The Asia File

A historic day: Aung San Suu Kyi meets Hillary Clinton in Yangon

2011-12-05T21:25:00.004+08:00

Local and international journalists queue up outside 54 University Avenue, the family residence of Aung San Suu Kyi, where she was detained under house arrest by the military junta for 15 years until her release last November We were told to arrive at least 3 hours before Suu Kyi and Hillary Clinton graced us with their presence for security reasons.

A US Secret Service officer keeps watch while the "uncles" from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, including 82-year-old U Win Tin, file into her house ahead of the meeting with Clinton.

Western journalists had a good opportunity to top up their tan while waiting for the "two ladies" to appear. The set-up, by Inya lake in the garden of Suu Kyi's house, looks like it would make a good wedding venue if she is ever short of cash.

This member of the traveling Washington press corps appears to be struggling to come to terms with his comically-oversized Burmese mobile phone, the sort of brick-like communication device last seen in the West about 20 years ago. In a country with very poor mobile phone networks, the large aerial helps but not enough to assuage this poor chap's frustrations.

Here come the brides...

They make a great couple, complete with matching hand gestures.

Photographers scramble to get a shot of "the hug".

Surprisingly, for two women with steely reputations, the warmth between them looked genuine.

Some of Burma's private weekly newspapers went big on the Clinton/Suu Kyi meeting. A veteran Burmese journalist told me that sticking The Lady's photo on their front page always boosts sales. The government still does not allow any privately-owned newspapers to publish on a daily basis but has indicated that that may change next year.

An interview with Vietnam's first and only astronaut

2011-04-02T12:31:00.000+08:00

Today the Financial Times has published a special edition magazine to commemorate the 50th anniversary of man going into space.

Below is an extract of my interview with Pham Tuan, Vietnam's first and only astronaut.

Pham Tuan was the ideal candidate to become the first Asian in space, as far as Vietnam’s hard-line communist leaders were concerned. From humble beginnings in a poor village, he had already risen to the rank of national hero. Defending his homeland from sustained US attacks during the Christmas Bombings of 1972, Tuan was credited with becoming the first Vietnamese fighter pilot to shoot down a B52 in air-to-air combat – a feat many US aviators still insist was impossible.

During his eight-day sojourn at the Salyut 6 space station, Tuan beamed back messages hailing Vietnam’s long struggle for independence and thanking the Communist party “for having trained me and given me wings to fly into space”.

Back on planet Earth, the hungry Vietnamese people were not so easily taken in. A popular rhyme at the time pondered: “We have no rice, we have no noodles, so why are you going into space Mr Tuan?”

Read the rest of my profile here.

(Not) Understanding Vietnam

2011-03-28T02:22:00.000+08:00

If you want to understand why Vietnam is mired in economic instability, I'd urge you not to read this story on the state-owned Voice of Vietnam news website.

The story - an interview with a national assembly member headlined: "Why are gold and USD strictly controlled?" - meanders around the subject, adding new layers of confusion with each paragraph.

Perhaps it's just a bad translation - I know official Vietnamese can be very tough to render into crisp English.

After circling round and round, the report climaxes with a richly and - I suspect - accidentally ironic ending, which merits full quotation:

Dr Kien: The bottom line is that people have lost their trust in the value of the domestic currency due to one-sided information in the media.

Reporter: Thank you.

Western pop music in Vietnam: from “social evil” to status symbol

2011-03-23T23:16:00.001+08:00

My latest post for the Financial Times' Beyond Brics blog:

Throaty song-writing legend Bob Dylan and 90s teen favourites the Backstreet Boys might not have much in common as far as most music fans are concerned.

But both are playing big gigs in Vietnam over the next few weeks as music promoters test out the appetite for expensive, international standard entertainment.

Communist Vietnam has opened up rapidly over the last twenty years and Western pop music has been off the list of “social evils” for some time. But the live music market remains relatively undeveloped and only a handful of international artists have played in Vietnam thus far.

In a country where many would count themselves lucky to earn $100 a month, you might wonder who will be willing to pay $50-$120 for a ticket to the Dylan and Backstreet Boys gigs. But that’s well within the reach of status-conscious urbanites, who have been splashing out on iPhones, fancy cars and sleek scooters for a number of years.

Read the rest of this blog post over at the FT's Beyond Brics, which is free to all comers.

The Financial Times is recruiting a News Assistant in Hanoi

2011-03-14T02:54:00.002+08:00

Vacancy – News assistant for the Financial Times, Hanoi

The Financial Times, one of the world’s leading business news organisations, recently opened a bureau in Hanoi in order to expand its coverage of Vietnam.
We are looking to recruit a Vietnamese national to work as a news assistant alongside our resident foreign correspondent.
The successful candidate will be a dynamic and enthusiastic self-starter, with experience in journalism and strong news judgement.
You will help the correspondent to cover a wide range of stories involving economics, investment, politics, climate change, health and social issues. As we are a new and small bureau, you must be flexible and able to work independently and as part of a team.
When covering breaking news, you will have to work under pressure to tight deadlines.
This is an exciting opportunity for an ambitious individual to gain experience working at a leading international news organisation and to help shape our coverage of Vietnam.

Job description

Setting up and carrying out interviews with government officials, business leaders and others
Scanning the Vietnamese press for important stories and monitoring other news sources
Generating and developing story ideas
Carrying out in-depth research
Translating and interpreting
Some travel within Vietnam will be required

Essential Qualifications/Experience/Qualities

Bachelors degree or higher
Experience in journalism
Fluent in Vietnamese and English
A good understanding of economics, business and politics
Confident and good at making new contacts
Able to find information quickly

Preferred

Good existing contacts among government officials and in the business community

Competitive salary

To apply, please send your CV and a covering letter explaining why you're the right person for this position to Ben Bland at ftvietnamjob@gmail.com.

Comparing corruption in India and Vietnam

2011-02-10T12:48:00.000+08:00

My colleague David Pilling has written a great column in today's FT, arguing that, despite much hand-wringing, Indian companies are as much to blame for corruption as government officials.

India is said to grow at night while its government sleeps. The quip, beloved of Indian businessmen, is often invoked to rubbish a corrupt and incompetent state and to praise a supposedly heroic entrepreneurial class. But there is something wrong with this picture. In many sectors, Indian entrepreneurs make money not in spite of government interference, but precisely through colluding with a state that provides the land, licences and rent-seeking opportunities on which they thrive.

A number of Vietnamese contacts have persistently made the same point to me here: when it comes to corruption, it takes two to tango.

Many Western businesses are also guilty of double standards, criticising the dominance of the state in the economy, while themselves seeking patronage, licences and rents from the government.

Vietnam’s black market alchemists

2011-01-28T21:06:00.000+08:00

Life is not easy when annual inflation is more than 12 per cent, your currency is likely to be devalued again shortly and you have to splash out on overpriced Lunar New Year gifts to impress your friends, family and colleagues.

But Vietnamese people, long faced with macroeconomic instability, have become expert at cooking up black market schemes to make a little money on the side. The latest ruse, picked up by the Phnom Penh Post, involves travelling to neighbouring Cambodia, withdrawing dollars from an ATM at the official dong-dollar exchange rate and then converting the greenbacks back to Vietnam dong at the superior black market exchange rate.

Read the rest of this blog post over at the FT's Beyond Brics, which is free to all comers.

Diageo thirsty for local alcohol in Vietnam

2011-01-28T11:04:00.001+08:00

While a select class of wealthy Vietnamese men like nothing more than cracking open a bottle of Johnnie Walker with their mates at a karaoke bar, the vast majority of alcohol consumed here is home-made “rice wine” served in re-used plastic water bottles.

But tastes are changing as the middle class grows and Diageo, the global drinks group, has forked over £33m for a stake in a local vodka maker as it seeks to tap into the growing fondness for higher quality but affordable Vietnamese brands.

Read the rest of this blog post over at the FT's Beyond Brics, which is free to all comers.

The power of connections in Vietnam

2011-01-26T01:38:00.001+08:00

Whether you're a luckless street kid, an ambitious Communist party apparatchik or an upstanding foreign investor, there are few greater truisms in Vietnam than "it's not what you know but who you know."

I observed a classic example this week while on a trip to the paddy fields of greater Hanoi.

Approaching a traffic police roadblock, the car I was in was flagged down by an officious senior cop. He beckoned the driver out of the vehicle and accused him of violating traffic regulations (yes, they do exist here) by overtaking on the other side of the road.

No matter that there was no oncoming traffic, the dividing line down the centre of the road was dotted rather than continuous (indicating overtaking was allowed) and that this driver was perhaps the most cautious I've ever had the pleasure to travel with in Vietnam.

The cop was either having a bad day standing around in the clammy Hanoi cold or needed some extra cash ahead of Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year.

The driver was taken aside and given the usual dressing down that precedes negotiations over the extent of any fine (around 500,000 Vietnam dong or $25 for this type of offence, so I'm told).

Rightly or wrongly, it is unusual for traffic police to stop cars containing foreigners as they don't want to create extra work for themselves or risk annoying some important diplomat, investor or other VIP.

So I stepped out of the car, naively intent on explaining my status as a foreign journalist and asking politely if we could be allowed to resume our journey.

No sooner had I walked up to the senior policeman, head bowed out of respect, than the driver had called up a relative who worked for the traffic police and passed the phone to the other cop who swiftly waved us on our way.

History in the making: live tweeting Vietnam's Communist Party congress

2011-01-12T00:09:00.000+08:00

The last time Vietnam's Communist Party met for its all-important five-yearly national congress, Twitter, the 140 character micro-blogging service, was yet to launch.

So prepare for a social media first, when I "live tweet" the 11th party congress, which begins on Wednesday at Hanoi's rather smart National Convention Centre.

Granted the bar hasn't been set that high. I didn't see any other journalists using Twitter at the pre-event press conference on Monday and Twitter isn't yet that popular in Vietnam (though that may change if Facebook continues to be blocked - some people have started bypassing the block by using Twitter to update their Facebook page).

But it's still going to be a first, provided I can get a mobile phone signal.

Read all about it at http://twitter.com/benjaminbland.

For a sneak peek inside the congress venue, check out this blog I wrote for the FT's Beyond Brics.

Moving on

2010-11-27T00:32:00.000+08:00

Apologies for the lack of posting. This blog has been through its fair share of changes over the last few years, starting out as part of The Daily Telegraph before going independent and then joining Asian Correspondent.

But, after more than a year on the Asian Correspondent platform, we've agreed to go our separate ways.

I'd like to thank all my regular readers and commenters and would urge you to bookmark my new/old blog web address, which will be http://theasiafile.blogspot.com.

As ever, I can be reached at theasiafile@gmail.com or @benjaminbland on Twitter.

Taxi boy and the taxi girls

2010-11-20T14:02:00.000+08:00

It's been a while since I penned my last Taxi Tale, a regular blog series dedicated to the insightful anecdotes, witty repartee and occasional pearls of wisdom that emerge from my regular conversations with taxi drivers around the region. So here's a new one:

Once every month, a Hanoi taxi driver goes to pick up one of his best clients - a South Korean businessman in his mid-20s. Without fail, this young man needs to travel every four weeks to Do Son, a far-from-swanky beach resort east of Hanoi. It may only be 130km from the Vietnamese capital but because of the poor condition of the roads and the deteriorating traffic, a round trip can take as long as eight hours.

For the young Korean, these time-consuming, regular journeys are essential to his ongoing success in Vietnam. But he is not traveling to meet government officials or business contacts. He is not interested in the sea, the sand or even the Do Son casino (open only to foreigners like all Vietnam's growing number of casinos).

He goes to Do Son to sleep with Vietnamese prostitutes and to alleviate the boredom and alienation of expatriation. While few businessmen would travel quite so far to satisfy their carnal desires, across Asia, prostitution continues to oil the wheels of commerce. And commerce continues to oil the wheels of prostitution.

The taxi driver, who only earns $500 a month with which to support a wife and two young children, is happy with the regular custom. Like many men in Vietnam, he has no moral qualms about what his client gets up to.

"Men need to eat, drink and fuck," he told me.

Time for an Aung San Suu Kyi reality check

2010-11-14T20:32:00.000+08:00

When U2 releases a statement sharing Bono and The Edge's views on Southeast Asian politics, you know it's time to take a major reality check.

The coverage of Aung San Suu Kyi's release thus far has been breathless - not surprising given how long she has been detained and how much of an icon she has become within her country and globally.

But the emotional outpourings from international journalists, campaigners and worthy pop stars alike seem to be having just the effect that Burma's ruling generals presumably wanted - distracting attention from their sham elections.

It's far too early to know how much real freedom the generals will give Suu Kyi, what she will try to do and what impact this will have on Burma. Even genuine Burma experts seem at a loss to explain the junta's real game at the moment - see the 13, yes that's 13, theories on why they decided to hold elections, penned by academic Andrew Selth at the Lowy Interpreter.

As Nicholas Farrelly at the excellent New Mandala blog puts it: "...many difficult questions remain unanswered and nobody pretends that the future will be easy, or that Burma’s generals don’t have their next moves in mind."

In the meantime, you could do worse than read this sobering piece in The Sunday Telegraph by Justin Wintle, a critical but fair biographer of Suu Kyi. Extract:

Looking back, and comparing what has happened in Burma with what has happened among such other Southeast Asian states as Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and even Vietnam since World War Two, it is difficult not to behold an extreme political polarisation between Burma's military and the more liberal elements of its population, in which any bridges between the two sides have long been swept away.

And if the army is principally responsible for the stasis that has ensued, it is arguable that Aung San Suu Kyi's principled commitment to full democracy, and her unwillingness, or inability, to make meaningful compromises, have been a significant contributor.

As for Miss Suu Kyi herself, it is tempting to think she has resigned herself to martyrdom of one sort or another, as the only means left to leave her mark.

Her critics say she is too pure, and that her actual grasp of politics is slender. They also say she made a fundamental error in the mid- 1990s, when she was at liberty, by not bringing on a younger leadership generation within her party, preferring instead to depend upon an elderly coterie made up of such democratic stalwarts as one time defence minister U Tin Oo and the journalist Win Tin, both now in their eighties.

Yet if martyrdom is her chosen path, Aung San Suu Kyi's instincts may not be so awry.

Above all she has furnished the Burmese people with a heroic model quite different from that dreary line of past warrior kings so beloved of Than Shwe and his cronies. And for that she will be remembered, inside and outside Burma for generations to come.

Vietnam: The face of modern Communism

2010-11-12T13:44:00.000+08:00

The right to denounce thy neighbour, comrade, colleague or family member is one of the fundamental building blocks of any self-respecting, self-criticising Communist state.

The Vietnamese government is making some small steps to revamp the legal and political framework in line with the rapid economic changes that have been taking place over the last 20 years.

As part of that process, deputies to Vietnam's National Assembly are currently debating an upgrade to the legislation to ensure that Vietnam has a denunciation law for the 21st Century.

On Thursday, deputies debated the need to find a balance between protecting denouncers from revenge while ensuring that the denounced cannot be unfairly maligned, according to a report in the Vietnam News, the main government mouthpiece.

Deputy Hong Anh voiced the need for a specific framework to protect denouncers so that they will not be deterred by the risk of revenge.

Anh's point was echoed by other deputies, who complained about general regulations in the law regarding this issue, and required elaboration by authorities at various levels on protections for denouncers.

Deputies also mentioned the law also needs to protect the denounced in terms of employment, dignity, and political and economic benefits.

"The law should ensure restoration of honour, rights and benefits of the denounced in case the allegations cannot be proven," said deputy Nguyen Thi Hoa.

It looks like a valiant effort to combine the principle of denunciation with the norms of human rights and employment law. The National Assembly also discussed the need to clarify the denunciation rights of overseas Vietnamese, in light of the fact that expatriates living in Vietnam already have the right to denounce.

Not a right that I'd expect many expats to make use of, however annoyed they may get at being overcharged 2,000 Vietnam dong for a can of Coke.

Singapore’s confused stance on media freedom

2010-11-06T17:00:00.000+08:00

Singapore’s government likes to be number one. If you want proof, look through any speech by a government minister. They will invariably reel off a list of examples of the city-state coming top of some global ranking or other on the ease of doing business or quality of life.

Hence the frustration on the part of K Shanmugam, the newly promoted home affairs minister, at the censorious city-state’s lowly ranking in the press freedom rankings produced by Reporters without Borders and others.

In a speech in New York on Thursday, which the journalism.sg website described as the “government's most detailed and robust defence in years of its position on the role of the press”, he bemoaned the fact that media freedom organisations rank Singapore below Colombia, Guinea, Haiti, Kenya and Pakistan.

In Guinea, democracy activists have recently been gunned down and female opposition campaigners raped, so how can Singapore rank below Guinea, he ponders incredulously.

Shanmugam appears not to understand that press freedom indices rank press freedom, not military repression.

More broadly, it seems that he cannot make up his mind whether he wants to defend Singapore’s very restrictive media environment – using the old Asian values argument favoured by Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew – or promote Singapore’s ambitions to be a global media hub.

At one stage, he starts bragging about the Singapore government’s impeccable record of winning libel actions against the world’s leading news organisations:

I suspect that our rankings are at least partly due to the fact that we take an uncompromising attitude we take [sic] on libel – and the fact that we have taken on the almost every major newspaper company. Such audacity that tiny Singapore has.

Then he turns course, insisting that “we don’t shut out the world”:

We have more than 5,500 foreign newspapers and publications in circulation in Singapore. There are close to 100 TV channels carried on our cable networks. Nearly 200 correspondents from 72 foreign media organisations are based in Singapore.

Similarly, he says that the media in Singapore should be politically neutral and “should report fully and fairly what goes on… can probe, ask inconvenient questions, and expose wrong-doing.”

But he attacks the so-called western concept of the media as a fourth estate, holding the government to account. News organisations are fallible, unaccountable and open to influence from their owners and commercial partners, he says.

He’s right about that, of course. But when he poses the following question – “Do parts of the media act as campaign arms of politicians, peddle half-truths and present very biased perspectives?” – this concern surely applies more to Singapore’s homogeneous government-controlled press then to plural Western media environments.

Perhaps the greatest irony of his speech is that many of his criticisms of the Western liberal approach to the media are drawn from commentaries in the self-same leading newspapers that he is so proud of Singapore having sued.

It all goes to show that those who fear criticism the most also crave recognition.

