Singapore – Labour Day Message 2007 April 30, 2007
Posted by soci in May Day, Singapore.add a comment
Press Release – Labour Day Message 2007
Mon, Apr 30, 2007
The National Solidarity Party (NSP) stands in solidarity with the workers in Singapore. We are strongly of the view that each and every Singapore workers has contributed tremendously and significantly to the building of this nation. We lament however the lack of sincere treatment by the PAP government towards the hands which toiled to keep Singapore afloat.
The clearest testimony of that affront is illustrated in the PAP government’s unabashed claim that the nation owes its billions in GDP to the “extraordinary” leadership of the PAP, and as such the PAP must necessarily be compensated with “extraordinary” escalating wages. While the GDP of Singapore has grown over the years, the salaries of many Singapore workers have proportionately stagnated, seen tokenish improvement, or sadly even regressed.
Singapore workers have been mercilessly pounded by salvoes of undignified government measures such as non-negotiable hikes in GST, property tax, utility charges, public transport fares, postage cost, medical fees, education costs, and even PAP town councils fees. The PAP government does not pause for an empathising moment from inflicting punishing measures on the workers.
We are painfully concerned that many workers are now unable to accumulate sufficient savings to contemplate a decent retirement at old age, or to meet their medical expenditures. We are equally disturbed that the PAP’s more liberal policy on foreign workers has seen a collapse in salary floor for the lower-income workers. This trend is now rapidly infecting the middle-income workers caught in a hard squeeze of facing cheaper foreign competition and higher cost of living while receiving lesser state subsidies.
It is all the more deplorable that the PAP government now decides to prescribe the “bitter medicine” of urging workers to “work for as long as he can”, and to completely forgo the concept of retirement. It is also painful to see workers, especially those who have lost their jobs through the sordid government policies, literally begging for an increase in state assistance, only to be seen as a liability by the PAP government who wastes no time dismissing the pleas as one stemming from a “crutch mentality”.
The NSP is disappointed that Singapore workers are unable to enjoy the fruit of their 40-years of labour, needing to practically ‘work to their graves’. And to aggravate matters, the workers’ unions in Singapore have evolved from one amplifying the muffled cries of concerns of the workers, to one serving as a mere communication-bridge to disseminate and persuade workers to accept debatable government labour policies.
Nevertheless, the NSP is optimistic that Singapore workers will be steadfast in their quest to seek a fairer alternative for themselves and their future generations. We are hopeful that the Singapore workers will one day regain the sense of respectability and purpose that is enshrined in the original spirit of Labour Day.
We wish all Singapore workers peace and hope.
Singapore – May Day Rally: A personal appeal from John Tan April 30, 2007
Posted by soci in May Day Walk, Singapore.add a comment
As I am writing this, Dr. Chee and Ms. Chee are probably walking along the streets of Hougang or Eunos. On May Day, they will be arriving at the Speaker’s Corner at about noon to address gatherers.
Our purpose for this event is to commemorate May Day by highlighting the plight of the workers in Singapore in juxtaposition to the incredulous pay raise the already rich ministers are giving themselves.
Some of you might have wondered what a walk such this can accomplish. After all, many had spoken and blogged on the issue, whereupon the ruling elites, in their usual manner, had chosen to turn a deaf ear to the citizens and bulldozed their self-serving policy through.
It is true that a two-person walk would not add much voice to what had already been said. But a 500-person walk would. The ruling party knows the power of a people united. That is why they use undemocratic laws to curb peaceful assembly.
Fortunately for us, there is yet no restriction to the number of people who can assemble at the Speaker’s Corner. Therefore, I urge all of you, who want to make your voice heard, to be at Hong Lim Park before noon this Tuesday (May Day). There is more than enough space there for 500 people. Make full use of the last remnant of your democratic rights before the day comes when even that might be taken away.
You must have heard this humorous story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody. There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but instead Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about this, because it was Everybody’s job. When Everybody thought Anybody could do it, Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn’t do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.
