1 February 2025: Ah yes, that pre-GE repression

Happy Lunar New Year, one and all! I hope it was a good holiday for everyone with pesky questions kept at a minimum and ang paos galore.

(1)

I published a guest issue of Altering States last night, in memory of Syed Suhail bin Syed Zin, the first person to be executed in Singapore this year. It was written by Sabrena Jefri-Tan, who was in a relationship with Syed until his arrested in 2011. I think everyone should read it in full, but here's an excerpt:

On 23 January 2025, a man I deeply loved was executed by the state in Singapore. He had been on death row for almost 10 years, and I vividly remember the day he was arrested in our shared home.

Some wounds never heal.

[...]

Syed Suhail bin Syed Zin was an extraordinary man.

I always joked that if he were free from the shackles of addiction, he would have collected at least three PhDs. What else would you expect from a person with photographic memory, limitless intellectual curiosity and perseverance? So much perseverance against the odds he'd been dealt. He was tall as a giant, with the heart of a kitten and an impeccable taste in music. For all his brightness, he deserved to shine.

[...]

Everyone has a story. Syed deserved to be heard and understood and supported, yet the systems in place failed him completely. When he lost his mother to cancer as a young boy and fell in with the wrong crowd, he found solace in drugs. Recreational at first, then gradually, when the emotional pain was too great, the harder stuff. He tried, so many times, to kick the addiction. He tried until the very last day of his freedom. I would know; I was there to witness his falls, hopes, dreams and resilience for a better future. I was there to hold him through endless cycles of withdrawal. Syed was the living embodiment of my favourite Japanese proverb: "Fall down seven times, get up eight."

(2)

When The Australian rang and asked what I thought about Singapore going after the likes of East Asia Forum and the New York Times, all I could say was, "They're coming after everybody." (paywalled) Let's just take it from December to see what's happened over the last two months (not in chronological order):

• There have been POFMA orders against the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), The Online Citizen, Bloomberg, The Edge Singapore, The Independent Singapore and East Asia Forum. (As logged in We, The Citizens's POFMA Tracker.)
• Legal letters were sent by K Shanmugam and Tan See Leng to outlets like Bloomberg, The Edge Singapore and The Online Citizen, leading to an apology from The Edge Singapore. The Online Citizen, on the other hand, is standing by its article and demanding proper legal service in Taiwan, where its company is registered.
• East Asia Forum has been blocked in Singapore after it did not comply with its Correction Direction the way the authorities want it to.
• TJC's website and social media platforms were designated as "declared online locations (DOLs)" under POFMA. We found the restrictions and conditions placed on DOLs so onerous that TJC eventually decided to shut down these pages until the order expires in 2026.
• An investigation into TJC has been opened under Section 7 of POFMA (we found out just before the Lunar New Year, which was lovely), in relation to posts that we'd already received POFMA directions for and complied with. Three members of TJC—Kokila, Rocky and Sobi—have been individually summoned by the POFMA Office for this investigation. Koki has also been summoned for investigation in relation to her refusal to comply with a previous POFMA direction issued to her. TJC will be following up on this with a statement soon, so watch this space.
• Multiple individuals, including yours truly, were summoned for investigation under the Public Order Act, in relation to various actions from reporting on students who were delivering letters to the Ministry of Home Affairs to vigils for death row prisoners outside Changi Prison.
• End FGC Singapore was forced to cancel its event aimed at sharing perspectives on female genital cutting in Singapore because the authorities claimed that it might breach the Public Order Act if they went ahead.
• Teo Soh Lung, Jolovan Wham and I have been summoned for investigation into "a potential offence of Intentionally Causing Harassment to a Public Servant". When I wrote back to ask what exactly I was supposed to have done, I didn't get an answer. (You can see the wonderful exchange I had with the police below.)
• Jolovan is also going to be charged with five counts of participating in public assemblies without a permit, in relation to peaceful vigils outside Changi Prison. (By the way, you should watch the ludicrous exchange he had with a police officer outside Changi Prison the night before Syed was executed.)
• The Singapore government got shitty with the New York Times for their video on tyranny, which featured Li Shengwu talking about Singapore.
• Meanwhile, academics are questioning NUS's new system requiring academics at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences to fill in a form assessing potential invited speakers for "controversy" or "sensitivity".

This all happened in December 2024 and January 2025. And this is only the stuff I know about/can remember. Whatever Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said about being open to differing views and moving Singapore forward together... yeah, that's not happening, friends. But I still think that we, the citizens, are changing even if the government is trying to stick to the old playbook.

(3)

A 55-year-old man has been sentenced to jail time for collecting kickbacks from migrant workers working as estate cleaners in Nee Soon East. Between 2014 and 2020, Derrick Ho collected close to $400,000 from 57 Bangladeshi workers in return for renewing their work permits. This isn't the first time this has happened in Singapore—migrant labour rights groups like TWC2 have seen multiple cases of kickbacks over the years. Migrant workers are easy to exploit in this way because their work permits are tied to their employers, and many have accrued debt to pay the fees to come to Singapore in the first place. If an unscrupulous employer demands money to renew their work permits, a migrant worker who hasn't earned enough in Singapore to cover his debts might feel like he has no choice but to comply.

Around the region

Thank you for reading We, The Citizens! Feel free to forward this email to anyone you like and help spread the word about this newsletter.