Vietnam's diplomatic height requirement applies to men too

2010-11-06T15:56:00.000+08:00

After I blogged last month about the 160cm minimum height requirement for women to join Vietnam's diplomatic service, one reader asked whether there was also a limit for men.

Further discussions with some of Vietnam's finest young foreign service officials, who have done a sterling job organising the recent Asean summits in Hanoi, reveals that there is a height requirement for men too, of 165cm.

One female official told me that the height requirement for women has increased from 157cm when she took her foreign service exams nine years ago, a sign of the increasing wealth and improving standards of nutrition in Vietnam.

But, she added, there is some flexibility with regards to these height requirements. After candidates are measured and their heights announced, they have a chance to argue their case if they fall short.

"It's a good test of your negotiating skills," she said.

Maturing Vietnam-US relations

2010-11-01T10:46:00.000+08:00

When Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State, chided Vietnam over its recent human rights record during a joint press conference in Hanoi on Saturday with Pham Gia Khiem, Vietnam's Foreign Minister, he grimaced for a brief moment before relaxing and offering the following response:

In my talk with Madame Secretary, we agreed that in human rights, we have a lot of differences between the US and Vietnam and I told Madame Secretary that we should continue carrying out a dialogue to resolve our differences.

While cynics might say that he is effectively sticking two fingers up at his American counterpart, the mellow tone of his reply is significant. In the past, the Vietnamese government has reacted angrily to criticism from the US and others over human rights, insisting that they have no right to interfere in its internal affairs.

Ever since relations between the former warring parties were normalised 15 years ago, Vietnam has been aware of the economic importance of developing its trade relations with the US. Over the last couple of years, there has also been an increasing realisation in both countries of the need to strengthen their political and strategic ties, in order to better balance the growing regional power of China.

It can't have been easy for Khiem to stand up, in front of the Vietnamese and international press and TV cameras, and let Clinton's comments wash over him but it was a sign of the maturity of the relationship between the two countries.

The US thinks that arresting bloggers and limiting academic and press freedom will damage Vietnam's growth prospects. The Vietnamese government disagrees. But both sides can accept the difference of opinion and move on to more fruitful area of co-operation, at least for now.

Beware of Burmese bearing gifts

2010-10-30T14:44:00.000+08:00

This morning, I was skulking around the depths of Hanoi's National Convention Centre, which is hosting the Asean and East Asian Summits, when I saw an intriguing sight.

A very well presented woman in a traditional Burmese longyi, was trying to gain access to the office of the United Nations delegation, with a large package.

The woman, escorted by a rather less well presented male Burmese diplomat, had a present for Ban Ki Moon, it transpired.

She told me it was a "painting made out of precious stones".

Unfortunately, the UN had already left the building.

Presuming the painting is eventually passed on to Mr Ban, I wonder what he will do with it, given that Burma's gem trade is reliant on forced labour, child labour and land confiscation, according to NGOs such as Human Rights Watch.

US academic in Singapore casts doubt on Yale tie-up

2010-10-24T19:15:00.000+08:00

Over the last year, I've hosted a reasonably robust debate on this blog about academic freedom in Singapore. This has generated some very interesting feedback from readers and others.

An anonymous reader, who says they are an American academic in Singapore, has posted an insightful and balanced comment on the prospects for Yale's proposed tie-up with the National University of Singapore. I have no way of knowing if they are who they say they are but they seem to know what they are talking about.

I will leave you to decide. Here's the comment in full:

I am an American academic who has lived and taught in Singapore for well over a decade, in both local universities and in an American college program here that went under about 10 years back. The latter experience left those of us faculty members who taught in the program and had to be let go severely demoralized. I have serious doubts about the Yale initiative in Singapore for four reasons:

1. An intellectual/psychic time sink: I agree with James Scott that over time, it's likely that the Yale constituency will have to make more and more compromises in order to carry on here. As the situation intensifies, you can bet that at least 50% of the staff/students will spend at least 50% of their time focused on the negativities of this situation, and it will only get worse. The "Yale in NUS" prospect is a potential waste of both faculty and student resources that could better be put towards other kinds of cross-cultural and experiential learning. And if/when Yale pulls out, it will be a very depressing, frustrating experience for all concerned.

2. An inherently status-limiting pursuit for people who are invested in achieving higher and higher status: both the faculty and students involved in the Yale initiative will no doubt have ambitious plans for achieving all that is embodied in the Yale name. They will find out that in Singapore, the humanities and social sciences simply cannot achieve the kind of social recognition and financial reward associated with the science and business spheres. This may be happening everywhere, but it’s particularly acute in Singapore.

3. An uncongenial environment for the personal downtime and reflection that go along with a liberal arts education: try to find somewhere peaceful and quiet to ruminate on the big questions in life in Singapore, away from campus. Good luck. Over the decade-and-a-half that I’ve lived here, I’ve seen the opportunities to go for long, thoughtful walks diminish as space becomes increasingly chopped up and commercialized, and it’s even hard to find a relatively quiet place just to read or discuss off-campus where you don’t have to pay through the nose. These days I think I'm living in a glitzy-glam corporate park, alternating with feeling like a lab rat in a social engineering experiment (well, Singapore has always had that lab-rat feeling, I must admit).

4. An unnecessary reduplication of effort: NUS is already doing as good of a job as Yale probably ever could in the social sciences and humanities sphere for this particular setting, and the other major universities here have much to offer as well. Singapore students can go out, and non-Singaporean students can come in. Really, Yale, what’s the point?

Will Alan Shadrake verdict affect Yale's plan to set up a college in Singapore?

2010-10-20T23:58:00.000+08:00

Singaporean prosecutors on Wednesday wrapped up their case against Alan Shadrake, the 75-year-old British writer charged with contempt of court after publishing a book critical of the use of the death penalty in the city-state.

Judge Quentin Loh is expected to issue his verdict next week and, if found guilty, Shadrake could be facing a jail sentence as well as a fine.

The case has been followed closely by the small community of civil society activists in Singapore, as evidenced by the extensive reports on The Online Citizen, a popular citizen journalism website.

But international eyes are also on Singapore.

Yale University is in the final stages of discussions with the National University of Singapore to set up a "liberal arts college" in a state not exactly famed for its promotion of academic freedom.

A number of Yale academics have kicked up a stink about the deal, which they fear will boost the university's coffers at the expense of its reputation for independent academic inquiry.

In a prospectus designed to reassure weary dons, Yale's president and provost say they were "greatly concerned" by the arrest of Shadrake.

"This gave us reason to inquire even more deeply to understand how free faculty and students would be to express themselves in scholarly publications, in the classroom and on campus," they wrote.

Presumably, they will be eager to see what transpires next week before concluding their talks.

Facebook fights back against Vietnam block

2010-10-17T23:52:00.000+08:00

Facebook is battling back against the Vietnamese government's block on the social networking website by looking to recruit a Policy and Growth Manager for Vietnam who will "lead the company’s interactions with policymakers and will be responsible for ensuring the site’s accessibility".

The successful candidate, who will be based in Hanoi, "will be able to communicate effectively in both English and Vietnamese and have experience in government relations work and navigating government agencies along with an extensive network of contacts in the government and the technology space."

One of their key responsibilities will be to "monitor legislation and regulatory matters in states affecting Facebook and advise company with respect to policy challenges."

Although the Vietnamese Facebook block is relatively easy for those with a little nous to circumvent, here's the full text of the job ad on the Facebook website for those who can't access it:

Manager, Policy and Growth – Contract (Vietnam)
Facebook is seeking a Policy & Growth Manager for Vietnam, who is passionate about Facebook and has a background in technology or social media, business strategy and legislative and regulatory matters. The ideal candidate will be able to communicate effectively in both English and Vietnamese and have experience in government relations work and navigating government agencies along with an extensive network of contacts in the government and the technology space. The candidate should have experience in developing a growth strategy that involves creating coalitions and communicating with policymakers across the government. The position will require someone to be entrepreneurial in nature, resourceful, flexible and bring an intensity of focus to the project. The Growth Managers at Facebook and will lead the company’s interactions with policymakers and will be responsible for ensuring the site’s accessibility as well as driving user acquisition programs, identifying growth opportunities that help with the distribution of the Facebook brand online and offline and adding value to the Facebook user experience. The position will be based in Hanoi but some travel around Vietnam will be required as needed. This is a 12 months based contract position.

Responsibilities
• Lead outreach to data protection authorities, other regulators and policy makers
• Monitor legislation and regulatory matters in states affecting Facebook and advise company with respect to policy challenges
• Represent Facebook in meetings with the national government and elected officials
• Explore, identify and evaluate strategic growth opportunities
• Influence and improve the Facebook experience of users in Vietnam by identifying product / market fit gaps
• Provide market insights – identify and monitor strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats relevant for Facebook’s adoption in Vietnam
• Be an advocate for developers and users in Vietnam

Requirements
• Fluent in English and Vietnamese
• Interest in emerging technologies and public policy issues
• Superb written and oral communications skills
• Strategic thinker and planner
• Performance driven
• Self motivated , entrepreneurial in nature and comfortable in ambiguous situations
• Proven track record with high standards of professionalism Exceptional interpersonal skills and ability to develop strong working relationships inside and outside Facebook
• Creative, resourceful, detail-oriented, and highly organized
• Ability to meet multiple objectives in an entrepreneurial environment with little supervision
• Extensive experience dealing with policymakers and industry groups
• Prior experience working in a high-growth or startup technology company preferred

Warning: You must be over 160cm to enter this diplomatic service

2010-10-17T14:07:00.000+08:00

In many diplomatic services around the world, women meet a glass ceiling as they climb the departmental ladder. In Vietnam, it's more like a glass ruler.

Two very able female graduates of Vietnam's Diplomatic Academy told me they were unable to join the foreign ministry because they were under the 160cm minimum height requirement.

Vietnam's diplomacy has certainly risen in stature over the last year, with the government deftly using its chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to force the South China Sea disputes onto the international agenda.

But, I'm not convinced that the best way to ensure that Vietnam continues to grow on the world stage is to exclude women under 160cm, who make up no small proportion of the population.

Given that Vietnam always provides a cohort of smiling, ao dai-clad dolly birds to impress foreign officials at international events, why is the ministry so concerned about the height of its female diplomats?

US defence secretary Robert Gates gets a military welcome in Hanoi

2010-10-14T00:59:00.000+08:00

While traveling around Hanoi with US defence secretary Robert Gates' entourage on Monday, I took the following video of the Vietnamese army welcoming him to a meeting at the Ministry of National Defence with his Vietnamese counterpart, General Phung Quang Thanh.

It was quite something to see Vietnamese soldiers playing the Star-Spangled Banner and to watch Gates inspecting the honour guard escorted by a goose-stepping officer.

Gates was in town for the a big meeting of Asia Pacific defence ministers.

A low key protest by banned group in Hanoi

2010-10-10T18:58:00.000+08:00

UPDATE - Monday 08:00 - Viet Tan says that the Australian Vietnamese woman mentioned below, who seemed to be leading the protest, was arrested on Sunday evening. I have no independent confirmation of this. There is now a DPA story on the arrest.

Yesterday, I observed a protest in Hanoi by the banned Viet Tan group - or Vietnam Reform Party - which was low key in terms of the number of participants and the immediate police response.

A handful of overseas Vietnamese Viet Tan members gave out t-shirts and caps in a central Hanoi park, while calling on the government to stand up to Chinese aggression in the South China Sea. (See reports by DPA, the German press agency, and AP)

There were several dozen local onlookers but it was unclear who were supporters of Viet Tan and who were simply bemused Hanoians - it's not everyday that you see political protests in a country where little dissent is tolerated. For obvious reasons, Hong Vu, the Australian Vietnamese who seemed to be doing most of the talking, was reluctant to say how many local supporters were present.

The Vietnamese government calls the US-based group a terrorist organisation, although Viet Tan insists it only believes in promoting peaceful change.

Although the surrounding area was amply supplied with police - the protest took place just behind one of the main stages were Hanoi's millennial celebrations have been taking place - there was no immediate reaction.

Once the blue t-shirt-clad Viet Tan members had headed off in a hurry and the small crowd has dispersed, a policeman did come around looking to confiscate some of the t-shirts they had given out.

Apparently, a similar unauthorised Viet Tan event earlier this year, when overseas Vietnamese gave out t-shirts and caps to an obliging Vietnamese public (if only because they like free gear rather than because they share the political messages), was also met with a relatively hands-off response.

The universality of terrible customer service

2010-10-09T19:20:00.000+08:00

I have been scouting around Hanoi for my first smartphone and have been very disappointed with the level of customer service.

Given that most of these phones sell for more than the average monthly wage, it ought to take some pretty good sales advice to convince people to part with their hard-earned cash.

But not a bit of it. Having visited about 15 mobile phone shops, not one assistant could explain the pros and cons of different makes/models.

A Vietnamese friend, who was helping me to translate (my Vietnamese is still more, erm, conversational than technical), noted that these shops were effectively pushing eager customers away.

Just as my frustration began to boil over - and I started wondering if the ineffectual customer service was linked to the fact that Vietnam has yet to really open its retail sector up to foreign competition despite its World Trade Organization obligations - I realised that the Vietnamese mobile phone shopping experience was not particularly exceptional.

You get the same muppets working in these shops everywhere.

Asian casinos: What's in a name?

2010-10-08T01:03:00.000+08:00

Across Asia, from Japan to Vietnam via Taiwan and Singapore, governments are experimenting with the legalisation of casinos in order to tap into the massive pent-up demand for gambling in the region.

But with many of Asia's governments professing some form of socially conservative credentials, the legalisation and promotion of casino gambling is, to put it mildly, a thorny issue.

Hence, in Singapore, those huge complexes that you see in Marina Bay and on Sentosa island, and which are generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, are not casinos but, to use the official terminology, "integrated resorts".

Likewise I learn courtesy of a job advertisement in the Viet Nam News that the massive Ho Tram strip development on the southern coast, which is backed by MGM Grand, will not include regular casinos but merely "a prized entertainment and amusement area reserved for foreigners".

A free casino licence in the Asian nation of your choice is on offer to the reader who can come up with the best new euphemism.

Government takes on Facebook in Vietnam

2010-10-05T11:34:00.000+08:00

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting story today about the Vietnamese government's attempt to launch a sanitised alternative to Facebook, which has been blocked on and off here since the end of last year.

The site, called go.vn, failed to capture the imagination of Vietnam's tech-savvy youth with initial articles about Ho Chi Minh and other revolutionary leaders and is now being spiced up. The WSJ reports:

The team has added online English tests and several state-approved videogames, including a a violent multiplayer contest featuring a band of militants bent on stopping the spread of global capitalism. The stream of news on the home page recently included an item on local beauty queens, news of a South Carolina fisherman who caught a fish that had human-like teeth, and word that British intelligence services once experimented with semen as an invisible ink.

Mr. Hop, the information minister, predicted go.vn will sign up more than 40 million people— about half the country's 85 million people—by 2015.

But the apetite for Facebook and other uncensored global social networking sites seems unlikely to fade quickly, particularly given the ease with which the Vietnamese restrictions can be circumvented.

As Global Post puts it in an article on the ineffectiveness of Vietnam's Facebook block: "Vietnam’s answer to China’s Great Firewall is more of a smoldering bamboo fence — an inconvenience more than an outright prohibition." (For the record, Facebook is currently accesbile in my hotel room.)

At first sight, it appears hard to understand why the government would waste its time with such lacklustre censorship. Part of the problem is that the Vietnamese media police do not have the same resources or know-how as China's army of technologically-advanced censors.

I suspect that the government is also aware that it cannot completely control access to the internet without damaging prospects for economic growth.

The Facebook block will not stop even the mildly determined. But it sends out a clear message that the government is watching what you do online and that using state-sanctioned social media is a safer path to tread.

Leading Yale professor opposes Singapore tie-up

2010-09-30T00:05:00.000+08:00

Having written extensively about the limits on academic freedom in Singapore, I was rather surprised to see that Yale was in talks with the National University of Singapore about setting up a "liberal arts college" in the restrictive city state. Especially as the UK's Warwick University abandoned an earlier proposal to set up a university in Singapore because of concerns about freedom of speech.

It seems I was not the only one. James C. Scott, one of the leading Southeast Asia-focused academics of the modern era and a professor of political science at Yale, has spoken out against the proposal, according to a story for the Yale Daily News. The college newspaper reported him as saying:

"There’s unlikely to be a cataclysmic moment in which Yale would have to decide instantly whether to leave or stay. It’s more like to be a very gradual diminution of freedom of maneuver in which there’s not obviously some decisive threshold.”

Scott, the story reports, says Yale would be better off setting up a campus in Malaysia, the Philippines or Thailand, which also fall far short of democratic ideals but allow significantly more criticism of the establishment than Singapore.

In his most famous work, Scott argued that popular uprisings in Southeast Asia were driven by "The Moral Economy of the Peasant" - that poor farmers believed they had a right to basic subsistence and would rebel if it was denied them.

Will the Singapore government's particular view of a moral economy, that education (among other things) should be subservient to the politico-economic goals of the ruling caste, drive an uprising among Yale professors?

Vietnam contradictions #1

2010-09-29T01:12:00.000+08:00

Like any complex subject, Vietnam is perhaps best understood not by attempting gross generalisations but by trying to come to terms with the inherent contradictions.

During my time in Vietnam, I intend to document the many contradictions that surface in the hope of shedding some light on this remarkable, if often confusing, country.

I start with two stories published today in the Dan Tri online newspaper.

One, headlined "Hoan Kiem’s magnificent light show ready to go" sings the praises of the truly spectacular, high voltage light show that is being rehearsed ahead of the celebration of the 1,000-year anniversary of the founding of Hanoi, early next month.

The second, headlined "Vietnam’s power troubles far from over", warns that the country will continue to be hit with chronic power shortages in the coming years.

Hat-tip to Our Man in Hanoi, who I met in person last week, having followed his blog for some time.

Asean fears US support over maritime dispute may alienate China

2010-09-25T12:46:00.000+08:00

Southeast Asian governments are concerned that the increasingly vocal US comments about the South China Sea disputes could alienate China.

While Western politicians usually like their foreign policy statements bold and clear, the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) prefer the softly-softly approach.

An initial draft of the statement to be issued at the end of Friday's US-Asean summit, prepared by the Philippines, opposed the "use or threat of force by any claimant attempting to enforce disputed claims in the South China Sea," according to an AP report.