The joke might be old and moldy, but its relevance is timeless. If Everybody only wants to stay home and wait for Somebody to put up streaming video clips of the event, guess who will be there at the event? No prize for guessing that trusty Nobody will show up. So, if you are Anybody, I urge you to be there.
Let us shout to force the attention of our uncaring government. Let us rattle their beds in which they slumber while we, the Singapore Workers, slog our lives away.
See you there,
John Tan
Singapore – Island sits in an ocean of economic turbulence April 30, 2007
Posted by soci in Burma, Indonesia, Market, Singapore, Temasek, Thailand.add a comment
Recommended by an anonymous emailer who I would like to thank for drawing my attention to the article. It is from the Sydney Morning Herald on the April 30, 2007.
Eric Ellis looks for explanations for Singapore’s booming property market.
SINGAPORE’S property market is roaring. And why I know that is because the lease on our apartment will soon expire and our landlady wants 70 per cent more rent than she did in 2004.
No matter that the place leaks like a Canberra cabinet and that its 1970s-wired electricity trips at least once a week: these are details too far for our poco-curante proprietrix. But she has noticed that a private banker from Tokyo has signed, sight unseen, for a same-sized unimproved flat downstairs at 150 per cent more than the vacating lessee paid, and she reckons we are getting a bargain for $6000 a month.
It’s all very puzzling as there’s no textbook rationale to the sudden real estate boom here. The economy’s growing at an unremarkable-for-Asia 6 per cent, much the same as it has for years, save the difficult “Asian Contagion” period of the late 1990s. There’s no more government pump-priming than usual, none of the official withholding of land to get prices artificially moving that’s much loved in Singapore’s rival for city-state hothouse, Hong Kong. And though wealthy enough, with just 4.5 million people Singapore is still 2.4 billion consumers short of being “Chindia”, Asia’s neologism du jour.
From Sotheby’s to shares, Singapore has no shortage of places to park cash. But new luxury apartment blocks are sprouting among the frangipani, touting all manner of metropolitan arcadia – infinity pools, gyms, private clubs. They sport funky names such as Trillium and Botanika, fashioned on hoardings in designer fonts usually seen in Wallpaper magazine. My favourite promises that the elysian towers rising behind it will be “Home to 46 of the Most Luminous Families” – which will presumably take care of electricity bills, also on the rise.
The reasons why it’s suddenly salad days for Singapore developers seem to reside in neighbouring Indonesia, a country rated by the graft watchdog Transparency International at 130th of the 163 nations it tracks in its annual corruption survey. TI’s first place, ie, the world’s least corrupt place, is occupied by Finland, Iceland and New Zealand. Australia ranks joint ninth with The Netherlands.
Censorship: What’s the way forward? and Zahari’s 17 Years April 27, 2007
Posted by soci in Singapore, Zahari's 17 Years.add a comment
Refers to Zahari’s 17 Years which is available on google video. It has so far been viewed 7691 times and downloaded 634 times. So there are a lot of people out there, potentially in Singapore with this video on their hard drives and ipods passing it around.
SINGAPORE: The decision by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts — and its use, for the first time, of the Minister’s discretionary powers — to ban a film based on the arrest and detention of a former journalist and politician throws up a number of questions.
Why ban the film, Zahari’s 17 Years, when it was passed with a PG rating not once but twice last year, to be screened at the Singapore International Film Festival and the Substation’s Asian Film Symposium?
Neither organiser screened the film and it was reported that the Media Development Authority had told the Substation that the film may include defamatory content.
Why ban the film when the memoirs of Mr Said Zahari, a former editor of the Malay language newspaper Utusan Melayu and president of Parti Rakyat Singapura, are available in bookshops here?
As the 77-year-old told AFP: “What I said in the movie I have already said in my book, and much, much more.”
Why create unnecessary curiosity and drive people online to watch the film, which has already found its way on to the Internet?
In today’s wired world, it is more likely than not, the ban will be ineffective and counter-productive. Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said as much recently: Censorship in the Internet age “makes no sense”.
Indeed, a movie has a wider and more evocative reach than a book, since voice, motion, drama and images do tend to have a bigger impact on shaping the minds of audiences — which is why different rules must apply to different media, especially on issues that could get the viewers worked up.
