I'm officially on MC today—after three days of being unable to maintain an upright position for very long, I finally dragged myself to the GP on the fourth day—but am writing this newsletter as a way to very tentatively dip my toe back into work. Jiayou, me!
As always (but especially this week, considering how groggy I am from cough meds), feel free to email me if you spot any errors or typos that need correcting!
(1)
When Lee Kuan Yew took a tough stance against admitting refugees into Singapore, he probably never imagined that one of his sons would one day seek asylum in another country. Well, Lee Hsien Yang has now been granted asylum in the UK, which means that it's no longer just LHY and his family alleging persecution from the Singapore state—the UK government is recognising it too. This, of course, pisses off the Singapore government, who continues to insist that LHY and his family have not been persecuted, and that he and his wife, Lee Suet Fern, are free to come back to Singapore whenever they like. (What might happen after they return to Singapore, however, is less clear... and very much the crux of the matter.)
LHY's news has drawn attention to Singaporeans and asylum seeking—interestingly, there are many more cases than one might have expected. I took the following screenshot from the UNHCR database:
We can't tell from these figures the grounds on which people have been applying for asylum in other countries, although from clicking around the database I'm guessing that many headed to the US, and some might have been entire families; once broken down by demographics, the database shows that there are boys and girls aged 17 and below who have sought asylum.
In any case, LHY is also back in the news again because he's applied to demolish the house on 38 Oxley Road, but the Urban Redevelopment Authority has deferred their evaluation of his application. The government says the National Heritage Board will first assess if the house should be preserved as a national monument. "Doing so [demolishing the house] would straightaway rule out options which can be considered," Edwin Tong, the Minister for Culture, Community and Youth and Second Minister for Law, wrote on his Facebook page. "We do not think that any option should be precluded, or closed off, at this stage."
LHY, meanwhile, has brought the issue to Prime Minister Lawrence Wong's door, writing on Facebook: "This is your responsibility. You have had nine years to consider. Further delay would trample on the last wishes of Lee Kuan Yew, whom you claim to honour. Please lead."
(2)
Like the Transformative Justice Collective, Kokila Annamalai received a POFMA direction earlier this month. She has chosen not to comply. She sets out her reasoning in a powerful statement, which I urge you to read in full:
Kokila Annamalai
While some people or groups overseas, like Lawyers for Liberty in Malaysia, have chosen not to comply with POFMA directions, we've not really seen what happens when someone in Singapore (and thus within the authorities' reach) defies an order. We've not yet seen someone get charged for non-compliance, but the law states the penalty: "a fine not exceeding $20,000 or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding 12 months or to both".
"I feel particularly strongly about defying this POFMA order because the way POFMA is used has gotten increasingly ludicrous over time," Koki wrote in her statement. "Some people in power have shifted from using POFMA to slam inaccuracies in statistics to blatantly shutting down critical views and inconvenient truths. POFMA is weaponised as a form of psychological violence against the public when those in power dress up their self-serving opinions as the 'correct facts' and shove them down our throats."
In solidarity, around 30 of us published posts on Instagram with the hashtag #IDefyPOFMA, standing by and republishing the post that TJC and Koki were POFMA-ed for: "We believe that the government has misused POFMA against criticism, dissent and alternative views. Critics should not be intimidated into parroting the words of the government. We do not agree that POFMA is an authority for determining whether a post is true or false."
(3)
Singapore needs to do much better to keep migrant workers safe. On 9 October, it was reported that, in the first half of 2024, 19 workers had died from work injuries—five more than in the first half of 2023. Between January and June 2024, 293 major work injuries were recorded.
A day after that report, a construction worker was taken to hospital after falling about 2.3m at a worksite for the Johor Bahru–Singapore Rapid Transit System. A day after that, a worker died after he got hit by a precast concrete drain channel being lifted by an excavator at a worksite for HDB BTOs. A week later, a worker died from his injuries after being hit over the head by a falling steel bar at a Tuas construction site. A few days later, another worker was hit by a steel gate frame at an Yishun site and died of his injuries in hospital.
Ripon Chowdhury, a migrant worker and activist, also reported on his social media platforms that a worker died last weekend in a lorry accident.
On the radar...
A couple of big stories looking at Singapore's death penalty and drug policy in the international media recently. The BBC put out a two-part radio documentary which you can find on their website or listen to as a podcast. CNN, too, published both a written story and a video report. Both media outlets were given access to interview K Shanmugam, Minister for Home Affairs and Law, and also enter Changi Prison.
Perhaps the government thinks that giving international media outlets such access will help spread their pro-death penalty, pro-War on Drugs propaganda further, but the media coverage makes it clear that the Drug Rehabilitation Centre is a prison—which goes against the evidence of what people with problematic drug use need in terms of healthcare and support—and casts doubt on the deterrence argument, for which the government has never had any real proof. On this deterrence point, you should definitely catch up on this webinar by the Transformative Justice Collective, where Rocky Howe interviews Dr Mai Sato about arguments of deterrence in relation to the death penalty. (And don't forget this webinar, where Kokila Annamali speaks with experts Steve Rolles and Shayla Schlossenberg, on drug policy! I did say I'd put together an Altering States newsletter on it but haven't been able to get around to it yet.)