But, according to the Bangkok Post, Asean leaders pushed the US to remove any direct reference to the South China Sea for fear of angering China.

Kasit Piromya, Thailand's foreign minister, told the paper:

"We have discussed the South China Sea issue at the Asean Regional Forum to which all the claimant states are members. It might be inappropriate if Asean and the US discuss this issue without China being present. We don't want to be seen as trying to gang up with the US against China."

And Asean appeared to have won this particular diplomatic debate, with the final joint statement not mentioning the South China Sea, saying only:

"We reaffirmed the importance of regional peace and stability, maritime security, unimpeded commerce, and freedom of navigation, in accordance with relevant universally agreed principles of international law, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and other international maritime law, and the peaceful settlement of disputes."

However, the White House's official "read-out" of President Barack Obama's meeting with the Asean leaders makes an overt mention of the South China Sea:

"The President and the leaders also agreed on the importance of peaceful resolution of disputes, freedom of navigation, regional stability, and respect for international law, including in the South China Sea."

Sometimes, you have to wonder why diplomats bother with such circumlocutions.

Hanoi bound

2010-09-23T00:33:00.000+08:00

After a longer-than-expected sojourn in London, I'm finally returning to Southeast Asia later this week.

Following Singapore and Jakarta, my new - and hopefully more permanent base - will be in Hanoi, as the Vietnam correspondent for the Financial Times.

Having first worked in Vietnam back in 2001, it's a long-awaited return to a country of which I grew very fond.

It has been fascinating to observe (from afar) the speed with which Vietnam has been changing as a result of the country's cautious yet sustained moves toward a market economy.

I now have a great opportunity to get a much closer look.

Anyone who wants to get a sense of the scale of the transformation could do worse than check out this video of Hanoi in 1989, replete with trams and bicycles and almost totally devoid of motorbikes and cars, let alone the Bentleys and Ferraris that can be seen on the capital's streets today.

Vietnam hopes closer US ties won't harm China relations

2010-09-20T16:31:00.000+08:00

Vietnam's steadily improving relationship with the US provoked the ire of China over the summer after US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton told a regional security forum in Hanoi that the peaceful resolution of disputes over hotly-contested islands in the South China Sea was in America's national interest.

Barack Obama will re-iterate this view at a meeting with leaders from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Friday, according to an AP report, reassuring Vietnam and the other ASEAN countries that claim some of the Spratly and Paracel islands that the US will not abandon them to China's whim.

Where old rivalries run deep, it often appears that diplomacy is a zero sum game, with Vietnam's growing military and diplomatic cooperation with the US seemingly bound to damage relations with China.

But Vietnam's foreign minister, who I interviewed for the Financial Times recently, believes Vietnam can move closer to both China and the US without alienating either side.

"To enhance relations with the US does not mean we want to be against China," Pham Gia Khiem, who is also a deputy prime minister, told me. "Vietnam has enjoyed good military co-operation with many countries, including China, the Southeast Asian nations and the US. The goal of our military cooperation is to keep and enhance peace and stability."

He welcomed Hilary Clinton's recent comments on the South China Sea dispute but insisted that Vietnam did not want to bring in America as a bulwark against Chinese might.

"We don’t want to engage any country to be against a third country – that’s not our policy."

But he did accept that Vietnam, which has been trying to extend military cooperation with China as well as the US and other Southeast Asian nations, needed to work hard to erode mutual suspicion.

"In relations between Vietnam and other countries, the building of confidence is the most important thing. Confidence building helps avoid scepticism. Vietnam and China want to develop a comprehensive strategic partnership and the foundation is confidence building as it is a good way to reduce doubt."

Singapore government starts to rein in casinos

2010-09-17T17:47:00.000+08:00

As I've written before, the Singapore government was placing a big double bet when it decided to legalise casino gambling: that the two casinos would turn a handsome profit and that their success would not bring with it social problems such as crime and addiction.

There's no doubting that the first part of that wager has paid off, with record numbers of tourists coming to the island nation and Singapore's gaming revenue forecast to surpass that of Las Vegas by the end of next year.

While the economic benefits appear clear cut, the social impact is less positive. Since the Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands casinos opened earlier this year, the police have arrested dozens of people for trying to cheat at the gaming tables and the courts have handed down swift and stiff sentences to try to deter future casino criminality.

The government has been more worried by the large number of gambling-crazy Singaporeans who have flocked to the baccarat tables and slot machines. Last week, the Casino Regulatory Authority told the casino operators to stop providing shuttle bus services to Singapore's heartland government housing estates.

This week Vivian Balakrishnan, the minister for community development, youth and sports, wrapped the casino operators on the knuckles. He reminded the operators that the government's aim was " to prevent the casinos from targeting the locals as their principal market".

In an effort to deter them from patronising the casinos, the government has imposed a levy of S$100 per day or $2,000 a year on Singaporeans and permanent residents. But Balakrishnan revealed in Parliament that there have still been more than one million visits by local residents in the few months since the casinos opened - that is more than one visit for every three residents of gambling age (over 21).

The government's plan to use the casinos to bring in big spending foreigners while sparing its citizens the negative consequences of mass market casino gambling will be very hard to pull off.

Singaporean Satirist Mr Brown suggests that the government wants to "have a casino that is there but not really there, existing in some Twilight Zone only foreigners can enter. Enjoy the money it will bring, but not the vices and social problems."

As he notes, having your cake and eating it is never easy.

Lee Kuan Yew gets all reflective in New York Times interview

2010-09-11T17:54:00.000+08:00

This week's Saturday profile in the New York Times is a surprisingly reflective interview with Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding prime minister.

The 86-year-old political gunslinger has shown few signs of mellowing with age, most recently advising Singaporeans to work until they drop dead or risk ruining the island nation's economic prospects.

But, in an interview with a newspaper that his lawyers felt compelled to sue again back in March (a fact not mentioned in the piece), he talks rather movingly about his struggle to face the uncomfortable reality of ageing, his wife's illness and his own mortality:

“I can feel the gradual decline of energy and vitality,” said Mr. Lee, whose “Singapore model” of economic growth and tight social control made him one of the most influential political figures of Asia. “And I mean generally, every year, when you know you are not on the same level as last year. But that’s life.”

In a long, unusually reflective interview last week, he talked about the aches and pains of age and the solace of meditation, about his struggle to build a thriving nation on this resource-poor island, and his concern that the next generation might take his achievements for granted and let them slip away.

He was dressed informally in a windbreaker and running shoes in his big, bright office, still sharp of mind but visibly older and a little stooped, no longer in day-to-day control but, for as long as he lives, the dominant figure of the nation he created.

But in these final years, he said, his life has been darkened by the illness of his wife and companion of 61 years, bedridden and mute after a series of strokes.

“I try to busy myself,” he said, “but from time to time in idle moments, my mind goes back to the happy days we were up and about together.” Agnostic and pragmatic in his approach to life, he spoke with something like envy of people who find strength and solace in religion. “How do I comfort myself?” he asked. “Well, I say, ‘Life is just like that.’"

Although he has never seemed fond of apologies, he talks with a hint of regret about the darker days of Singaporean politics, when he locked up a number of political opponents for years without trial:

I’m not saying that everything I did was right but everything I did was for an honorable purpose. I had to do some nasty things, locking fellows up without trial.

But Lee is not yet ready to go gentle into that good night. The interview concludes with him citing a Chinese proverb: Do not judge a man until his coffin is closed.

Close the coffin, then decide. Then you assess him. I may still do something foolish before the lid is closed on me.

BBC denies bowing to political pressure over dropped Malaysia interview

2010-09-02T18:44:00.000+08:00

Earlier this week, I wrote about the BBC's decision to pull a planned Hardtalk interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin, a controversial Malaysian blogger, because of legal advice.

The decision has been heavily criticised on independent Malaysian blogs and news websites with many accusing the British state broadcaster of caving in to pressure from the Malaysian government.

But the BBC has insisted in a statement that "the suggestion that the item was dropped due to political pressure is untrue." Peter Connors, a press officer for BBC News, told me that the BBC had not been contacted by lawyers or other advisers acting for the Malaysian prime minister or government.

This is the full statement:

The BBC researches many different stories, it is the normal process of news and current affairs throughout the media that not all make it to air for a variety of editorial reasons.

In this case, it became clear in our research that any comprehensive interview with former Malaysia Today Editor Raja Petra Kamarudin would prominently feature issues that are currently the subject of a current court case in Malaysia, which raise issues of defamation.

The suggestion that the item was dropped due to political pressure is untrue. All BBC programmes adhere to the same strict editorial guidelines which ensure complete editorial independence and impartiality.

I suspect that the BBC was most concerned about RPK's persistent claims that Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak and members of his family were somehow implicated in the murder of a Mongolian translator and/or an attempt to cover up key details relating to the case - claims that the PM has vociferously denied.

The BBC is keen to play down the affair as nothing out of the ordinary but its decision to drop the interview does appear lily-livered.

From past experience, my hypothesis is that the editorial decision-making process came down to a trade off between time/money/hassle, on the one hand, and news-worthiness, on the other.

While the BBC might risk the ire of (and tempt possible legal action from) the leaders of countries such as Iran, Zimbabwe or Myanmar, I imagine that Malaysia is simply not a big enough global news story to warrrant such risks - especially when the Hardtalk producers have a long list of shows to research and record.

The end result is a victory for the Malaysian government, and its well-remunerated international PR advisers APCO Worldwide, who will be pleased that one of their most vocal and well-connected opponents has been denied 30 minutes of airtime on a leading global TV programme.

Malaysia's opposition activists, meanwhile, are understandly miffed about this missed opportunity.

BBC pulls interview with Malaysian blogger on legal grounds

2010-08-31T18:12:00.000+08:00

The BBC's Hardtalk programme has dropped a planned interview with Raja Petra Kamarudin, a leading Malaysian blogger who fled to the UK, following advice from the broadcaster's lawyers.

RPK, who I interviewed for The Guardian earlier this month, revealed on his blog on Sunday that the BBC had decided to pull the interview, which was due to take place on Wednesday.

I just got off the phone to Bridget Osborne, a Hardtalk producer, who confirmed that the RPK interview had been dropped following legal advice.

"He has made all sorts of allegtaions that we have no way of confirming or denying independently," she said, so the programme's lawyers advised them not to go ahead.

Hardtalk, which describes itself as BBC News' "hard-hitting flagship news programme", has previously interviewed many dictators, dissidents and crackpots who have made countless wild allegations.

But the producer refused to comment any further on why RPK had been dropped when so many other controversial interviews had gone ahead.

It is strange that the BBC appears to have wimped out of interviewing one of Malaysia's leading dissidents. As RPK says, "it is a rare occasion that they have had to drop a program".

But, in defence of the producers, I know from my own experience as a journalist that in-house media lawyers often have a very low risk threshold.

If the whole world was designed like Singapore...

2010-08-27T23:38:00.000+08:00

...you could fit the global population into an area the size of Texas.

That's the concept behind the government's 1,000 Singapores pavilion at the international architecture exhibition at the Venice Biennale.

The government believes that it can comfortably fit 6.5 million people into Singapore's 710 sq km (although the current population is around 5 million and I'm not sure the citizenry necessarily share the goverment's desire for another 1.5 million residents).

The projected population of Singapore is roughly 1/1000th of the world population so, using the Singapore city planning model, you could fit the whole world's population into an area of 710,000 sq km - roughly the size of Texas, a fifth the size of India and a tenth the size of China.

While the idea of rolling out identikit Singapores around the world may fill some with dread, I always found Singapore to be a very nice place to live in terms of urban planning. Only a third of the total land area is built up and, despite the prevalence of slightly dreary high-rise government housing, there are many pleasant open spaces where you can escape.

But while Singapore can offer many positive lessons for urban planners, particularly in fast-growing and seemingly sprawl-addicted Asia, the Lion City's model is not quite as compact and sustainable as it first appears.

Singapore's land area has grown by 22% since the 1960s because of large scale land reclamation projects that have relied on the at times environmentally, socially and politically questionable import of sand from around Southeast Asia. Likewise, the construction industry has depended on cheap sand and cheap workers brought in from all around the region.

John Donne wrote: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent."

Surely the same is true for, erm, islands.

You say tomato, I say incitement to violence

2010-08-26T18:40:00.000+08:00

The implementation of laws against incitement to violence or hatred is always problematic as they are very much open to interpretation.

Abdul Malik Mohammed Ghazali, a 27-year-old Singaporean, was arrested on Tuesday for allegedly inciting violence after criticising a minister in a comment left on a Facebook page.

Adding to the barrage of criticism on a page called "I hate the Youth Olympic Games organising committee", Abdul Malik attacked Vivian Balakrishnan, the sports minister, for his handling of the event:

"THIS IS THE TIME FOR US TO BURN VIVIEN [sic] Balakrishnan AND THE PAP!!!!!!" he wrote, referring to the ruling People's Action Party. "RALLY TOGETHER AND VOTE THEM OUT!!!"

[Comment taken from a screen grab published by The Online Citizen, a Singaporean citizen journalism website.]

Abdul Malik has insisted that the use of the word "burn" was metaphorical although he hasn't yet been able to convince Singapore's police of his argument.

The opposition Singapore Democratic Party contrasts his comments with those of one Lee Kuan Yew, former prime minister and current minister mentor:

"Everybody knows that in my bag I have a hatchet, and a very sharp one," Lee once said. "You take me on, I take my hatchet, we meet in the cul-de-sac."

As far as I know, Lee has never been arrested by the Singapore police on suspicion of incitement to violence.

Trouble down on the (Singapore) farm

2010-08-25T23:32:00.000+08:00

Ivy Singh-Lim is one of the few real characters in the rather staid public life of Singapore. An outspoken former head of Singapore's netball association, she has spearheaded attempts to revitalise Singapore's farming hinterland (yes it does have one) in the north of the densely-populated island nation.

I wrote about her mission and her rather unflattering views of the Singapore government in a big feature I did for the Far Eastern Economic Review before it closed down last year (available here).

Unlike some of the other independent voices in the politically repressed city-state, Singh-Lim is plugged in to the establishment. Her husband is a former head of NTUC Fairprice, a leading supermarket chain run by the government "trade union", and she has some influential friends within the ruling regime.

But her drive to turn her farm, Bollywood Veggies, into an "agro-tourism" destination seems to have ruffled some feathers. Her business is currently being prosecuted for allegedly flouting building regulations. Her defence counsel has claimed that she is the target of a malicious prosecution by the Building and Construction Authority.

Ivy is not the sort to back away from a fight so it will be interesting to see how this one turns out. In a recent posting on her website, she says:

Dear Valued Customers,

Some of you may be concerned about the recent TODAY article stating that the gentle-warrior farmer has been "hauled to court" because Bollywood Veggies did not comply with building inspections mandated by the BCA. I was not hauled to court but rather asked politely to appear.

The newspaper reporter did not ask for our side of the story so it was not mentioned that we had already complied with the inspections last year. Please be assured that our farm and bistro are safe to visit. However, if you are worried, please bring along a crash helmet or call us to provide you with an organic "coconut husk" crash helmet.

Mrs. Ivy Singh-Lim
Gentle-warrior Farmer

Quote of the week: James C. Scott on the successful pre-modern state

2010-08-20T21:30:00.000+08:00

A monopolistic protection racket that keeps the peace and fosters production and trade while extracting no more rents than the traffic will bear.

Leading Southeast Asia-focused political scientist James C. Scott on the essence of the successful pre-modern state, quoted from his insightful new book The Art of Not Being Governed.

To my mind, his definition also stands true for most modern (or should that be post-modern) states. The book, which I expect will become a new classic of Southeast Asian historiography, seeks to challenge the received wisdom about hill peoples and their relationship with the state.

An insider's view of academic censorship in Singapore

2010-08-18T17:39:00.000+08:00

In recent years, I've had many discussions with Singapore-based academics, both locals and foreigners, on the pervasive climate of self-censorship that surrounds those who would conduct research focused on the city-state.

However, with the vast majority of them employed by the state, very few are willing to speak out publicly for fear of jeopardising their positions.

So I'm grateful to Mark R. Frost, co-author of the fascinating new book Singapore: A Biography (reviewed by me here), for the comments he has left on this blog as part of an ongoing exchange between us.

Mark, who is now assistant professor of history at the University of Hong Kong, talks candidly about the censorship, both self-imposed and external, that guided his research and writing. I have published his latest comment below, while our full exchange is here.

Dear Ben,

To answer your first question, yes. But I am not sure I was fully conscious of it until I left Singapore and became reacquainted with what it's like to write in a freer context again. During my 6 years in the city, I definitely became ever more acutely aware of "political sensitivities". Thus, there were comments that came up in interviews with some of Singapore's former political detainees (interviews which are cited in the book) that were not included because they would have possibly resulted in libel actions. There were other things, such as the deviousness of LKY's political negotiations with the British in the late 50s and early 60s, which we could have gone into further (the details have been published) rather than just pointing to them in the footnotes. Was this the result of a subconscious self-censorship or a desire to move the story on? I'm still thinking about that one. But I do recall that, as a foreign academic working at the National Univ. of Singapore, you inevitably became careful about what sort of public criticism you directed at your paymasters. No doubt, this carefulness ultimately seeps into you (though I think good work can be done in Singapore, nevertheless, and many people in academia there continue to do it).

The decision to halt Singapore: a Biography in 1965, and in that sense narrow the narrative, was a very conscious one. I am still not comfortable tackling Singapore's political history after 1965, given the current political constraints in the Republic, and the official control of the archive. I have told publishers who have enquired about us extending the story or writing a sequel that this would involve a narrative far more critical of the ruling party. Repressive political measures that might have garnered a degree of popular support in the turbulent early-60s became, I believe, for many Singaporeans, less justifiable and more reprehensible in the 70s and 80s (culminating with the disgust that many people felt over the treatment of Catholic agitators involved in the so-called "Marxist conspiracy" of 1987).

As for the rise of the PAP, my personal view is that in the late 1950s the PAP was the only viable alternative to colonial rule, once Marshall had bailed - that is, in terms of getting Singapore out of its postwar social and economic predicament. As much as my heart is with the idealists who founded the Barisan, I'm not sure they would have achieved the same practical results as the PAP did in its first 5 years, had they got into power. There were already rifts in the Barisan prior to Operation Cold Store in 1963, and the more one looks into the party at this time, the more chaotic it appears. (Undoubtedly, this chaos was also a result of the pressures exerted upon it by the PAP.)