I saw the film before the ban. It gave an account of Mr Said’s arrest and detention days — including his recollection of taking Chinese lessons from a fellow detainee. He said he was not a foreign agent, nor a communist sympathiser. He also spoke critically about Mr Lee, when asked for his take on why he was detained.
Mica said that the film gives a “distorted and misleading” portrayal of Mr Said’s arrest and detention and “could undermine public confidence in the Government”. The film, it added, was “an attempt (by Mr Said) to “exculpate himself from his past involvement in communist front activities against the interests of Singapore”.
Most Singaporeans recognise a good government — and a flat lie for that matter — when they see one. If the authorities were worried about whether the audience would be discerning enough to separate the wheat from the chaff, they could have given the film a higher classification rating.
If the intention was to send an unequivocal message, there are better ways to do so, including a rebuttal of the false accusations.
The Government has every right to take a stand against what it feels is a distorted account. If it felt that an open rebuttal would raise the film’s profile unnecessarily — which it has inadvertently already done with the ban — the authorities could impose, as a condition for screening, a “government advisory” at the start or end of the film, to refute any misleading statements.
Actually, this was a great opportunity for the Government to engage Singaporeans on an important part of the country’s history.
The tumultuous period from the ’50s right through the ’70s, with its backdrop of riots and demonstrations, can arguably be described as the defining period of nationhood.
These events, which were openly documented by newspapers, shaped the Republic’s relatively short but no less rich history.
Yet, our school children do not get a good grasp of these events from our history textbooks — the same sources that described the ’50s Hock Lee bus riots as having been primarily fuelled by dissatisfaction with long work hours and low pay.
Some researchers and historians have offered other possible reasons for the riots, such as anti-colonial sentiments and instigation by pro-communist quarters.
It is not that these accounts are not available here. One can go to the Internet, visit libraries and bookshops, attend forums — like the one held last year by former political detainees Messrs Tan Jing Quee and Michael Fernandez — or even get second-hand accounts from their parents or grandparents, to piece together this important chapter of the Singapore story.
Censorship is a double-edged sword, especially in today’s YouTube world, where privacy is constantly under threat.
Allow anything and everything and you are likely to have an uncontrollable situation on your hands. Cut and censor and you will have a population hungry for the forbidden fruit.
So, how do we move forward?
Engage Singaporeans, let contrarian views find their voice and challenge the views of those who have different accounts.
The Government took a rare and bold move to debate ministerial salaries openly in Parliament, although it was not duty-bound to do so. Singaporeans wrote in to newspapers to give their views, not all of them agreeing with the Government.
Censorship deserves a similar airing. I can’t think of a better way forward. – TODAY/fa
SAFE responds to MM Lee’s comments on homosexuality April 27, 2007
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Below is a SAFE press release in response to Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew’s comments on homosexuality and the Penal Code, as reported in a recent Reuters article.
…
PRESS RELEASE
27 April 2007
SAFE is a group of family and friends who affirm and support gay and transgendered people as persons with equal rights to respect, dignity, acceptance and empowerment in society.
We are writing to express our appreciation and thanks to MM Lee for his recent comments at the dialogue with Young PAP and the interview with Reuters.
We appreciate the two cogent points he made,
1. That homosexuals are born with this propensity and not by choice. It is a genetic variation, not an aberration.
2. That the existing criminal law against homosexual acts in the Penal Code is outmoded.
We at SAFE fully agree with and support these points and are hopeful that the law that criminalises homosexual acts will be abolished in the proposed amendments to the Penal Code. We see this as a logical and responsible next step.
As with all complex human traits and behaviours such as intelligence, homosexuality is probably a result of many factors. Rather than arguing about whether particular genes can be found for these traits and behaviours, we should continue to accept our fellow Singaporean citizens and residents who deserve the same rights to respect, dignity, acceptance and empowerment as everyone else, and to be treated equally under the law.
