an unlawful assembly is
broadened to include any gathering of five or more persons whose common
objective is to commit any offence whatsoever.
In a letter to the Straits Times newspaper, Ong-Chew Peck
Wan, director of the Corporate Communications Division of the Singapore
government, said the decision to revise upwards the penalties for unlawful
assembly “must be seen in the context of this being a fairly prevalent offence
related to the offence of rioting…Between 1984 and 2005, there were 3,604
convictions of rioting, and 4,465 convictions of unlawful assembly. These
offences remain a serious concern today. Therefore, we propose to increase the
maximum imprisonment term for unlawful assembly from six months to two years, and
for rioting from five years to seven years.”
Singapore Democratic Party letter to International Bar
Association about its conference in Singapore
15 February 2007
Dear Sirs,
I am given to understand that the International Bar Association (IBA) will hold
its Annual Conference in Singapore from 14-19 October this year. While I would
very much like to welcome you to my country, I have to highlight to you some
very disturbing developments that I believe would concern the IBA.
It is apparent that human rights feature prominently in the IBA's mission:
"To promote, protect and enforce human rights
under a just rule of law, and to preserve the independence of the judiciary and
the legal profession worldwide." This is why it is so perplexing why your
organization has chosen to host its next annual meeting in Singapore.
Detention without trial
Let me explain. We note that the IBA's
Human Rights Institute was established under the honorary presidency of Nelson
Mandela. Disturbingly, we too have our Nelson Mandela in the person of Chia
Thye Poh. Chia was imprisoned for 23 years and placed under city-arrest for
another nine. He was released only in 1998.
Unlike Mandela, however, Chia was never charged of any crime and was never
allowed to defend himself in a court of law. He was imprisoned without trial
under the Internal Security Act (ISA) which exists till today. In addition, he
was an elected member of parliament. Although freed Chia is still monitored
closely by the Singapore Government.
Scores of his compatriots in opposition parties, trade unions, universities and
media were similarly locked up for various periods, many for as long as 15 to
20 years and were, according to Amnesty International, tortured and abused.
In 1987, 22 Singaporeans were again detained under the ISA because the
Singapore Government accused them of being Marxist conspirators out to
violently overthrow it when in fact they were helpers of the opposition
Workers' Party, members of the arts community, social and church workers, and
leaders of the Law Society of Singapore. Again, they were tortured and
confessions were forcibly extracted.
When the then president of the Law Society and former solicitor-general of Singapore, Mr
Francis Seow, moved to represent some of them in court, he found himself
detained for more than two months. He was subsequently charged with tax evasion
but didn't wait around to find out the verdict. He now lives in exile in the US.
As president, Seow had indicated that he had wanted the Law Society to take a
more active role in contributing towards the process of lawmaking in Singapore and
also to speak with greater intensity for lawyers in the country. The upshot was
that the Law Society is now barred from commenting on proposed legislation.
The use of defamation suits
The ruling Peoples' Action Party (PAP) has also resorted to using defamation
lawsuits to silence its critics. Opposition leaders have been repeatedly sued
and huge sums of money have been awarded in damages. J B Jeyaretnam, Tang Liang
Hong and I have been on the receiving end of such lawsuits, ordered to pay
millions of dollars to former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew and his colleagues in
the party. As a result, we have been declared bankrupts and barred from
standing for elections.
In my case I was sued in 2001 by Lee Kuan Yew and another former prime minister
Goh Chok Tong. I had applied for a Queen's Counsel (QC) to represent me because
no Singaporean lawyer dared to take up my case. This is not surprising given
that president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers
of Singapore, Subhas Anandan, had indicated that he would represent
murderers, thieves, and even terror suspects, but would avoid acting for
dissidents in Singapore.
The courts rejected my repeated applications for QCs, insisting that my case
was not "complex enough" thereby leaving me without legal
representation. It then awarded summary judgment to the plaintiffs. Thus, not
only was I deprived of a lawyer, I was also denied of a trial. I was
subsequently ordered to pay US$300,000 in damages. And because I couldn't meet
the demands, I was declared a bankrupt. I had already paid US$300,000 to
another set of plaintiffs in another lawsuit in 1993 when I first joined the
Singapore Democratic Party (SDP).
As a bankrupt I have been barred form traveling overseas and my passport has
been impounded. I am now facing charges for attempting to leave the country
without permission from the Official Assignee. I was also prevented from
campaigning for my colleagues in the elections in 2006 and barred from getting
up on the stage for election rallies.
Another suit, the most recent, has been taken by Lee Kuan Yew (now Minister
Mentor) and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, this time against the SDP
and its executive committee members. Again the case was awarded to the
plaintiffs in a summary judgment despite our filing of our defence disputing
many of the Lees' claims of fact and law.