However, when the Barisan was systematically destroyed, hopeless though its leaders might have proved as technocrats, Singapore turned a corner. From 1963, economic success and political stability were won at the expense of freedom of expression and 'responsible dissent', generating a conformity, an intellectual sterility and a deep loss of historical identity that I hope the Epilogue to the book conveys. That's basically my take on the rise of the PAP. The party became something very different from 1963.

Another long email, sorry. But to answer your other question: the book was peer reviewed by three reviewers. Two were contacted by the co=publisher HKUP, and one by the National Museum of Singapore. The Museum, quite resonably, asked a prominent academic based in Singapore to review the book and indicate any parts that might raise political difficulties. He found none (a scholar with less integrity might have demanded changes, a ministry official would certainly have). In that sense the book was vetted.

The story of the 18-year-old Jakarta suicide bomber

2010-08-17T17:30:00.000+08:00

For TV coverage of Southeast Asia, Al Jazeera English cannot really be beaten. This film by Singaporean producers Lynn Lee and James Leong tells the story of Dani Dwi Permana, an 18-year-old Indonesian who walked into the lobby of the J.W. Marriott hotel in Jakarta last July and blew himself up, killing five others and wounding many.

The film follows Dani's brother Jaka Karyana as he tries to find out how and why his quiet, unassuming brother transformed into a murderous terrorist. It includes harrowing footage of the bomber's last moments as he is guided to his target via a video call with his terrorist mentor, who keeps shouting "Allahu Akbar" to reassure his young protege as he approaches his grisly end.

Jacques Rogge brings Olympic spirit to Singapore

2010-08-16T19:02:00.000+08:00

The Youth Olympic Games, held for the first time this year, is a longstanding pet project of Jacques Rogge, the president of the International Olympic Committee, who has spoken of his joy at watching his "baby being born".

And it is heartening to see that Rogge has ensured that the full Olympic spirit has been brought to Singapore, where the games are currently being held.

I'm not talking about international solidarity, amateur dedication or the principles of sportsmanship. No, I'm referring to the Olympic spirit of marketing fascism.

A letter sent to some Singaporean parents asking for permission for their children to "volunteer" as spectators has been published on a number of online forums and blogs.

The letter instructs parents to give their children money as refreshments will not be provided. However, they are kindly informed that "your son/ward is allowed to bring a water bottle provided the water bottle does not have either the "Nike" or "Adidas" logos".

Singaporean blogger Mr Brown remarks:

Since when did school children forced to be spectators at a sporting event have to adhere to branding guidelines? I understand if the athletes are covered by sponsor restrictions but SPECTATORS too? Next you'll be telling parents that the kids can only wear certain brands of UNDERWEAR to spectate YOG events too.

It's worth pointing out that the Singapore organising committee has insisted that no children have been harmed in the making of these Youth Olympic Games and that all the youthful spectators are there of their own accord. According to AP, Ng Ser Miang, chairman of the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organizing Committee and IOC Vice President, said:

There will be stories flying around. But just look at the faces of the children that are there, the sparkle in their eyes and the smile on their faces. Those are not things you can force. I don't think anyone will be forced to come to watch the torch relay or the Games. So I don't think there is any coercion.

Since I published yesterday's blog post, it's been drawn to my attention that there is an "I hate the Youth Olympic Games" Facebook group, with nearly 2,000 members.

The organisers of the group attack the more than trebling of the initial Games budget and contrast it with the relatively paltry amount spent by the government on welfare for the needy.

But, for what it's worth, membership of that group of online dissidents is dwarfed by the 58,000 people who are "fans" of the official Games Facebook group.

I'm sure that Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong is a fan of the games but that didn't stop him apparently nodding off during the "dazzling" opening ceremony.

Singapore gets all Stalinist over Youth Olympics

2010-08-15T19:08:00.000+08:00

Unlike many Singaporean bloggers and online commenters, I don't have any major objections to Singapore's decision to host the inaugural Youth Olympic Games, which begun this weekend.

Many have complained about the financial impact of holding the games, with the budget trebling from the original forecast to $290m, but such spiralling costs are par for the course when it comes to holding major sporting events.

Others have pointed out, correctly, that the games have failed to attract much international press attention.

But $290m is a relatively small amount of money for the government to commit and, while the Games were never going to generate much coverage outside the city-state, they will undoubtedly help promote Singapore as a major international tourism and events centre among the nearly 5,000 athletes, officials and assorted hangers-on who have come from all over the world.

What I do, however, find funny is the heavy-handed attempt by the Singapore establishment to make the kids Olympics sound like the greatest show on earth.

Singapore has clearly taken a leaf out of China's book but the key difference was that many Beijingers were genuinely proud to be hosting the 2008 Olympics. Most Singaporeans would probably be more excited by a discount computer fair at the Expo centre or a cut in the price of a plate of bee hoon then by the fact they're hosting the Youth Olympics.

But you wouldn't know that from reading the government-controlled Straits Times newspaper, which is hardly an independent voice at the best of times but has now gone into full Pravda mode.

Despite minimal evidence of interest among Singaporeans, the paper has been pumping out story after story about the games over the last few weeks and has now gone into overdrive.

Today's paper carries well over 10 stories about the "dazzling" opening ceremony, which was apparently witnessed by "millions of viewers" worldwide.

"All over the island last night, Singaporeans wanted to witness this landmark moment, whether it was at home, at a mall or at the fringe of the show venue," the paper crowed.

Reading activist Alex Au's blog, which carries a picture of a deserted concert arena, you get a slightly different impression.

With a nod to the likes of North Korea, the Singaporean authorities have also worked hard to ensure they have gangs of obedient, flag-waving young "patriots" to deploy to stadia and other Olympic events as and when necessary.

According to one blogger, secondary school students were forced by their teachers to cheer the Youth Olympics flame as it made its way around the island nation.

In education-focused Singapore, games organisers faced the challenge of roping in volunteers during the exam season, when every available public space, including Changi Airport, is usually full of stressed school kids buried in their books.

But the 7,000 children taking part in the opening ceremony were given special treatment, bussed to practice sessions and then back to school and even being "allowed" to stay overnight at school.

Underlying all this is a key contradiction at the heart of the post-independence Singapore regime, which says it wants to build a nation of patriotic, productive and creative people while also wanting to ensure it retains a large army of hard-working, pliant drones who won't challenge its position.

Rwanda: the Singapore of Africa?

2010-08-12T21:37:00.000+08:00

This week I have been reading a lot about a small country in a turbulent region where authoritarian one-party rule, in the guise of democracy, has soothed ethnic tensions and brought stability and rapid economic development.

This has been achieved under the watchful eye of a ruthless, maverick leader who tolerates little criticism, using draconian laws to silence dissenting journalists and opposition activists.

With the help of tight control over the electoral process, the ruling party is assured overwhelming majorities at every election. It is so confident of its position that it can even afford to lend a helping hand to some of the less threatening opposition parties, in order to promote the appearance of a multitude of political voices.

Western nations, led by the US and Britain, have "mollycoddled" this leader, according to the Financial Times, encouraging the notion that the country's stability rests on him.

"They have relied on his good will to get the timing right, in the hope that political space will gradually open," the FT says. "It should come as no surprise that the reverse is taking place."

According to The Economist, the success of authoritarian rule in this country raises a number of wider questions: "So where should the balance between development and freedom lie? Can democracy be shoved aside in the battle against poverty? And what should outsiders do to tilt the balance back?"

The Economist's conclusion is that those in the West who praise the leader of this country for his achievements in development "must also loudly lambast him for his loathsome and needless tendency to intolerance".

The country in question is, of course, Rwanda, not Singapore. And the leader is Paul Kagame, not Lee Kuan Yew.

The seemingly uncanny similarity between the situations in the two countries is partly the result of Kagame's efforts to learn from Singapore.

Kagame made his first official visit to Singapore in 2008, when he gave a lecture at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, telling the audience:

"In the case of Rwanda, we look at countries like Singapore as inspirational development models due to the rapid pace at which you successfully transformed your country."

Interviewing fugitive Malaysian blogger Raja Petra Kamarudin

2010-08-09T17:25:00.000+08:00

I met Raja Petra Kamarudin, one of Malaysia's best known bloggers, at a recent press conference in London, after spotting his trademark beret in the crowd. I subsequently interviewed him for a piece that's been published in The Guardian today.

RPK, as he's usually known, fled Malaysia after hearing that he was about to be detained without trial for a third time under the Internal Security Act, which was bequeathed by the British colonial regime.

But the same colonial legacy that threatened his freedom also proved to be his salvation. As he was born in the UK before Malaysia obtained independence, he has right of abode here.

Many senior members of the ruling United Malays National Organisation have called on RPK to come back to Malaysia and clear his name if he really believes he is innocent of the sedition and criminal defamation charges that have been levelled against him.

But, RPK says, he is less concerned about those charges than the fact that the government seems determined to detain him without trial again - the home ministry is still trying to overturn RPK's successful appeal against his ISA detention in 2008.

In any case, he says that it is for the prosecution to prove his guilt, not for him to prove his innocence.

"If the Malaysian government wants to prove my guilt, they will have to apply to extradite me and for them to be able to, they will have to satisfy a British court that I am guilty. Does the Malaysian government have the guts to try to convince a British court that I'm guilty? Because the standards set by a British court are very different."

Now that his Malaysian passport has expired. RPK is effectively stuck in the UK. Although he is free to remain in the UK, he has no official travel document so cannot leave the country.

But the chirpy trouble-maker doesn't seem too perturbed, saying he may even opt to stay in the UK if the charges against him are dropped by a future Malaysian government.

In the globalised era, distance is no bar to speaking truth to power and RPK has continued to be a thorn in the side of the Malaysian establishment from his Manchester base.

The success of his Malaysia Today website, which he says gets up to 1m hits a day, is partly due to his high-level contacts within the establishment. RPK told me that he's twice been visited in the UK by a senior UMNO figure "of ministerial level".

Like all high-profile bloggers, he's also extremely prolific and spends "10-14 hours a day, seven days a week" working on his website, assisted by a team of Malaysian volunteers spread around the world.

Postmodern capitalism and the embarrassment of riches

2010-08-06T00:49:00.000+08:00

The dozens of American billionaires who this week pledged to give half of their fortunes to charity should surely be applauded for their generosity.

The world's sick, poor and needy stand to benefit to the tune of up to $150bn over the coming years as a result of the initiative led by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

But there is something paradoxical about men (for it is mostly men) who spend most of their lives ruthlessly building business empires, without fear or favour, only to then give half of their gains away.

While philanthropy is nothing new, the world has never before seen wealth creation and dispersal on a such a massive global scale.

It's a phenomenon that Slavoj Zizek, the entertainingly rabid marxist philosopher, has dubbed "postmodern capitalism".

If they truly wanted to help save the world, you might ask, why didn't these compasionate capitalists pay their employees and suppliers more and ensure that their companies helped nurture communities and the environment, rather than damaging them?

Because, they might respond, if we hadn't kept a tight ship, we never would have been able to create jobs, generate tax receipts and accumulate the billions that we are now so keen to give away.

Anwar Ibrahim's US allies hit out at sodomy trial

2010-08-05T07:43:00.000+08:00

Malaysia's charming opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim, who is currently on trial for sodomy for the second time, regularly travels overseas and has made some very influential friends over the years.

In a joint editorial in today's Wall Street Journal, former US vice president Al Gore and former deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz insist that the sodomy charges against Anwar are "trumped up" and call on the US government to pressure the Malaysian authorities to end the trial.

Like the charges 10 years earlier, the timing of these new charges carries the strong odor of political manipulation. And, if anything, the case against Mr. Anwar this time is even less credible and the violations of due process are even more egregious.

While Anwar Ibrahim is on trial before the state, the state is on trial before its people and the world. If he were to be convicted, the whole of Malaysia's political life and its standing in the world would be damaged. And for what gain?

It is not surprising that either of these men is speaking out in defence of Anwar. Both Gore and Wolfowitz have supported Anwar for years, with Gore famously causing a stink at an APEC meeting in Kuala Lumpur in 1998 when he publicly backed the Reformasi movement that Anwar was leading against then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad. (Wolfowitz penned this Time magazine portrait of Anwar last year).

But the fact that these two American politicians from opposite ends of the political spectrum have spoken out as one in such a high profile forum is likely to raise the profile of the Anwar case in the US and raise the political temperature in Malaysia.

Malaysian blogs and online news sites have taken the story up very swiftly indeed. It will be interesting to see if prime minister Najib Razak, who has been carefully cultivating his international image with the help of PR firm APCO Worldwide, feels the need to respond.

Spit and punish on the streets of London

2010-08-02T06:16:00.000+08:00

It may be strictly-controlled Singapore that is best known for criminalising misdemeanours such as spitting, but once laid-back London is not too far behind, it seems.

Out and about in Wembley, in the north-west London borough of Brent, earlier today, I noticed a number of posters imploring residents not to spit paan, a spiced tobacco leaf mixture popular with the area's many South Asian inhabitants.

"Spitting tobacco paan on Brent's pavements is unhygienic and anti-social," the poster warned. "You could be fined £80".

Just up the road, at Sudbury Town tube station, the message became rather sterner.

Would-be spitters were told in another poster that "CCTV images of offenders may be used to report incidents to the British Transport Police".

And, if the CCTV doesn't get you, the DNA database will:

"Samples of saliva may also be passed onto the Police for DNA identification should the problem persist."

I share Brent Council's abhorrence at the practice of spitting paan, or anything else for that matter.

But shouldn't the police be deploying its extensive CCTV network and much-criticised DNA database to fight security threats more pressing than misplaced saliva?

British author refuses to apologise for Singapore death penalty book

2010-07-30T18:54:00.000+08:00

Alan Shadrake, whose trial on contempt of court charges in Singapore began today, has rejected an offer from the attorney general's chambers to issue an "unreserved apology".

After the trial was adjourned for several weeks to allow him and his lawyer M Ravi time to prepare their case, he vowed that he would not back down.

"I would never apologize and I would never say sorry," Shadrake told reporters, according to AP. "I didn't do this to grovel to them like Singaporeans mostly have to do to lead a normal life."

The attorney general's chambers alleges that various statements in Shadrake's book, Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, "impugn the impartiality, integrity and independence of the Singapore Judiciary".

At the start of today's hearing, senior counsel David Chong from the attorney general's chambers warned journalists that they too would be liable to contempt of court proceedings if they reproduced the paragraphs from the book that are at the centre of the case.

So the debate about this case, and the wider issue of the death penalty in Singapore, will doubtless be severly restricted in Singapore and foreign journalists based in the city-state will be writing their pieces with extra caution.

I'm currently reading the book for a review I'm writing for Asia Sentinel so will make my thoughts known in due course.

Elderly Lee Kuan Yew offers to take pay cut

2010-07-29T20:06:00.000+08:00

I was rather surprised to read today in the government-controlled Straits Times that Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father and rather well remunerated "minister mentor", is offering to take a pay cut.

Singaporean officials are among the best-paid in the world thanks to Lee's long-term policy of paying "private sector" wages to bring the best people into government and ensure that they are not tempted into corruption.

The 86-year-old Lee has suggested that to improve Singapore's sagging productivity, there should be no retirement age and workers should carry on going as long as they are healthy.

But, as they age, workers will become less efficient so they must be paid less as a result.

I think we have to develop that approach to life: You've reached the maximum you can do at your age in that position, you move sideways and you take less pay and you move gradually to less and less pay because you are moving slower and slower, especially if you are doing physical work.

Given Lee's admission that he is "still functioning, if not at the rate at which I was functioning, say, 20 years ago ... I have aches and pains, but nothing terminal and I can keep going," it seems as if he's offering to take a pay cut.

But blog Temasek Review is not won over by his call for thrift:

While Lee asked Singapore workers to accept a pay cut when they grow old, he has blatantly refused to practice what he preaches himself.

Lee costs Singaporeans some S$3 million dollars a year, or more than five times the annual salary of U.S. President Barack Obama and that is not including his lifelong pension which amounts to two-thirds of monthly salary.

Return to Vietnam

2010-07-27T18:16:00.000+08:00

I first moved to Vietnam as a wide-eyed and highly putative English teacher, an 18-year-old on my first-ever trip to Asia.

Nine-and-a-half years later I'm returning to live in Hanoi once more, having been appointed Vietnam correspondent for the Financial Times.

It's a great opportunity to report on the change that rapid economic growth is bringing to this incredibly dynamic country and the many challenges that are arising as a result.

I've now left Jakarta and am back in my home town of London, waiting for the paperwork to be completed in Vietnam.

In the meantime, I'm reading as widely as possible about Vietnam and the region and trying to rekindle my Vietnamese language skills.

I will continue to blog for Asian Correspondent and look forward to helping drive the site on to bigger and better things.

I won't back down from 'bullies', says British writer facing trial in Singapore

2010-07-24T22:14:00.000+08:00

Alan Shadrake, who is facing trial in Singapore on contempt of court and defamation charges, has said he "will give as good as I get" in court because he doesn't "believe in backing down from bullies".

In his first interview since he was arrested last Sunday, he told British Weekly, a publication for British expats in California, that he would not be cowed by the aggressive response from the Singapore government to his new book on the death penalty in the strictly-controlled city-state.

"I’d write that book again," he said. "Although they are giving me a very gruelling time here – every day I am interrogated for eight to ten hours, often covering the same ground - I would write the book again in a heartbeat. I am not allowed to have an attorney to be present when I am questioned. But I’m not going to be cowed. I’m looking forward to my day in court."

Read the rest of the interview here. Hat-tip to Jacob George.

Alan Shadrake update

2010-07-23T19:20:00.000+08:00

Inevitably, the initial international media buzz surrounding the arrest of British writer Alan Shadrake in Singapore has faded.

But for Shadrake, the saga continues. Although Shadrake was released on bail in the early hours of Tuesday morning, he has subsequently been summoned back to the police station several times for lengthy interrogation sessions, according to independent news site The Online Citizen.

The Online Citizen, which broke the story of Shadrake's arrest, also claims that police have seized a tape recording of Shadrake's book launch from a reporter for one of the city-state's government-controlled newspapers.

Erudite blogger Alex Au has seen a copy of the summons issued to Shadrake and reveals that so far all charges relate to contempt of court, rather than the criminal defamation allegations for which he was originally arrested.