We cannot agree with a law that proclaims our sons, grandsons, brothers, nephews, uncles, relatives and friends are criminals for a propensity that is not of their volition, is innocuous and part of their private lives. For far too long our gay loved ones from a young age, have suffered deep internalized oppression, often resulting in the disintegration of family, compromised relationships, low self-esteem, stunted maturity and unavoidable deceitfulness.
We therefore support the proposed decriminalisation of oral and anal sex as proposed by the Ministry of Home Affairs this past November, and ask that it apply equally to all consenting adults.
Since the 1970s, the law has been used in Singapore as an educational tool; we implore the Government to use it again for the same purpose. This will be a first step in educating the public on the nature of homosexuality, educating them to become more understanding, respectful and accepting of our human diversity.
The homosexual community is an essential element in the tapestry of peoples that make Singapore such a unique and cosmopolitan community. Homosexual men and women enrich our lives through their participation in business, the professions, the arts, and government. They are our sons and daughters, colleagues, neighbors, and friends.
Legal discrimination against homosexuals is unfortunate, outdated, and regrettable. It tells them that they are less than fully welcome; that their participation in Singapore life is subject to government forbearance. It diminishes the entire Singaporean community by allowing laws to stand that criminalise many of our fellow citizens. While contributing to intolerance it leaves the government and legal authorities open to the charge of being hypocritical for not enforcing a standing law.
As we focus on the richness gay people bring to our lives and our love and support for them, we not only liberate them, we also become a society committed to the Asian values of real family – strong, whole and committed to love against all odds.
…
Read the Reuters article: Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew questions homosexuality ban
Singapore – May Day Walk for Workers April 27, 2007
Posted by soci in May Day Walk, Singapore.add a comment
Dr Chee Soon Juan and Ms Chee Siok Chin will be walking the above route for the May Day Walk for Workers.
Starting at Hong Lim Park (Speakers’ Corner) at 6am on Sunday, 29 Apr 07, the two will proceed westward towards Jurong and then work their way north to Choa Chu Kang and Woodlands before journeying south to Yishun and then Ang Mo Kio.
The walkers expect to reach the Yishun/Ang Mo Kio sector by Sunday evening.
After some rest, they will continue to the eastern part of the island and hit Pasir Ris and Tampines before heading south towards downtown Singapore and, finally, ending back at Hong Lim Park on Tuesday, 1 May, at around noon.
The Walk is intended to focus attention on the plight of workers in Singapore who have been exploited by the PAP, and left voiceless without independent trade unions to represent their rights and interests.
Rest stops and meal breaks will be announced on this website during the walk itself. There will be updates on the progress of the Walk and video messages will be posted to keep Singaporeans informed.
Supporters are encouraged to come by and encourage the Chees in their attempt to cover the distance of 150 km.
So tell your family and friends of this event, and help spread the message that Singaporeans need to become active citizens and assert their rights. On this May Day, people need to know that they need not suffer in silence while the PAP and its ministers grow rich on the back of these workers.
Remember, workers made Singapore rich, not the PAP.
If you want to help make this event successful, contact the Singapore Democrats at speakup@singaporedemocrat.org.
Singapore – Enough of Enigmatic Words, Time for Government to Act April 26, 2007
Posted by soci in Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore.add a comment
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew Questions Gay Sex Law
According to the Straits Times, Lee was speaking in answer to a question from Young PAP activist Loretta Chen, who had asked where censorship was headed in the next two decades. Young PAP is the youth wing of the People’s Action Party. The event was a gathering of this youth group at the St James Power Station, a trendy night spot, on 21 April 2007.
Especially as these comments were made extemporaneously, their meaning is open to interpretation. There remains considerable uncertainty as to what Lee had in mind when he spoke of taking a “practical, pragmatic approach” and not upsetting anti-gay groups’ “sense of propriety and right and wrong.”
People Like Us has long argued that equality for the GLBT minorities is more than just a matter of being practical. Fundamental rights are at issue. It is detrimental to fundamental conceptions of justice and equality as well as the constitutional development of Singapore not to respect these rights, whether with regard to GLBTs or other minorities.