The foreign media has also come in for such action. The Far Eastern Economic
Review was recently sued by the Lees for publishing an interview it did
with me. Because it refused to apologise, the journal was banned. Other
publications that were targeted over the years include Time, Newsweek,
Asiaweek (defunct), Asian Wall Street Journal, International
Herald Tribune, Economist, and Bloomberg News, leading the Committee
to Protect Journalists to comment:
State control of the media in Singapore is so complete that few dare to
challenge the system and there is no longer much need to arrest or even harass
journalists. Even foreign correspondents have learned to be cautious when
reporting on Singapore,
since the government has frequently hauled the international press into court
to face lengthy and expensive libel suits.
The entire local
media in Singapore
is owned and run by the Government. In its latest
annual survey, Reporters Without Borders ranked Singapore
146th out of 168 countries, one spot below countries like Somalia and Sudan.
Because of such defamation cases Singapore's legal system has been
repeatedly and strongly condemned by organizations such as the New York City
Bar Association, Amnesty International, International Commission of Jurists as
well as by legal experts and senior judges across the world.
Crushing human rights
The UN has repeatedly raised questions about Singapore's legal system especially
when it comes to the mandatory death sentence for drug peddlers. UN Special
Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston,
stated that the mandatory death sentences in Singapore "violate
international legal standards" and are "inconsistent with
international human rights standards." In the recent case of a young
Nigerian man, Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi, Alston said that the Singapore Government
"failed to ensure respect for the relevant legal safeguards. Under the
circumstances, the execution should not proceed." The Singapore Government
ignored the plea and hanged Tochi on 26 January 2007.
As far as citizens are concerned, we are barred from gathering and speaking in
public places. When a group of four persons staged a silent protest outside a
government building in August 2005, they were met with the riot squad and
ordered to disperse.
The four protesters then filed a legal action taking the Minister for Home
Affairs and Police Commissioner to court for overstepping their powers (under
the Constitution only five or more people gathered in a public place with
common intent constitute an illegal assembly). High Court Judge V K Rajah not
only dismissed the protesters' application but also warned them that they did
not have the right to "picket public institutions" because to do so
would be to "question the [institutions'] integrity and cast a slur on
their reputation." The protesters were then ordered to pay the Attorney-General's
costs amounting to US$15,000.
My colleagues and I have been repeatedly convicted and imprisoned for
"speaking in public without a permit" even though the Minister for
Home Affairs openly declared that "The government does not authorise
protests and demonstrations of any nature."
There are seven outstanding charges against me and another activist for
speaking in public. We will be tried over the next few months.
During the World Bank-IMF meeting in Singapore in September last year,
12 activists were deported and another 28 who had accreditation with the World
Bank were banned from entering the country. One activist, Wilfred D'Costa,
general secretary of the Indian Social Action Forum, was even interrogated for
several hours before he was deported. The Singapore Government banned all
outdoor protests at the meeting.
Practitioners of the Falungong faith have likewise faced these repressive curbs
on freedom of speech and assembly in Singapore. Several of them have
been, and continue to be, prosecuted for illegal assembly when they gathered in
parks to exercise their faiths. Jehovah's Witnesses remain banned.
Homosexuality in Singapore
continues to be criminalised and their efforts to hold functions have been
repeatedly denied by the Government.
If all this is not enough, the Singapore Government announced in December 2006
that it was amending the Penal Code to increase the penalty for various
offences including unlawful assemblies.
Academic freedom remains elusive in Singapore. This was the primary
reason the University
of Warwick rejected the
Singapore Government's invitation to set up a campus here. The university had
written to the Government asking that its students in Singapore
campus be exempt from laws limiting freedom of assembly, speech and the press,
and to remove bans on homosexuality and certain religious practices on campus.
It also wanted its staff and students not to be punished for making
academic-related comments that might be seen "as being outside the
boundaries of political debate". The Government turned this down. Imperial College, London and the London School of Economics had previously
also rejected similar invitations from Singapore.
I apologise for the length of this letter but I wanted to give you a
comprehensive picture of the human rights situation and the abysmal lack of the
rule of law in Singapore.
Even so I have had to omit much more information because of space constraints.
But as you can see, much of what is happening in Singapore goes against many, if not
most, of what the IBA stands and works for.
For this reason and for the sake of the rule of law in Singapore I
would like to ask the IBA to re-consider its decision to hold its 2007 Annual
Conference here.
My colleagues and I would be happy to discuss this matter with you in greater
detail. We invite you to send a fact-finding mission to Singapore in
the near future to ascertain for yourselves the validity of the issues that
I've raised in this letter.
As Singaporeans are so starved of news that runs contrary to the official stand,
it would be remiss of me if I did not make the contents of this letter
available to them. I would also be most grateful if you could highlight this
letter to your members and associates.
Thank you and I look forward to a meaningful discussion over this matter with
you and your colleagues.
Sincerely,
Chee Soon Juan
Secretary-General
Singapore
Democratic Party
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