As one of the commenters on Alex's blog points out, this may have worrying implications as the defence of justification (i.e. that what you wrote was true) is only available in defamation cases, not in contempt of court cases.

Elsewhere, I have written an analysis piece for Index on Censorship on the wider implications of Shadrake's arrest and James Gomez, a Singaporean academic and author of Self-Censorship: Singapore's Shame (good book, downloadable for free here), has done an interview on the case with Radio Australia.

British comedian Natalie Haynes has also penned her take on the case for Index on Censorship. She concludes:

You might be wondering who he defamed. The country’s most prolific hangman, perhaps? Or a judge? Or a policeman? Wrong every time, sunshine — he’s charged with defaming the country’s judicial system. How can it be possible to defame a system? Has he hurt the feelings of individual lawyers? All of them? And if so, couldn’t they bill someone for an extra hour, cackle softly, and grow the fuck up?

British author's arrest in Singapore 'not linked' to death penalty debate

2010-07-20T20:19:00.000+08:00

To the casual observer, it might have appeared that the arrest of British writer Alan Shadrake in Singapore was related to the fact that he has published a book that is highly critical of the Singapore government's use of the death penalty.

But, the Ministry of Home Affairs has thankfully made it clear in a statement that such a conclusion would be completely erroneous.

The ministry reassures us that Shadrake's "anti-death penalty views are not the issue in these investigations; it is his violation of the laws of Singapore which are".

Shadrake, like anyone else, is indeed free to express his views on this important issue:

The Singapore Government's position on the issue of capital punishment is not new. Those who disagree with our position have presented their arguments and as a matter of principle, we respect their right to hold such opposing views, as we hope they do ours.

The problem was not his views but his alleged criminality (although the Ministry appears to have forgotten to mention that his "offences" are still alleged at this stage - he has not even been charged yet):

Anyone, Singaporean or otherwise, who breaks the law regardless of the cause he touts, will be taken to task. Shadrake is no exception - he cannot expect to commit offences and then assume that he will be exempted from being held accountable under the law.

I'm glad that's all cleared up then.

The latest updates in the case are as follows: Shadrake was released in the early hours of Tuesday morning, Singapore time, after bail of S$10,000 was posted. His passport has been impounded and he cannot leave the country. A trial date has been set for July 30.

British author arrested in Singapore over death penalty book

2010-07-18T19:26:00.000+08:00

Alan Shadrake, a British investigative journalist who has just released a book about the death penalty in Singapore, was arrested at his hotel in the city-state this morning, according to government-owned Channel News Asia.

Shadrake, who last night attended a book launch for Once a Jolly Hangman: Singapore Justice in the Dock, is being investigated by the police for alleged criminal defamation following a complaint by the government's Media Development Authority, according to the CNA report.

He has also been served with a contempt of court order by the attorney-general, CNA says.

Shadrake came to prominence in Singapore in 2005 after revealing the identity of Singapore's hangman, Darshan Singh, shortly before he executed Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Van Tuong in a controversial case that caused friction between the Australian and Singaporean governments (PDF of Shadrake's front-page article in The Australian here).

His new book, which has been published by a Malaysian company, was withdrawn from the shelves of one of Singapore's biggest book shops last week after the retailer, Kinokuniya, was contacted by the Media Development Authority, which controls censorship in Singapore.

The book calls into question the way the government deploys the death penalty, suggesting that justice can be less than even in Singapore. The government has shown little tolerance in the past for those who cast doubt on the independence and fairness of the judiciary.

I've written previously about the government's reluctance to reveal information about the use of the death penalty in Singapore and the reasons why it takes this approach.

Does political censorship work in Singapore?

2010-07-17T23:34:00.000+08:00

The above video of a speech by Lim Hock Siew, who was detained by the Singapore government without charge or trial for 19 years and 8 months, has been banned by Singapore's censors.

It is a criminal offence to possess or distribute the video in Singapore and anyone doing so could face two years in prison and a fine of up to S$10,000.

The prohibition of the video, which was prodcued by film-maker Martyn See, is merely the latest in a long list of acts of political repression by the government.

Both Martyn See and Siew Kum Hong, a lawyer and former nominated MP, have noted that the ban has generated extra publicity for the video and led to an increase in the number of people who have watched it online.

Although the film-maker has complied with the Singapore government's demand that the film be taken down from YouTube, it has now gone viral and is available on several other sites (such as the one above).

At first sight, then, it appears as if this latest act of political censorship is wholly counter-productive.

However, while each act of political suppression by the Singapore government seems mindless when viewed in isolation (from suing the International Herald Tribune to arresting activists for handing out leaflets), the medium-term effect of this constant, drip-drip of repression is to suggest that political activists are dangerous and to warn right-thinking Singaporeans against engaging in any independent political activities.

I would urge anyone interested in politics or human rights to watch the 79-year-old Lim speak about his Kakfa-esque detention.

He relates how, at one stage during his detention from 1963 to 1982, he was put before an advisory board of judges and presented with charge sheets that included a number of blank spaces.

He asked one of the three judges why some of the charges were blanked out and the judge told him that these were charges that were so sensitive they could be shown only to the advisory board and not to the detainee.

The government did not try to stop Lim making his speech, which he did openly at a book launch in Singapore last year, but feel that a straight-up recording of his comments is "against the public interest" because it "gives a distorted and misleading portrayal of Dr Lim’s arrests and detention under the Internal Security Act (ISA) in 1963".

Why not let the Singapore public decide?

Malaysia seeks clemency for drug mule facing gallows in Singapore

2010-07-06T19:30:00.000+08:00

Malaysia's foreign minister will write to the Singapore government to seek clemency for Yong Vui Kong, a Malaysian citizen who was given a mandatory death sentence after being caught while trafficking 47g of heroin into Singapore at the age of 18 in 2007.

"We sympathise with what had transpired and will do everything possible within our powers or diplomatic means to solve the problem," Foreign Minister Anifah Aman told reporters.

The intervention in Yong's case, which I have been following since attending an anti-death penalty forum in Singapore last October, seems somewhat surprising (and rather hypocritical) given that Malaysia also employs the mandatory death penalty for drug traffickers.

The move follows pressure from Yong's Singaporean lawyer M Ravi, one of the very few human rights lawyers in the city-state, who has been working hard to try to save Yong's life.

Yong's supporters argue that he was a naive, troubled teenager who had fallen in with the wrong crowd at the time of his arrest and that he deserves a second chance given his lack of previous convictions and the relatively small amount of drugs he was found with.

Ravi also appealed on the grounds that the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking was unconstitutional but that appeal was rejected by Singapore's courts. He is now arguing that comments made by Singapore's law minister have prejudiced Yong's final clemency appeal to Singapore's President.

Singapore has only commuted death sentences in a handful of cases and it seems extremely unlikely that Yong will be spared. Pressure from the Malaysian government may make the Singaporean authorities even less likely to back down.

Whatever the outcome, the campaign to save Yong points to a possible strengthening of civil society in Singapore. Despite the best efforts of a government and a government-controlled media that are not keen to raise sensitive issues like the mandatory death penalty nor to encourage campaigns against government policy, Yong's supporters have succeeded in promoting their cause at home and abroad.

The upstanding Malaysian who's spied on 1,200 couples having sex

2010-07-06T01:05:00.000+08:00

In many countries, a man who had spied on 1,200 couples having sex would be put behind bars and added to the sexual offenders register.

But in Malaysia, which upholds Shariah law for the majority Malay-Muslim population, he is lauded as an "anti-vice volunteer".

The above-mentioned Malaysian volunteer, interviewed in The Star newspaper, said he was giving up his role after six years because he "cannot take it any longer".

The work certainly sounds demanding. Firstly, the volunteers go to "hot spots" where couples often seek intimacy.

"We listen for sounds of heavy breathing and kissing," he tells the government-owned newspaper. “We then move in and aim our torchlights on the couples. In most cases, they are caught naked.”

Rather than arresting the forniactors straight away, the anti-vice squad prefers to observe the couple for a while, not for any untoward purpose but purely "to get evidence for prosecution purposes", according to the newspaper.

As with the head of the Shariah police in the strictly Islamic Indonesian province of Aceh, who was angered by women wearing tight trousers through which "you can see the shadow of the vagina", you have to wonder if these moral policemen take some perverse pleasure from what they do.

A genuine slice of Malaysia in the heart of Singapore

2010-07-05T18:41:00.000+08:00

I enjoyed reading Neel Chowdhury's account of a journey to Malaysia from Singapore's Tanjong Pagar railway station, which is set to close later this year following the resolution of a long-running land dispute between the two neighbouring countries.

As he puts it in his Time magazine piece, "the frigid efficiencies of the city-state fell quickly away as I stepped under the 78-year-old station's Roman-style arches."

The station, which is owned by the Malaysian government, is like a little slice of Malaysia in the heart of Singapore, which goes some way to explaining why its continued existence proved to be such a thorny issue for both sides.

With no departures board, no air conditioning and filthy toilets that you have to pay to use, it is certainly not an efficient travel hub. And the train journeys through Singapore, over the causeway and into Malaysia, are painfully slow and often delayed or cancelled.

Yet the station is one of the most evocative places in often sterile Singapore. I'm a particular fan of the 24-hour food court, with its plastic tables and chairs that spill out onto the train platform, the cats (and rats) that scurry up and down the tracks and some of the best teh tarik and roti prata you're likely to find south of the Johor Straits.

Singapore and Malaysia have much to gain by making it easier for people to travel between the two countries and the eventual plan to connect the Malaysian city of Johor Bahru to Singapore's MRT network could prove transformative.

But, unlike Chowdhury, who seemed put out by the quirks of the Malaysian railway system, I will still mourn the loss of the Tanjong Pagar station and its almost inevitable replacement by some identikit skyscraper.

The trouble with Asia's mega cities

2010-07-03T00:08:00.000+08:00

If, as the Banyan columnist argues in The Economist this week, "the world’s hopes of putting carbon emissions on a manageable path depend upon on how developing Asia urbanises in the coming decades", then I fear we may be in trouble.

In developing Asia, governments of both the democratic and non-democratic hue claim legitimacy through the promise that they will deliver rapid economic development. It is, therefore, hard to envisage these governments reining in growth in order to ensure more sustainable development.

Banyan says that "urban living can be greener than other ways of life", with the economies of scale created by huge population clusters opening the theoretical door to reduced travel, less energy wastage and lower carbon emissions.

But, the reality in developing Asia is less rosy. As Banyan puts it:

Most poor people coming to the city aspire to higher standards of living and consumption. Ill-planned public transport reinforces car use. Most striking, putting up and using buildings accounts for a big part of developing Asia’s carbon emissions—perhaps 30% in the case of China, where nearly half the world’s new floor space is built each year. What’s more, the buildings do not age well. Many thrown up in the 1990s are already being pulled down and replaced.

When I was living in Jakarta, I saw first-hand the embodiment of the filthy, polluted, badly planned Asian mega city. My next destination, Hanoi, retains many of the charms that have all but vanished from other major cities in Asia. Yet it too is under growing pressure because of urbanisation and rapid development.

In terms of medium to long term sustainability, the picture is bleak. But millions of people have been brought out of poverty because of the opportunities afforded by Asia's mega cities.

So can it be right to argue from the comfort of a city that went through its growing pains a hundred years ago (London) that Asia's governments should put stricter controls on urban growth?

The grim reality of judicial corporal punishment

2010-06-28T01:02:00.000+08:00

In my last blog post, I argued that Oliver Fricker, who broke into a depot and spray painted a train in Singapore, can hardly be surprised that he faces three strokes of the cane.

However, I also voiced my strongly-held opinion that corporal punishment is barbaric and should be outlawed.

The decision to cane a Western white-collar worker like Fricker has already sparked considerable debate both within Singapore and in the wider world (as I've said before, few pay any attention when Singaporeans and other Asians are caned on a regular basis).

I'd urge the less squeamish among you, particularly those who support corporal punishment, to watch this video of a judicial caning in Malaysia.

The gruesome caning itself is perhaps less harrowing than the clinical precision with which the punishment is meted out.

Hat-tip to The Online Citizen for the video link.

Singapore to cane Swiss man after train graffiti incident

2010-06-25T20:15:00.000+08:00

I wrote previously how Singapore was facing another Michael Fay moment over the case of Oliver Fricker, a Swiss national charged with vandalism and trespass after breaking into a depot and spray-painting a train.

Today Fricker pleaded guilty in a Singapore court and he has been sentenced to five months in jail and three strokes of the cane. Despite a number of not-too-dissimilar recent cases where errant Western expats were treated leniently by the courts, Fricker has not been spared the rod.

The powers that be in Singapore clearly believe it's better to send a message that such vandalism will not be tolerated than to pander to Western public and political opinion. Like many people, I believe the use of corporal punishment is barbaric and unjustifiable. Its continued use puts Singapore firmly in the camp of repressive states such as Burma, China, Iran and Malaysia.

However, it's hard to have much sympathy for Fricker's predicament, which is entirely of his own making. Anyone living in Singapore should be well aware of the hard line taken over transgressions such as this and the sort of punishments that the state normally metes out.

And while Fricker's case has attracted substantial coverage in the Western media, scores of Singaporeans and other Asians are caned in the city-state every year with few eyebrows raised except by human rights organisations such as Amnesty.

More illegal sand exports to Singapore uncovered

2010-06-24T21:09:00.000+08:00

Singapore needs vast amounts of sand for its many land reclamation and construction projects and its eagerness to buy up sand from its neighbours has long been a source of friction.

Amid environmental concerns about the effects of sand dredging carried out on Singapore's behalf, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Vietnam have all placed full bans or partial restrictions on the export of sand (see my story in The Economist).

Last month an NGO called Global Witness published an investigation that revealed how river sand was still being exported to Singapore from Cambodia in defiance of a Cambodian government ban.

Now The Star, a government-owned Malaysian newspaper, has revealed that sand is also being exported illegally from southern Malaysia across the straits to Singapore and sold on to Singapore's Housing Development Board.

Campaigners such as Global Witness argue that Singapore's appetite for sand and its willingness to turn a blind eye to the way it is procured is causing serious environmental damage and undermining the fight against corruption in sand-exporting countries such as Cambodia and Malaysia.

In response to the Global Witness report, Singapore's Ministry of National Development claimed that it was "not true" that the "Singapore government seeks to import sand without due regard to the laws or environmental impact" in source countries such as Malaysia.

But the government, which likes to promote its credentials as an innovator in the field of sustainable development, noted that "the policing and enforcement of sand extraction licences is ultimately the responsibility of the source country".

It appears as if the Singapore government is (pardon the pun) burying its head in the sand, hiding behind the fact that the export and import of sand is done on a commercial basis and that it is the responsibility of the vendors and the exporting nation to ensure that everything is above board.

The Malaysian and Cambodian governments ought to be doing more to rein in the corrupt officials who are allowing the illegal sand exports to continue on such a grand scale.

But, if Singapore wants to be taken seriously as a responsible regional partner and environmental innovator, it must also step up to the plate.

The government may save money in the short term by buying in cheap, questionably acquired sand but it will have to pay the price in the longer term of supporting environmental degradation and corruption in neighbouring countries.

The slowly shifting tectonic plates of Vietnamese politics

2010-06-22T07:45:00.000+08:00

Ernie Bower from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington D.C. has written an insightful analysis of the hidden nature of political change in Vietnam, ahead of the Communist Party's all-important National Congress early next year.

He explains that while there are rarely any overt signs of political change taking place in Hanoi, the real moves tend to happen slowly and behind closed doors.

He concludes:

The quiet in Vietnam belies a proactive subterranean political agenda. The good news is that Vietnam’s leaders are likely to move the country in directions that will enhance its standing and growth, strengthen ASEAN, and open the door for closer ties with the United States and other international partners.

His argument seems to be supported by recent developments. Vietnam's National Assembly, whose delegates are almost all members of the Communist Party, has long been a supine body that appeared to do little-more than rubber stamp government policy.

But in recent years, the delegates have slowly grown bolder and the volume of debate has increased. On the weekend, the National Assembly further enhanced its increasing importance as a political institution, voting down a major government proposal for the first time.

The proposal in question was a controversial $56bn plan to build a 1,600km high-speed rail link between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, which critics argue would be costly and ineffective.

It would be going too far to conclude that the National Assembly's rejection of the proposal is a manifestation that some deeper democratisation process is underway in this one-party state.

But it is a sign that even when politics seems stale on the surface in Vietnam, the tectonic plates of change are often still moving underneath.

Paying for a piss: The true face of capitalist decadence

2010-06-16T01:18:00.000+08:00

Like other football fans, I'm eagerly awaiting tonight's fascinating World Cup encounter between Brazil and North Korea, whose coach Kim Jung-hoon has vowed to "embarrass the Brazilian team".

This World Cup is one of the very rare occasions on which the world's media are able to peer into the black box that is North Korea. There have been some good pieces on the North Korean team and its Japan-born star striker Jong Tae-se, including this one in the LA Times and this one in The Guardian.

Both reports mention Jong's bemusement at the naivety of his team-mates, who are cut off from the rest of the world like most North Koreans. They refer to an incident recounted on Jong's blog, when the North Korean team was recently traveling from Switzerland to Austria and stopped for a toilet break.

His team-mates rushed out of the public conveniences upon discovering that they had to pay to use the facilities.

"Then they turned to me and said, 'This is truly what capitalist society is like.'"

Mahathir: Politicians who sue critics are cowards

2010-06-15T00:04:00.000+08:00

Octogenarian former Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has hit out at politicians who sue their critics, after he was urged to take legal action against Barry Wain, the author of a critical new book about his long-running premiership.

On his blog, Che Det, Mahathir says that politicians must accept criticism from all quarters as it comes with the territory.

I am leery of politicians who sue their critics. I suspect that what they want is to make the issue sub-judice so as to prevent the critics from attacking them on the issue. This is a cowardly move and in fact proves that the criticisms are fully justified.

A politician who is convinced of his own integrity and innocence should be able to fend off the attacks by proving that they have no basis in fact. It is up to the people, after hearing both sides to decide on the matter. Shutting the mouth of the critics by abusing the authority of the court of law is no better than Governments which censor or shut down papers which are critical of them.

I share his view that politicians who readily turn to their libel lawyers are often more concerned with preventing genuine criticism than stopping the publication of any supposedly defamatory material.