Nonetheless, if the government thinks that it can sell the idea of decriminalisation – if indeed that was what Lee had at the back of his mind – through reliance on the argument of pragmatism, then so be it. The important thing is for the government to act. For many years now, it’s been one minister after another muttering words that have so far not translated into any meaningful change in policy or legislation. Enough.
Singapore – SDP leaders to Walk for Workers on May Day April 26, 2007
Posted by soci in Singapore.add a comment
In the lead up to May Day next week, SDP leaders and activists will conduct a series of activities to commemorate International Workers’ Day.
One of the main events will be the Walk for Workers in Singapore where Dr Chee Soon Juan and Ms Chee Siok Chin will attempt to walk across the island of Singapore.
Starting from the Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim Park, the two will walk west to Jurong, then head north to Woodlands, proceed to Pasir Ris in the east and then finish back at Hong Lim Park.
The entire journey is expected to take approximately 55 hours with rest and meal breaks. It will cover approximately 150 km. The walkers will begin at 6 am on Sunday, 29 Apr, and finish on May Day, Tuesday, 1 May.
The Chees ran a marathon in 2000 to mark International Human Rights Day. The 26-mile run marked the numbers of years Chia Thye Poh was imprisoned by the PAP. For details of the occasion see http://www.singapore-window.org/sw00/001209sc.htm.
The aim of the walk is to focus attention on the exploitation of Singapore’s workers by the Government and recent raising of the GST adding to the financial burden of the working class.
The walk will also be part of the continuing rebuke of the ministers increasing their salaries to unconscionable levels despite the poor getting poorer in this country. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong pays himself $260,000 a month while workers make as little as $400 monthly.
Logistical support is needed for this exercise. Anyone and everyone who wants to help out can contact the Singapore Democrats at speakup@singaporedemocrat.org. Details of the walk will be announced over the next few days.
The second activity will be the launching of an online SDP report on poverty and labour in Singapore which exposes the PAP’s inept handling of Singapore’s economy.
Democracy activists will also attend a seminar to be held in the next few days where the development of leadership skills for NGO leaders will be discussed.
Finally, SDP leaders will be at Speakers’ Corner on May Day (next Tuesday) starting at 12 noon to welcome Dr Chee and Ms Chee on the completion of their walk as well as to speak on the hardships faced by workers in Singapore.
So keep your eyes and ears open for details and join us in our continued endeavour to empower Singaporeans and to restore the rights of our workers.
Growing Number of Asian Blogs Offers Alternatives to Mainstream Media April 25, 2007
Posted by soci in New Media, Singapore, South East Asia.add a comment
I have posted this article here as it is a position and an argument that is very close to my own.
And the MrBrown affair gets yet another mention.
By Claudia Blume
Hong Kong
25 April 2007
Blume report – Download 717k
Listen to Blume report
Asia’s blogging community is growing rapidly, as more people get access to the Internet. In countries with a controlled media environment, blogs promote free speech and offer alternative sources of news and information. But some governments in the region try to limit access to the new media. Claudia Blume reports from VOA’s Asia News Center in Hong Kong.
Millions of people in Asia have taken to blogging in recent years, creating personal Web sites that often take the form of an online diary. The word blog derives from Web log. China alone is estimated to have up to 30 million bloggers.
As elsewhere in the world, the region’s collection of blogs on the Internet is diverse and amorphous. But in Asia, a survey by the U.S. software company Microsoft estimates that nearly half of those who are online have a blog, compared to just eight percent of U.S. Internet users.
Most people create blogs to share their lives and interests with friends, family and a few strangers. Many use text and photos, but also sound and video. Others blog to exchange information, create networks or express opinions about a wide range of issues.
In this music video, posted on the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube, two young Malaysians say an ironic ‘thank you’ to Indonesia for being responsible for last year’s haze, the pollution that spread from Indonesian forest fires. The bloggers’ criticism is an opinion that their governments would not express.
For some people, blogging has become a powerful tool for freedom of expression. Rebecca MacKinnon, an expert on online media at the University of Hong Kong, says a small percentage of people in the region create blogs to tell a wider audience what the mainstream media are not reporting.
