~from: Ministry of Home Affairs~
The 16 ex-detainees call for a Commission of Inquiry (see HERE) to investigate their detentions. The subversion and violence of the Communist insurgency from the 1940s to the 1970s are a historical reality. The Government’s actions against the Marxist plot in the late 1980s were fully explained and justified at the time, and extensively debated in Parliament. These actual situations and events which were real threats to Singapore’s security cannot simply be dismissed as “rhetoric”, as the ex-detainees now try to do.
The detentions under the ISA were made for valid security reasons and properly dealt with according to the law. Every case was reviewed at that time by the Advisory Board chaired by a Supreme Court judge. The Government sees no reason to conduct a review now, more than 20 years after the event, via a Commission of Inquiry.