However, the lady doth protest too much, methinks. During the 22 years when he retained a tight grip on power, Mahathir was hardly a friend of press freedom, outlawing various publications and ensuring that the mainstream media was effectively controlled by the state.

Still, I wonder what Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, a rival octogenarian political warhorse with a penchant for libel actions, would make of Mahathir's belated conversion to free speech.

Singapore faces new Michael Fay moment

2010-06-11T00:04:00.000+08:00

Just over 16 years ago, American teenager Michael Fay was caned four times at Queenstown Remand Prison in Singapore after pleading guilty to vandalism.

The case thrust the tighly-controlled city-state into the international limelight (see Asiaweek story from 1994) but despite (or because of) pleas for clemency from U.S. President Bill Clinton and many other quarters, the government was unwilling to make any exceptions to its draconian justice system.

Now Oliver Fricker, a 32-year-old Swiss software consultant, may force Singapore to relive the Michael Fay debate after being charged with trespass and vandalism for allegedly spray-painting a train alongside a British accomplice who has fled the city-state.

Fricker has been released on bail and will next appear in court on June 21. If convicted, he faces a fine of up to S$2,000 ($1,424), up to three years in jail and three to eight strokes of the cane.

The case, which was the first time a Singapore train has ever suffered a graffiti attack according to the Straits Times, has attracted significant international press attention, particularly in Switzerland and Britain. It has also been big news in Singapore, where the state-controlled media has reported it as a major security lapse.

Fricker's trial will no doubt be closely watched, with particular focus on whether or not the judge opts to have the defendant caned if he is found guilty.

Stern Singapore has come a long way since 1994 and, although it still scraps with foreign journalists and human rights experts, it prefers to promote a softer global image these days as an open, creative business and leisure hub.

If Fricker is found guilty and caned, it would undo a lot of the careful international public relations work carried out by the People's Action Party-led regime, placing Singapore visibly in the ranks of oddball states. Swiss embassy official Peter Zimmerli said his government would not interfere in the case but noted that "certain punishments such as corporal punishment are foreign to Swiss legal conception".

Errant Singaporeans and Asian migrant workers regularly face corporal and capital punishment but the sad reality is that these cases attract little or no attention in the wider world.

A decision to spare Fricker the rod (if found guilty) would provoke the ire of many Singaporeans who already feel that Western expats get an easy ride when they commit such misdemeanours.

There has been significant disquiet on Singaporean blogs and message boards over recent cases in which Western expats (both Brits) escaped prison in Singapore for (variously) drunkenly stealing a truck and driving it down Orchard Road and stealing thousands of dollars from someone else's bank account.

It will be interesting to see what happens.

A tale of two city-states

2010-06-09T03:50:00.000+08:00

Last week, I walked past a branch of DBS, Singapore's biggest bank, and was shocked to see a noisy protest taking place.

Ten pension-age men and women had erected a series of banners outside the main entrance and one banged a gong, while the others chanted slogans in Chinese.

What's going on here, I wondered. Even one-man protests are illegal in Singapore unless they are held at the heavily-monitored and controlled Speakers' Corner.

Then I remembered that I was in Hong Kong, land of the relatively free (depending on who you ask). The DBS protestors were demonstrating against the alleged mis-sale of mini-bonds, debt-linked financial products that were sold by banks such as DBS as safe, long-term investments but which were rendered worthless by the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

I saw a number of similar protests outside other banks in Hong Kong. But, as far as I am aware, Hong Kong has not yet been brought to its knees by these bands of silver-haired gong-bangers and megaphone wielders, despite the grave threat to public security and societal harmony that they apparently pose.

Funny that.

The censorship of history in Singapore: a response

2010-06-02T19:36:00.000+08:00

My blog post about Singapore's National Library Board preventing a former political detainee from speaking at a history seminar prompted a heated debate in the comments and a response from fellow Asian Correspondent blogger Clement Tan, with whom I have locked horns in the past.

I'd like to respond to a few of their points in light of the carefully worded statement released by the NLB, which has been published in full on Ravi Philemon's blog.

The NLB's communications director Amy Gay says that the inclusion of ex-detainee Vincent Cheng in the line-up of speakers for the National University of Singapore History Society seminar "was not consistent with the direction of the initial proposed line-up, of academics".

The NLB, she says, had originally agreed to host the seminar, entitled "Singapore's History: Who Writes the Script?", because it was in line with the organisation's focus on exploring "the role of key movers in Singapore's growth from a fishing village into a modern nation".

Although her language is oblique, she seems to be saying that it is ok for certain Singaporean academics to talk about alternative histories but not former political detainees.

The clear implication is that Singapore's national library reserves the right to vet speakers at any events held there according to how closely they stick to the official historical narrative.

This is not so much the nation-building role outlined for the city-state's educational institutions by the Peoples Action Party-led government but a partisan, political party-building one.

The naysayers, like commenter Autolycus, attempt to dismiss my claim that academic freedom is regularly threatened in Singapore by pointing out that some critical books about Singapore are on sale in the city-state's bookshops.

But one act of academic censorship (and there have been many similar incidents over the last decade) has a much more damaging impact on the quality (and quantity) of public discourse than allowing one particular critical book to be sold.

The regular, overt attempts to restrict public debate in Singapore have a chilling effect, with academics, journalists, social activists and ordinary citizens fearful of the consequences of openly debating political issues even loosely related to the legitimacy and/or performance of the PAP-led government.

The NLB's actions send a signal to students, academics and others interested in history that certain subjects ought to remain off limits. Unfortunately there is no clear signal about where exactly these red lines (or "out-of-bounds markers", as they are often dubbed in Singapore) are drawn so ambitious Singaporean academics (or those who want to ensure that they can get a job) invariably give even vaguely sensitive issues a wide berth.

As for Clement Tan, he says that I seem to "to imply that ALL Singaporeans are incapable of critical history". I did nothing of the sort.

The problem is not with Singaporeans' mental capacity (which I don't doubt) but with the state-run institutions that have persistently made it clear that debates about history are to be restricted in order to leave the "nation-building" official narrative intact.

I totally agree with Clement that taking a critical approach to Singaporean history does not have to mean being critical of the PAP - it goes without saying that the PAP and Lee Kuan Yew have accomplished a great deal.

But the fact is that, for whatever reasons, the PAP government and its civil servants fear a genuine, open debate about Singapore's history.

At the same time, they are well aware that using soft repression to ensure a climate of self-censorship is much more effective and less likely to attract attention and adverse publicity than banning books.

Quote of the week: The lawmakers who make no laws

2010-05-29T17:11:00.000+08:00

“It is pretty hard to tell lawmakers to do their job of legislating these days.”

Ignatius Mulyono, chairman of the committee charged with steering legislation through Indonesia's House of Representatives (DPR), which has passed no bills this year and has had to slash its target of 70 new laws this year to just 17. (As quoted by the Jakarta Globe.)

Since the legislative elections last April, the DPR has focused on politicking rather than policy making, with much time taken up by the politically-motivated inquiry into the bailout of Bank Century, a small lender, in 2008.

Analysts say that the lack of legislative progress in the DPR should not necessarily hold up the reform agenda as many of the most important institutional reforms can be implemented through the executive power of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his Cabinet.

Painful history: Academic freedom receives another blow in Singapore

2010-05-28T14:25:00.000+08:00

In a review of a new book on Singapore that I penned in March, I argued that Singapore's historical narrative had for too long been dominated by the People's Action Party and its chief figurehead Lee Kuan Yew because of direct and indirect control by the state over schools, universities and the mass media.

That view was sharply challenged by Ong Weichong, an associate research fellow at Singapore's S Rajaratnam School of International Studies, in an RSIS commentary (PDF here).

I intend to respond to his article in greater depth at a later date. His key argument was that the reason for a lack of alternative histories in Singapore was not state domination but disinterest among kids, who would rather play PlayStation games than buy history books.

"While there is a certain quality of truth to Bland's assertions on the state of historical awareness in Singapore, the main cause is not the 'government's hegemonic control over the school curriculum, universities and the mass media' as suggested by Bland, but the lack of historical empathy of many a young Singaporean."

Well, I wonder what Weichong makes of the news that Vincent Cheng, a former political detainee in Singapore, has been prevented from speaking at a seminar run by the History Society of the National University of Singapore entitled "Singapore's History: Who Writes the Script?".

In a posting on the society's Facebook page, its president Bernard Chen suggests that the National Library Board, which is hosting the seminar, blocked Cheng from speaking. The event is scheduled to go ahead without him.

How revealing that someone like Cheng, who was detained in a 1987 roundup of supposed Marxist conspirators, be prevented from talking at an academic seminar designed to examine "the repercussions of alternative narratives on the nation-building process in Singapore today".

There's no word yet from the National Library Board on why it blocked Cheng but it's more likely to be the result of action by some nervous mid-level civil servant than high-level government interference.

This kind of institutional self-censorship, which is a direct result of overt censorship by the government, is a regular feature of academic life and the wider public discourse in Singapore. (For more on this see James Gomez's book Self Censorship: Singapore's Shame, which can be downloaded free here.)

To go back to Weichong's argument, the problem is not so much the lack of enthusiasm for history, as demonstrated by the NUS students' plan to hold this forum, but a desire by the state and its actors to close down or restrict alternative views of history in order to enhance their legitmacy.

Hat-tip to blogger and film-maker Martyn See, who broke the story.

It's what's on the inside that counts: a review of Singapore's casinos

2010-05-27T13:31:00.000+08:00

Having closely followed the build-up to the launch of Singapore's casinos, it was good to finally check them out last week.

The scale of both casino resorts - Resorts World Sentosa and Marina Bay Sands - was impressive, with the triple-towered MBS dominating the skyline of downtown Singapore.

The interior of both casinos was rather less impressive, with construction work still ongoing at MBS and teething problems at both venues.

With both projects running behind behind schedule, it seems as if the casino operators (American gambling tycoon Sheldon Adelson's Las Vegas Sands and Malaysia's Genting) were desperate to throw open the doors and start raking in the cash as soon as possible.

I think some of the staff could have done with a bit more practice before being unleashed on the public.

At a number of different blackjack tables in both casinos, young Singaporean dealers regularly fluffed the deal and screwed up the pay-out - major casino faux pas. When ordinary people are losing hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes, they expect good service.

Although indoor smoking is banned in public places in Singapore, both casinos were given exceptions by the Singapore government after concerted lobbying - the casino operators feared that if people had to go outside into the real world for a smoke they might think twice about coming back and losing more money.

The smoking area in Resorts World was a real den of iniquity, packed with chain-smoking Chinese gamblers pumping the slot machines and electronic roulette consoles with reckless abandon. Although the stench of smoke made the air almost unbreathable, some hardy and presumably not very well-off gamblers were sleeping in the room, ensuring that they didn't waste their hard-earned cash on such unnecessary frills as hotel rooms. An armed security officer stood guard just outside the smoking room, keeping the tobacco-addicted riff raff in check.

Like any casino, it all felt a bit seedy. But, once all the other facilities at both venues are fully open, perhaps they will feel more like "integrated resorts", as the government likes to call them.

If Singapore can pull off this grand experiment, boosting the coffers by legalising casino gambling without stirring up major social problems, other Asian governments are likely to sit up and take notice.

Vietnam is already building its first mega-casino at the Ho Tram strip, Taiwan has been debating legalising casinos and pressure is also growing in Japan for a similar move.

Just imagine how much money a casino in Jakarta could make.

For more on the casino issue, check out my latest story for Monocle.

Britain did not give aid to Singapore

2010-05-26T13:11:00.000+08:00

A recent story in The Daily Telegraph suggesting that the UK's Department for International Development had given £8.7m in aid to Singapore over the last five years caused a bit of a stir. Particularly after it was picked up by The Online Citizen, an alternative news website in Singapore.

The piece by Andrew Gilligan, headlined "Did Britain really need to give millions to the wealthy state of Singapore?", argued that the new government should abandon its pledge not to cut the overseas aid budget.

He argued that DFID needed a critical examination of its spending, some of which had been wasteful, including the £8.7m supposedly given to Singapore and £40.2m given to China.

Like Gilligan, I was bemused by the suggestion that Britain had given aid to prosperous Singapore. So I checked out the official DFID stats, which do, indeed, show £8.7m given to Singapore over the last five years. (For the official stats, go here and then download table 14.3 - h/t friend and development blogger Francis Bacon.)

But Gilligan should have dug a little deeper.

The above-mentioned table reveals that the bulk of the £8.7m was composed of £8.511m of "aid from other official UK sources" spent in 2005/06.

I checked in with DFID and the British High Commission in Singapore who told me that this £8.5m was not aid for Singapore but was in fact an investment in a developing country business by CDC, the UK government-owned development fund, through a Singapore-based fund.

The rest of the apparent aid to Singapore related to pensions paid to civil servants in Singapore. Press officers at the High Commission and DFID said that "no DFID aid money is currently spent in Singapore".

So it was all a fuss over nothing.

Western-style leadership gets the thumbs down in Indonesia

2010-05-24T16:11:00.000+08:00

I met a contact today who suggested that the pace of reform in Indonesia is dependent on the ongoing clash of mindsets between Western-style politicians and more traditional, Javanese leaders.

Often educated in the West, the first set of politicians tend to have clear policy aims, a strong belief that you win the argument first and the support will follow and a knack for political communication and marketing.

The latter group, often educated in Indonesia, typically prefer to promote unity over confrontation, building political support bases before pushing policy programmes and progressing with great caution.

While this simplified breakdown of the complex Indonesian political landscape is not unproblematic, it is interesting to note that the recent weeks have not been good for the Western-style politicians.

First Sri Mulyani Indrawati, the highly-rated finance minister, announced she was stepping down, following intense pressure from vested political and business interests who were unhappy with her reforming zeal.

Then yesterday, Andi Mallarangeng, the sports and youth affairs minister, suffered a humiliating defeat in the election for the chairmanship of president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's Democrat Party.

Both Sri Mulyani and Andi are reformers who undertook postgraduate education in the US, speak good English and would not seem out of place in many Western cabinets. Andi spent significant amounts of money on posters, TV adverts and a wider media campaign but lost out to Anas Urbaningrum, a more traditional Javanese politician who spent his campaign ingratiating himself with the various regional party chiefs.

The Javanese Yudhoyono, who put Sri Mulyani in the finance ministry and employed Andi as his first-term spokesman, clearly appreciates the pair's results-oriented political approach. But he evidently is not keen to back them at the risk of fomenting political discord.

Inside Indonesia's strange model town: Lippo Karawaci

2010-05-23T22:13:00.000+08:00

Jakarta is a disjointed, sprawling mess like many large cities in developing Asia. In the main business district, skyscrapers back onto fetid rivers of sewage and crumbling kampungs. There are few real enclaves and even the well-to-do have to put up with potholes and pollution.

One of the few places where you can escape the urban planning nightmare is Lippo Karawaci, a model town 30 minutes drive (in good traffic) west of central Jakarta.

Built by the Riady family conglomerate, Lippo Group, it is meant to provide a slice of Singapore-style living within reach of Jakarta, with clean streets, pedestrian crossings and no hawkers or motorbike taxis.

I went there today for the first time. Walking down the main street, lined with trees and a succession of open-air eateries and cafes, it feels more like a theme park than an Indonesian town.

The architecture is bizarre to say the least, with the Riady's University of Pelita Harapan looking like (and doubling as) a motor racing pit building and the monstrous Amartapura condominium towers dominating the skyline.

The influence of the evangelical Christianity of James Riady, son of the Lippo Group's founder Mochtar, is everywhere. American-style digital signboards distract drivers with religious messages and the Riady-owned Times bookshop in the centre of town, billed as one of the biggest in Indonesia, is full of dire, religious literature.

If this is what passes for urban planning in Indonesia, I think I prefer the chaos and sprawl.

Jakarta airport's twin-track immigration process

2010-05-21T23:31:00.000+08:00

As this Jakarta Globe story suggests, Jakarta's creaking Soekarno-Hatta International Airport is sorely in need of an overhaul.

I was reminded of the dire state of the airport while waiting in the interminably-long immigration queue after arriving back from Singapore earlier this week.

While I was resigned to my fate, a couple of Singaporean business types behind me grew increasingly frustrated, particularly once the queuing time had surpassed the flight time.

I was rather surprised by their predicament as Singaporeans, like other Asian businesspeople, normally know how to play the system in countries like Indonesia where, as one friend puts it, "anything is possible".

If you don't like queuing - or having your passport or baggage inspected too closely - all you need to do is retain the services one of the helpful "fixers" based at the airport.

For a very reasonable fee, part of which is passed on to an immigration official in a side room, they will whisk you through passport control and customs quicker than you can say "Commercially Important Person".

You can view this in two ways. Some would say that such opportunities for lucrative backhanders (the fixers presumably have to pay off the airport management as well) mean there is little incentive to smooth the process. Or, conversely, you can simply admire the efficiency guaranteed by a little bit of baksheesh.

First time journey to Pyongyang

2010-05-13T21:16:00.000+08:00

Last night, I made the tortuous journey to Pyongyang for the first time. It was, as expected, a very strange place.

But I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the food, the elegance of the women and the total lack of pictures of Kim Jong-il.

In case you're wondering how I'm managing to write this blog in a country that is completely isolated from the rest of the world, I ought to point out that I went to Pyongyang the North Korean restaurant in Jakarta, rather than the North Korean capital city.

Located off a non-descript main road in South Jakarta, it is an odd little place. The waitresses, who were trained in a North Korean hospitality academy, all wore elaborate traditional, red dresses, were heavily made-up and extremely polite. They didn't speak much English but it was a good opportunity to practice my Bahasa with fellow non-native speakers.

Disappointingly, there were no pictures of the Dear Leader on display, just a few tacky landscape paintings and some karaoke TVs. The clientele seemed to be mostly composed of South Korean businessmen.

The waitresses, who said they had three-year contracts in Jakarta, occasionally broke into song, chirping along merrily to such delights as Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On.

Presumably such morally-bankrupt capitalist running dog passtimes are hard to come by in the grit of the real Pyongyang. At the end of the evening, once the staff had encouraged my friends and I to leave, the dolled-up waitresses promptly disappeared up a staircase.

Given the supremely paranoid nature of the North Korean regime and its acolytes, some of my friends wondered if these women were ever let out.

This recent review in the Jakarta Globe (where I used to work) suggested that the restaurant was owned by an official from the North Korean Embassy.