“Some of these people who are creating media such as Jeff Ooi in Malaysia, a number of bloggers in China, basically there are people one could cite in any given country around the region, who are developing rather large audiences because they are saying something fresh or more direct than [what] people are getting from their traditional media sources,” said MacKinnon.
News of the famous nail house in the Chinese city of Chongqing, where a couple tried to block the destruction of their home earlier this year, was first spread on blogs. When mainstream media were told to remain silent on the case, a Chinese blogger who calls himself Zola traveled to Chongqing and continued to report about it.
Isaac Mao, a well-known Shanghai-based blogger and software architect, says Zola’s action was a milestone for Chinese bloggers.
“So it means once the traditional mainstream media, if they fail to work, grassroots media can take over the niche or they can take another role – to report some social events from different angles,” said Mao.
In countries with a highly restricted and regulated media environment, such as China, Vietnam, Burma and Singapore, blogs can provide different, independent information and viewpoints. While the quality and trustworthiness of blogs varies greatly, they are becoming popular sources of information in places where the mainstream media lacks credibility.
“People may now welcome this diversity of news but that’s precisely because I think one thing to remember is a lot of people are already very skeptical of mainstream media in their own countries, precisely because they are aware that most mainstream media in their countries are [one] either owned by the state or they are highly restricted and therefore are not really free to provide independent and diverse news,” said Roby Alampay, the executive director of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance.
Alampay says some blogs are created by professional journalists who post online what they are not allowed to publish in their day-jobs. Last year, for example, a Singaporean journalist whose column in a government-controlled newspaper was suspended after he criticized high living costs in the city-state was able to post the controversial story on his blog.
A number of Asian governments view bloggers as a threat. The Malaysian government has announced plans to set up a unit to monitor and counter what it calls lies and slander being spread on the Internet. Roby Alampay says governments across the region try to block, filter and monitor cyberspace.
“Censorship is becoming an issue all over Southeast Asia and I think it’s safe to assume that most countries exercise some form of blocking and censorship or harassment of websites,” Alampay added.
In Thailand, the military government recently blocked access to YouTube when an offending video clip of the Thai king appeared on the video-sharing Web site. It also suspended a popular political online chat room in April. In Malaysia, the government-linked New Straits Times newspaper recently filed defamation suits against two well-known bloggers.
Vietnam and China are particularly notorious for censoring the Internet. MacKinnon says that’s why it would be impossible for anyone to create an opposition press through blogs there.
“You are not going to see a pro-democracy, anti-communist party-press emerging through the Chinese blogosphere. The Chinese government is able to prevent that from happening,” said MacKinnon.
She said it would be over-simplistic to assume that the existence of blogs will suddenly bring about a democratic revolution in countries such as China.
Isaac Mao, for example, describes the cat-and-mouse game involved when bloggers want to outwit technical blocks imposed by government censors.
But MacKinnon says blogs offer the potential to open up the media in ways not possible before the spread of Internet access.
Singapore air force tanker deployed to IRAQ war April 25, 2007
Posted by soci in Iraq, Singapore, War.add a comment
This is the greatest example of ‘newspeak’ I have yet to come upon in my 30 plus years of existence.
The WAR and destruction of Iraq and the WAR in Afghanistan are a ‘multinational reconstruction effort’.
By S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia
Singapore’s Air Force has deployed another KC-135 tanker aircraft detachment to the Gulf.The SAF’s Chief of Defence Force, Major-General Desmond Kuek was at Changi Air Base on Wednesday morning to send off the team.
The Defence Ministry says this is Singapore’s latest contribution to support the multinational reconstruction efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The KC-135 detachment will conduct air-to-air refuelling missions during its three-month deployment.
Since 2003, the SAF has made deployments of Landing Ships Tank, KC-135 tankers and a C-130 aircraft to the Gulf. – CNA/ch
Whatever you do ‘don’t mention the war’. It might upset our neighbours in the South East Asia region and undermine our attempts to generate closer ties with Iran, if they all realise that we are providing physical support to the US led war.