If that's true, I hope my hard currency (yes, I mean the rupiah) somehow finds its way back to help the crumbling North Korean economy. At over Rp 200,000 ($22) a head, the meal certainly wasn't cheap.

Still, the food was tasty and well-presented, which got one of my co-diners thinking that perhaps Kim Jong-il has been approaching diplomacy from the wrong angle.

Instead of sinking South Korean ships and threatening a second nuclear war, why not just open up a chain of North Korean restaurants all over the world? That would surely win over the West.

Family values reign in Chinese, Indonesian civil services

2010-05-12T14:43:00.000+08:00

At a recent lunch, I found out that Indonesian civil servants still have to present their prospective spouse to their boss and ask for permission before they can get married.

Like many of the stranger aspects of the Indonesian bureaucracy, it's a hangover from the Suharto era, when military and civil service wives wielded significant influence and had to be vetted before they could join the gang of kleptocrats.

Apparently, approval is mostly a formality these days.

Meanwhile, a Chinese diplomat explained that Foreign Ministry officials are prevented from marrying foreigners while on posting. To do so is an immediate sackable offence.

I suspect this policy is upheld due to a fear of espionage and some lingering sense of racial superiority.

It suggests that Chinese diplomats are rather less interested than some of their counterparts in spreading soft power.

But no-one said anything about mistresses.

Former spokesman eyes 2014 presidential race in Indonesia

2010-05-10T18:43:00.000+08:00

In Indonesia, as in every good democracy, the positioning for the next election starts shortly after the last set of polls has closed.

With President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono obliged to step down in 2014 after two terms, Andi Mallarangeng, his former spokesman, has fired the starting gun in the race to replace him as the Democrat Party's presidential candidate.

Andi, who was promoted to Youth and Sports Minister by Yudhoyono after last year's election, is currently running for the chairmanship of the Democrat Party but has hinted that his ambitions go much higher.

At a meeting of the Jakarta Foreign Correspondents' Club on Wednesday, Andi was asked why, given that the Democrat chairman is elected by a small group of party cadres, he had been spending large amounts on posters and TV adverts. (Images that, incidentally, mimic the famous Barack Obama "Hope" poster created by US artist Shepard Fairey.)

His response was that of a pro. "I'm running for chairman of Partai Demokrat full stop." Only he didn't stop there, adding with a glint in his eye:

"In due time, Partai Demokrat will nominate a presidential candidate for 2014. Any cadres of Partai Demokrat will be eligible to be nominated and we will support them to win the election. It could be anyone within the party. It could be the chairman."

Andi also set out his stall as a centrist on political and economic issues, arguing that Indonesia faced an ongoing to struggle to keep extremists at bay and ensure the country remained a pluralistic society.

Although Andi is close to the president and has the backing of his son Edhie, he faces tough competition in the battle to secure the party chairmanship from House of Representatives speaker Marzuki Alie and Anas Urbaningrum, who heads the party faction in the House. The contest will be concluded at the party conference in Bandung later this month.

As for the presidential race, it is, of course, extremely early days.

The dark side of southeast Asia's street food

2010-05-09T20:15:00.000+08:00

From steaming hot bowls of pho bo in Hanoi to spicy roti canai in KL and freshly-grilled sate in Jakarta, it's a sheer delight eating your way around the street food of Southeast Asia.

But street food can often deliver a few nasty surprises to the digestive system, especially for us lily-livered expatriates. (Many locals have immunity to the most commonplace bacteria and parasites but poor food hygiene can still be a serious problem, especially for children).

So I was disturbed, if not surprised, to see a report on the VietnamNet news website that over 70 percent of the restaurants and food stalls in Ho Chi Minh City are serving raw vegetables infested with parasites such as worms.

Researchers from Pham Ngoc Thach Medical University took samples of vegetables from 50 restaurants and 50 street stalls and found that 72 percent were contaminated.

Hygiene at street stalls, which lack running water and fridges, was much worse, according to the report. The samples taken from street stalls were 2.4 times more likely to be infested than those from restaurants.

It's almost enough to put you off your dinner. But I'm hungry and there's a cheap and tasty warung down the road that serves great lamb sate.

Democracy is the only clear winner from Britain's election

2010-05-07T13:49:00.000+08:00

Having gone to bed at 3am Jakarta time (9pm London), shortly before the polls closed in the UK, and woken up at 6am Jakarta, as the first results came in, it's been a joy to watch the outcome of the election slowly unfold, nothwithstanding my crappy internet connection and persistent attacks from mosquitos.

With most of the constituencies having reported, it appears that the Conservatives will now be the biggest party in Parliament but without an overall majority. Meanwhile, despite losing many seats, it seems that the ruling Labour Party may be able to stay in government if it can form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, the third party.

It is far from obvious who will form the next government. But what is clear is that the whole election process has demonstrated the strength of democracy and the vitality of a system where power resides with the people, if only, as Rousseau noted, at election time.

The peculiarities of the British system mean that while the aggregated will of the electorate has opted for a hung Parliament, it is now the political parties who will decide the make-up of the next government, with a fair amount of shady backroom dealing likely to be at the heart of any agreed coalition.

Still, it's undeniable that the political theatre of an overwhelmingly free and fair election both demonstrates the power of democracy and reinforces it, particularly in a country where voter apathy seemed in danger of becoming the norm.

For the latest results, see BBC News election site here.

Some worrying early signs for Singapore's casinos

2010-05-06T11:52:00.000+08:00

Singapore's two casinos have succeeded in attracting a lot of publicity and hundreds of thousands of punters in their first few weeks.

But there appear to be some worrying early signs.

I set out previously how the Singapore government was taking a "double bet" by legalising casino gambling, wagering that:

1. The Marina Bay Sands and Resorts World Sentosa casinos will be able recoup their massive investments (over $10bn in total) AND

2. The casinos can thrive financially without leading to untoward social consequences (prostitution, organised crime, addiction, etc)

Well, according to initial soundings by some analysts and a report in today's government-controlled Straits Times, they may have a problem on both counts.

Citing a number of analysts, the Straits Times claims that the bulk of the gamblers at the two casinos are Singaporean citizens and permanent residents, who have to pay a S$100 ($72) daily or S$2,000 ($1,435) annual levy to play the tables.

This represents a potential financial concern because analysts believe the local players are mostly gambling relatively small amounts. The casinos need to attract the likes of the big betting Chinese officials and businessmen who flock to Macau, even if strict Singapore regulations have made it difficult for them to bring in these high rollers.

It also points to a possible increase in social problems down the line. The government vision for the casions was that they would service mostly foreign players in order to limit the damage on Singaporean society - hence the rather high entry levies for locals.

That does not appear to be happening yet and if the predominance of local players persists, it will be harder for the government to justify its decision to legalise casinos that are effectively transferring Singaporeans' hard-earned savings into the hands of a Las Vegas casino magnate (MBS' ultimate owner Sheldon Adelson) and a Malaysian gambling group (Resorts World owner Genting).

Having said all that, it is still early days. The locals' fascination with the casinos may wear off and it may take time for the casinos' VIP marketing efforts to take effect.

The mystery of Indonesia's departing finance minister

2010-05-05T17:27:00.000+08:00

Indonesia has been shaken today by the unexpected news that Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati is stepping down to become one of three manging directors of the World Bank.

Sri Mulyani was a key driver of reform in President Suslio Bambang Yudhoyono's cabinet and many international investors believe she helped to shepherd Indonesia through the global crisis unscathed.

However, her position had come under intense political pressure because of her backing for the $730m bailout of a small collapsed bank, Bank Century, in 2008. Her opponents charged that the bailout was illegal and alleged (with scant evidence) that Sri Mulyani and/or the president made some personal financial gain out of it.

Sri Mulyani has insisted that the bailout was driven by a desire to avoid financial contagion and that dark political forces were militating against her (i.e. Aburizal Bakrie, one of Indonesia's richest businessmen and the chairman of the opposition Golkar Party, who also happens to be involved in a messy tax dispute with Sri Mulyani's ministry).

Yet just when it seemed that Yudhonoyo, who has a strong preference for back-room compromises over open political bunfights, was willing to stand by his woman, she has gone.

The key question is whether she is leaving the finance ministry as a sacrificial lamb to assuage Bakrie and Golkar or whether she has just had enough of the endless political backbiting.

The Indonesian stock market, which has hit record levels over the last month, fell 3 percent earlier today because of concern about the loss of Sri Mulyani.

Certainly, businessmen I spoke to today were disappointed that she is leaving and worried that the search for her replacement could drag on for months and/or that an inept political appointee may be brought in rather than another reformist technocrat.

But I suspect that these initial fears will ebb away as investors realise that the strengths of the Indonesian economy and the continuation of the slow but steady reform agenda are about much more than one individual.

After all, Indonesia has been without a central bank chief since May last year, when the then governor Boediono stepped down to run for Vice President, and no-one seems to have minded, judging from the record stock market rally and the gathering strength of the rupiah.

British TV debates making waves in Southeast Asia

2010-04-30T20:22:00.000+08:00

Although the United States has been holding Presidential TV debates for years, the stunning impact of the first-ever televised debates between Britain's three main political leaders has not gone unnoticed here in Southeast Asia.

Britain's third party, the Liberal Democrats, has long struggled to get its message out, with the two main parties, Labour and the Conservatives, dominating media coverage of politics. But the TV debates, in which Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg was given equal billing to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron, have unexpectedly propelled the Lib Dems ahead of Labour in the polls.

Some political observers in Singapore and Malaysia, where opposition parties find it nigh on impossible to get any fair coverage in the largely government-controlled media, have taken notice of the seemingly levelling effect of the UK TV debates.

In Singapore, a Facebook group has been set up calling for a live TV debate to be held during the next general election, due by early 2012. The founder of the group, which has attracted 837 members so far, says:

I am sure ALL of us will agree that if we had a live TV debate between party leaders in Singapore, it would allow the electorate to question party policies in a way never before seen in Singapore and thus help and improve the chances of an informed voting decision.

Let us push for this! Be patriotic, Get Involved in Politics!

The Temasek Review website also carries a commentary that suggests that Singaporeans want a televised debate. "The proposed TV debate would reach out to a far larger audience and put all the rhetoric of the campaign trail into sharp focus," says writer Lee Seck Kay. "What the parties stand for, their thoughts on the road ahead for Singapore, and their views on issues such as the cost of living, health-care costs, the ageing population and national assets would all provide the basis for the voters’ decision on Polling Day."

Meanwhile, Malaysian politician Khairy Jamaluddin, the head of the youth wing of the United Malays National Organisation and a relative voice of reason within the ruling party, urged readers of his Twitter feed to watch the first debate.

"Sad political junkies should watch the UK election debate on YouTube," he said. "90mins that may have broken the duopoly that is UK politics."

I asked Khairy if he thought Malaysia should also hold TV debates during the next general election, which some analysts believe could be as early as next year, and he seemed keen.

"I would support such a proposal," he told me, via Twitter.

Whether his boss, Prime Minister Najib Razak, and the senior UMNO warlords would back such a move is somewhat doubtful, given their general lack of enthusiasm for a free press.

And, in any case, Najib's likely opponent, Anwar Ibrahim, is facing questionable sodomy charges again and may well be behind bars by the time of the next election. That would make the logistics of a TV debate difficult to say the least.

As for Singapore, the government wants people to "cool off" politics rather then get enthused. It would be great to see Lee Kuan Yew go up against Chee Soon Juan, the oft-jailed leader of the Singapore Democratic Party, live on TV (they've already had an entertaining run-in in court). But the chance of it happening is a big fat zero.

UN envoy's Singapore visit ends in row

2010-04-29T19:17:00.000+08:00

I was somewhat surprised when I discovered earlier this month that the Singapore government had agreed to let the UN's racism envoy conduct a week-long fact-finding visit to the city-state.

The ultra-sensitive government usually refuses to engage with human rights organisations. But with the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy having persuaded former UN secretary general Kofi Annan to take up a professorship in Singapore, perhaps the government felt under some pressure to appear more open to the UN.

In any case, Singapore actually has a decent record on fostering good race relations, particularly compared to neighbours Malaysia and Indonesia. So the government probably hoped that Githu Muigai, the UN's special rapporteur on racism, would come along and give them a pat on the back.

The government-owned TV station Channel News Asia certainly expected so, publishing a story on April 21, the day of Muigai's arrival in Singapore, headlined "UN Special Rapporteur to get better understanding of ethnic harmony". The cloying intro to the story read: "A United Nations representative is in Singapore to get a better understanding of how the various ethnic communities live together and the pillars of nation-building."

But, contrary to official Singaporean expectations, Muigai used his week in Singapore to do some proper research rather than mere glad-handing, meeting civil society acitivists as well as officials.

He concluded that while peaceful co-existence of the different ethnic groups in Singapore - Chinese, Malay and Indian - was a "remarkable achievement", there were a number of "blind spots" in the government's policies, which have "further marginalized certain ethnic groups". (His press statement is online here.)

Specifically he took the government to task for:

Limiting free speech when it comes to discussing racial issues

Perpetuating racial stereotypes through the excessive use of racial categorisation (e.g. on state ID cards)

Failing to do enough to address the persistent underperformance of Malay students at school

Failing to properly protect migrant workers' human rights and allowing a "dire" situation to develop

He warned: "This is a situation that must be acknowledged and acted upon in order to safeguard the stability, sustainability and prosperity of Singapore."

The government seemed rather taken aback by his forthright comments and the Foreign Ministry rushed out a statement rebutting Mugai's key points.

The ministry said it was "surprised" by Muigai's call for more to be done to help the Malay community given that affirmative action "has been tried by many countries without notable success".

It said it "emphatically" disagreed with Muigai's suggestion that restrictions on free speech be lifted. "This balance is only for the Singapore government to determine because only the Singapore government bears the responsibility should things go wrong," it said. "The UN bears no such responsibility and we see no reason to take risks for the sake of an abstract principle."

The ministry also outlined a number of "factual errors in Mr Muigai's press release that need immediate correction."

All in all, it's the kind of public diplomatic spat that Singapore tries desperately to avoid. I suspect it will be a while before the next UN human rights fact-finding team is invited to town.

Singapore and the perils of political domination

2010-04-27T12:13:00.000+08:00

How do you encourage more alternative voices in politically staid Singapore? If you were to ask one of Singapore's small band of civil society activists and opposition politicians, they would probably tell you the key was ending censorship of the media (direct and indirect), relaxing wide-ranging restrictions on political activity and making the city-state's electoral system more fair.

But the ruling People's Action Party (PAP), which seems to have accepted that some Singaporeans are becoming digruntled with its near-total domination of politics and public discourse, has another solution: more gerrymandering.

The government has proposed legislation to increase the minimum number of opposition voices in Singapore's parliament - where 82 of the 85 voting MPs are from the PAP - from three to nine.

If at least nine opposition MPs are not returned at the next election, due by early 2012, the government will make up the numbers by appointing some of the best-losing opposition candidates as "Non-Constituency MPs" (NCMPs).

But, as this Asia Sentinel analysis points out, these NCMPs have watered-down powers (they can't vote on constitutional matters, motions of no confidence or issues relating to public funds) and no physical constituency in which to build a public support base.

The expanded NCMP system thus appears designed to undermine a legitimate political opposition while heading off calls for a broader public discourse.

The PAP has shown itself adept at using the tools of soft authoritarianism to dilute criticism and maintain its hegemonic position. The tinkering to the political system seems to have been stepped up ahead of the next election, suggesting that the PAP is concerned about its overwhelming support starting to ebb away.

Alongside the NCMP changes, the government has introduced a "cooling-off" day before the election that will further weaken the opposition (it doesn't apply to the state-controlled media) and brought in a new public order act that allows the police to disburse even one-man protests and activists handing out leaflets.

Although there are no opinion polls in Singapore, judging by the number of people who go to opposition meetings or read alternative websites, it does not appear that support for Singapore's small opposition parties has increased significantly over the last few years. And with compulsory voting, the PAP does not need to fear voter disengagement.

So it's hard to see what the PAP is afraid of. Except that the paradox of hegemonic rule is that it often breeds paranoia. Those who seek to rule by fear end up living in fear.

Singapore opposition politician sells flat to contest election

2010-04-22T17:15:00.000+08:00

For a large variety of reasons, the small band of opposition politicians in Singapore face an uphill battle to win seats in Parliament.

So credit to Goh Meng Seng, the leader of the small National Solidarity Party, who is selling his apartment to raise funds for his election campaign.

As Goh puts it in a note to blogger and activist Tan Kin Lian: "freedom is not free".

"I think the most important thing is for people to realize that politics is about public service," he continues. "Not just opposition politics, but it is expected of the ruling party politicians as well. Public service may mean sacrifices on both financial as well as family time."

Goh suggests that this is an all-or-nothing election for him. If he fails to get elected, he will leave Singapore (see The Online Citizen for a further interview with Goh).

Singapore's next general election is due by early 2012 but some observers believe the government may go to the polls before then to capitalise on the strong economic recovery.

Politics is always an expensive business but, in Singapore, the risk of failure is particularly high.

The challenges faced by opposition politicians seeking elected office include: government control over the mainstream media, government control of the main grassroots organisation, compulsory voting in a climate of fear about the consequences of not backing the ruling party, the S$14,000 deposit, the risks of libel action for criticising the government in election material, etc.

There's also the small matter of the strong level of genuine support for the PAP, which makes it very difficult for opposition parties to generate any momentum.

UN Singapore human rights visit: you read it here first

2010-04-20T11:11:00.000+08:00

If you're a consumer of Singapore's government-linked media - the Straits Times or Channel News Asia - you will have read today that the UN's special rapporteur on racism will begin a one-week official visit this week.

Regular readers of this blog will have picked up this information just over two weeks ago.

APCO Worldwide, Malaysia and the wages of spin

2010-04-14T16:23:00.000+08:00

At a Jakarta Foreign Correspondents' Club briefing earlier today, John Arnold, the Indonesia head of spin merchants APCO Worldwide, asked Mari Elka Pangestu, Indonesia's trade minister, what the country could do to improve its poor international image.

The answer he presumably wanted to hear was that Indonesia would take on an international PR firm to dispel some of the damaging myths about the country and promote its attractions as a tourism and investment destination to the wider world.

Indonesia, which gets far fewer tourists than much smaller neighbours Malaysia and Singapore, could surely do with a good international branding campaign and tourism slogan (Malaysia: Truly Asia has certainly worked wonders).

But the government may balk at the likely cost of such assistance. After persistent questioning from Malaysia's opposition, the Malaysian government has finally revealed that it will pay APCO 76.8 million ringgit ($24 million) for one year of public relations consultancy - more than double what the government originally suggested it was paying.

That's a staggering amount for a developing country to pay for PR advice and it's no surprise that Malaysia's opposition parties are looking to make political capital out of the revelation.

Simon Cowell, who gets far more press attention globally than Malaysia, reportedly only pays £250,000 ($385,000) a year to retain the services of Max Clifford, one of Britain's leading PR advisers.

Seriously though, Malaysia does need to engage with the Western world if it is to restart its stuttering economy. And international PR/lobbying firms can help to open some doors and improve general perceptions.

But, having spent such a large chunk of state cash, the onus will now be on the Malaysian government to justify that it was money well spent.

Britain encourages Vietnamese lawmakers to engage online

2010-04-13T17:38:00.000+08:00

While America has been warning the Vietnamese government that continuing human rights abuses may harm trade ties, British diplomats prefer a more subtle approach to democratisation.

The British embassy in Hanoi, led by blogging ambassador Mark Kent, has provided £30,000 of funding to launch a new website designed to allow Vietnamese constituents to quiz their deputies to the National Assembly.

The site is all in Vietnamese so it'll take me a dictionary and some time to work out whether the initiative is succeeding in promoting "engagement" between Communist party delegates and their people. Alternatively, I may just ask a Vietnamese friend to give me an opinion.

In the video below, Mark says the project is aimed at promoting "transparency and accountability" within the one-party Vietnamese system - a system, lest we forget, that has detained and/or jailed nearly 20 bloggers and journalists over the last year or so.

It's easy to scoff at this softly, softly approach. But it's evident that the Vietnamese government does not respond positively to threats or overt criticism of the recent US variety.

Singapore threatens retaliation over Romanian diplomat hit-and-run

2010-04-09T18:10:00.000+08:00

Singapore has issued an arrest warrant for Silviu Ionescu, the former Romanian charge d'affaires, over a hit-and-run incident that left one man dead at the end of last year.

Ionescu, who has been suspended from his duties by the Romanian foreign ministry, fled Singapore after the incident and is now back in Romania, which does not have an extradition treaty with Singapore.

In a strongly-worded statement (at least in diplomatic terms), Singapore's foreign ministry said the Romanian government had "a clear moral obligation to do all it could to persuade Dr Ionescu to come back to Singapore to stand trial".

The Singapore foreign ministry has lodged a "strong protest" over comments made by Ionescu about the integrity of the Singapore legal system and said the Romanian government had a "strong obligation to ensure that Dr Ionescu refrained from making outrageous and inappropriate statements," which "damaged Romania's reputation".

The statement ends with a terse warning of "consequences for bilateral relations" if the Romanian government does not do its utmost to ensure that Ionescu faces justice.

MFA cautioned Ambassador Neagu that Romania should not underestimate the depth of feelings that had been aroused in Singapore over the case. Questions had been asked in Parliament. The Romanian Government must in its own interests ensure that justice was served and seen to be served. Otherwise, there would inevitably be consequences for bilateral relations.

Life before Lee: When Singapore had a history

2010-04-09T17:07:00.000+08:00

The history of Singapore has not received the level of investigation and coverage that it surely deserves. Not least in Singapore, where a dry, semi-official historical narrative focused on Lee Kuan Yew and the ruling People's Action Party predominates.

But a new book published by the National Museum of Singapore - Singapore: A Biography by Mark Ravinder Frost & Yu-Mei Balasingamchow - seeks to change that, albeit in a subtle way. I've reviewed it for the latest edition of the Global Asia journal. Here's an extract:

Every authoritarian government worth its salt understands the importance of commanding the national historical narrative. It is a concept that was perhaps best encapsulated by George Orwell in his classic dystopian novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future, who controls the present controls the past.”

Countless one-party states and banana republics have banned books, banished professors and pumped propaganda into the education system. But few have managed so successfully to stamp their imprint on their nation’s history as Singapore’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, and his ruling People’s Action Party (PAP).

Just as Lee dubbed his two-part memoirs The Singapore Story, so many Singaporeans perceive their own history to be little more than the Lee Kuan Yew story, with a bit of Sir Stamford Raffles thrown in for good measure.

The well-rehearsed official narrative tells of a Singapore that was little more than a sleepy fishing village until Raffles, a representative of the East India Company, arrived in 1819 and planted the British flag there. Raffles built Singapore into a successful trading outpost, but the vast majority of its people remained disenfranchised and mired in poverty until Lee took control amid the social and political turbulence that buffeted the city after the Second World War. Lee then dragged the people of Singapore, initially kicking and screaming, “from third world to first,” as he himself puts it in the sub-title of the second volume of his memoirs.

Given the government’s hegemonic control over the school curriculum, universities and the mass media — and its belief that these institutions must perform a “nation-building” function — this narrative has become deeply entrenched and gone largely unchallenged.

But a new book, Singapore: A Biography, makes a concerted if subtle attempt to wrest Singapore’s historical memory from Lee Kuan Yew’s unyielding grip. Turning the state-sanctioned timeline on its head, the authors begin their study of the island in the 14th century and draw it to a close in 1965, shortly after Lee’s accession to power. There are not many books about Singapore where the first mention of Lee comes on page 327.

The authors, Hong Kong-based academic Mark Ravinder Frost and Singaporean writer Yu-Mei Balasingamchow, delve into Singapore’s distant and little-known past in an attempt to challenge the orthodoxy that the Southeast Asian island was a stagnant backwater before it was pulled up by the PAP.

Self-consciously following in the footsteps of historian Simon Schama — who believes history should “bring a world to life, rather than entomb it in erudite discourse” — the authors draw vivid portraits of a Singapore shaped by pirates, prostitutes and prima donnas as well as the usual cast of colonial officials and Chinese businessmen.

Much history is invariably written by the victors, but Frost and Balasingamchow try to draw attention to the underdogs and their vital contribution to Singapore’s cultural, economic and political development: the Indian convict laborers who built some of the city’s better-known colonial edifices such as the former Government House (the present-day Istana or president’s residence) and St Andrew’s Cathedral, the opium-sustained Chinese coolies who kept Singapore’s people and goods moving and the Japanese prostitutes who serviced a population dominated by single men away from their families, whether they were colonial officials or rickshaw-pullers.

Continue reading at the Global Asia website.

New light at the end of the Myanmar tunnel

2010-04-06T17:18:00.000+08:00

It's occasionally entertaining (and equally depressing) to take a look at the New Light of Myanmar, the junta's official English-language newspaper.

You can enjoy the political slogans that are strategically positioned throughout the paper in pull-out boxes with titles like "People's Desire" and "Four Social Objectives".

These slogans urge the people to "oppose those relying on external elements, acting as stooges, holding negative views" and "crush all internal and external destructive elements as the common enemy".

There are also instructive aphorisms like "anarchy begets anarchy, not democracy" and "riots beget riots, not democracy". And brilliant headlines such as "Make right decision: correctly choose people’s representatives with vision to shape nation’s better future".

It's so over the top that it almost seems like it must be a satire.

Then there are the news stories, the like of which are just not available anywhere else.

For example, yesterday's NLM broke the 'news' that staff from the British and US embassies in Yangon visited the headquarters of the National League for Democracy, the opposition party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, 31 times during March alone.

During these meetings, the embassy officials apparently presented members of the NLD central executive committee with "large and small envelopes".

The fact that the NLD "adheres to the instructions of the US and British embassies in Yangon" therefore draws "widespread criticism and watchful eyes from the public". Here's the full story:

US, British embassies frequent NLD 31 times in March

YANGON, 5 April-The National League for Democracy (NLD) stays in touch with and adheres to the instructions of the US and British embassies in Yangon, thereby drawing the widespread criticism and watchful eyes from the public.

It was reported that in March 2010, staff from the two embassies visited NLD on West Shwegondaing Road in Yangon for 31 times and that during the visits they held meetings with NLD CEC members, and presented the latter large and small envelopes.

The NLD, in case you are not aware, have decided to boycott the upcoming elections, which are likely to be anything but free and fair. And anyway, if the British embassy were channeling secret funds to anyone in Myanmar, it would more likely be the "reform-minded" NGOs close to the junta that some Western observers believe ought to be tapped up.

Meanwhile, via last Thursday's NLM, I also learnt that the junta has launched a new international satellite TV channel. Myanmar International TV is the "best way to see real Myanmar apart from first-hand visit", we are told. It will broadcast "all day round in North America, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, China, India and Indochina".

Part of the reason the Ministry of Information is launching this channel is presumably because Voice of America and the BBC are "sowing hatred among the people", while Radio Free Asia and the Democratic Voice of Burma are "generating public outrage".

As the NLM reminds the people: "Do not allow ourselves to be swayed by killer broadcasts designed to cause troubles."

The most recent NLM stories are posted here and the full PDF archives are online here thanks to Myanmar's permanent mission to the UN.

Singapore agrees to rare human rights visit

2010-04-05T18:14:00.000+08:00

Although the Singapore government usually prevents human rights experts from conducting official trips to the city-state, it has agreed to a request from the UN special envoy on racism to visit Singapore later this month.

Githu Muigai, the UN's Special Rapporteur on racism, is scheduled to visit from April 21 to April 28, according to Anh Thu Duong, one of his assistants at the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

He will meet with "relevant government officials, as well as with civil society representatives" during his week-long trip before presenting the findings of his mission on April 28.

Muigai's mandate requires him to examine "incidents of contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, any form of discrimination against Blacks, Arabs and Muslims, xenophobia, negrophobia, anti-Semitism and related intolerance, as well as governmental measures to overcome them". UN Special Rapporteurs are independent experts that report to the UN Commission on Human Rights.

His assistant told me in an email that "Singapore had very few visits by Special Procedures mandate-holders (in fact, only one UN human rights expert visited Singapore). Therefore, we thought it'd be a good idea to get there."

The Singapore government routinely blocks visits from human rights experts and crosses swords with international rights campaigners, including UN representatives.

In 2007, Philip Alston, the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution criticised the Singapore government for hanging a Nigerian citizen who, he claimed, was denied the right to the presumption of innocence. The government hit back strongly.

While the Singapore government disregards international norms on issues like the use of the death penalty and media freedom, it actually has a comparatively good record on racism, which may explain the government's willingness to allow the UN visit.

The majority ethnic Chinese still dominate society and politics and there is strong evidence that the Malay community struggles to compete educationally and economically, but racial tensions and overt discrimination are much less apparent than in neighbouring Malaysia and Indonesia.

New York Times editor says IHT should pull out of Singapore

2010-04-04T18:47:00.000+08:00

It seems I'm not the only one who thinks that the International Herald Tribune's recent decision to cave in to the Singapore government again was rather lilly-livered.

Clark Hoyt, the readers' editor at the New York Times, which owns the IHT, has criticized the move in his regular column for the NYT. He does not pull his punches.

Some readers were astonished that a news organization with a long history of standing up for First Amendment values would appear to bow obsequiously to an authoritarian regime that makes no secret of its determination to cow critics, including Western news organizations, through aggressive libel actions.

He compares the decision faced by the IHT in Singapore, a key commercial market for the paper, to that faced by Google in China:

Google faced a similar painful dilemma in China. With potentially billions of dollars at risk, it stuck to its principles, and The Times applauded editorially. I think Google set an example for everyone who believes in the free flow of information.

Hoyt cites the late American columnist and sparring-partner of Lee Kuan Yew William Safire, who "told the American Journalism Review in 1995 that the world’s free press should unite and pull out of Singapore in the face of any new libel action."

"I think that is what should happen too, but it never has," Hoyt adds.

Hoyt also obtained a statement from the IHT explaining why it caved in. Make of it what you will:

Singapore is an important market for The International Herald Tribune. There are more than 12,000 I.H.T. readers who shouldn’t be deprived of the right to read the paper in print or online. In addition, getting kicked out of Singapore would also make it more difficult for others in the region to get the I.H.T. since we print in Singapore for distribution there and in the neighboring areas.

Hoyt's full column is online here. I presume it will not be published in the IHT.

Indonesia outpacing us on reform, says Malaysian govt

2010-04-02T16:39:00.000+08:00

In recent years, the development trajectories of Indonesia and Malaysia (which share a similar culture and could, at one time, have possibly become one country) have seemingly reversed.

Until the last few years, Malaysia was known for its political and social stability and, as a result, attracted significant international investment. Indonesia, on the other hand, was seen to be something of a basket case, riven by simmering racial and social tensions and handicapped by unstable government and dodgy financial institutions.

But President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has helped to resolve Indonesia's most divisive internal conflicts, eased racial divisions and begun the process of much-needed reform, helping the economy to record solid growth during the global crisis.

In the meantime, Malaysia has slipped into political and racial turmoil and its economy has stagnated, with large outflows of foreign money, some of which has probably gone into Indonesia, seen increasingly as the one of the world's most attractive emerging markets.

Even the Malaysian government now seems to accept that it is falling behind its neighbour. In the 206-page full version of the New Economic Model, unveiled by PM Najib Razak on Tuesday, the Malaysian government concedes that Indonesia is moving ahead in efforts to combat corruption and cut red tape.

"Countries in the region are combating corruption more effectively while implementing comprehensive reforms to reduce the cost of doing business," the report says. "In this context, Indonesia will soon outpace us as their reform actions inject renewed vigour into their economy as evidenced by stronger growth rates."

A rare admission of weakness by the Malaysian establishment, which likes to think of itself as being far superior to its poorer Indonesian cousins.

The People's Revolutionary Army of Singapore

2010-03-31T16:56:00.000+08:00

The Singapore government should be afraid, very afraid. A video (below) has appeared on YouTube in which a woman with a strong Singaporean accent claims to be the "leader of the revolutionary army known as the Reapers" and vows to lead a violent campaign to overthrow the repressive government.

This militant revolutionary, called Bolo Santosi, says that the people must "break the chains of oppression and rise up as one". She threatens to use nerve gas against the government and its "thugs" who want to "subdue the people".

In case you've haven't realised by now, this is not a real video but a series of clips from a new computer game, Just Cause 2.

But Bolo Santosi's camp Singapore-style drawl is not the only aspect of the game that may seem remarkably familiar to residents of the Lion City.

The game is set on a fictional island in Southeast Asia called Panau, which is ruled by an oppressive dictator called Pandak Panay.

The game's official website mentions a fictitious newspaper called the Panau Tribune, which proclaims that it is "proudly supporting Pandak Panay, our beloved president" and carries the brilliant sub-title "News you will trust".

The website also links to a spoof blog that says it is written by a journalist who is traveling round Panau. The blog links to a Flickr page of photos taken from around Panau, which includes a picture of a wok full of Char Kway Teow, which is described as a "local specialty".

Back in the real world, Char Kway Teow is a well-known Singapore specialty.

I'm sure that Just Cause 2 is pure fiction and that any resemblance to real Southeast Asian island states is purely coincidental.

Hat-tips to The Online Citizen and Mr Brown.

What Singapore doesn't want to happen in its casinos

2010-03-30T18:36:00.000+08:00

Late last autumn, a Hong Kong jury convicted four men of a conspiracy to commit bodily harm and a fifth of soliciting a murder.

At first, the men had been ordered to break the arms and legs of a dealer at Sands Macau suspected of helping a patron cheat millions of dollars from the business. Later, a call went out to murder the dealer, court records show. But then one of the gangsters balked and reported the plans to authorities.

So begins a fascinating investigation into the links between organized crime and Macau's casinos by Reuters and the Investigative Reporting Program at University of California, Berkeley.

As the authors note, the link between Macau's gambling industry and triads is something of an open secret - I've heard many tales of VIP gamblers chased down and beaten almost to death or shot and killed after failing to repay debts to junkets, the middlemen who extend crucial lines of credit to mainland Chinese gamers and get commission from the casinos for bringing in these high rollers.

The Reuters piece lays out the connections between the VIPs, the junkets and casinos such as the Sands Macau, owned by America's Las Vegas Sands group. It goes some way to explaining why the Singapore government has decided not to allow Macau-style junkets to operate in the Lion City, as I wrote in a recent piece for Asia Sentinel.

The Reuters story notes that when Macau first opened up to international casino operators, the big US players, such as LVS and Wynn Resorts, were reluctant to allow junkets to control their VIP rooms because of fears that they would be taken over by triads.

But, it notes, "the US companies realized soon enough that they could not compete with local casinos without junkets".

It will be interesting to see how Singapore does without junkets and whether the city-state's organised crime syndicates, which do exist contrary to popular external perception (just read details of this near-riot that occurred after a police raid on a gambling den in the red light district of Geylang), manage to muscle in on the casino business successfully.

Hat-tip to The Economist's online Asia editor.

Is Singapore working with Israel on a missile defence system?

2010-03-29T18:17:00.000+08:00

Both small states haunted by the fear (real or imagined) that they are encircled by volatile and hostile neighbours, Singapore and Israel have long cooperated on military matters, trading arms and helping to train each other's forces.

In an intriguing story, Israel's most influential newspaper, Haaretz, claims that their latest joint project is a missile defence system that is being developed by an Israeli company with Singaporean financing.

The story claims that Singapore has helped to fund the $250m Iron Dome, which is designed to intercept short-range missiles and rockets, in exchange for several of the systems, which it intends to deploy in the Lion City.

Haaretz has picked the story up from Intelligence Online, a paid-for industry news publication. (You can read the original here for the bargain price of 7 euros - I haven't.)

The Intelligence Online story begins: "Some Israeli arms programs are too costly for the local market and are developed principally for export. The anti-missile system Kipat Barzel (Iron Dome), is a typical example. The system is currently being tested in the field by the Israeli Army before being delivered to Singapore."

If true, it is hardly surprising that Singapore and Israel are continuing to further their close military relationship.

But I can't imagine what Singapore would want with a short-range missile defence system.

Despite the similarities between Singapore and Israel, the security threat is mostly imagined in the case of the former.

If Malaysia or Indonesia ever want to get at Singapore - and it's highly unlikely given how many members of the Indonesian and Malaysian elite secrete their personal wealth there - they need only cut off the water or gas supply.

But, on the off chance that rogue Islamists or unhinged nationalists ever fire Qassam rockets at Singapore from Pulau Bintan or Johor, Singapore will soon be protected (if this story is true).