~pictures: Terry Xu~
excerpt from Channel NewsAsia ‘Police investigating SDP Forum‘:
The Ministry of Home Affairs, in response to media queries, said on Sunday that the organisers of the forum on the Internal Security Act had arranged for a fugitive from justice, Mr Francis Seow, and a foreign national, Ms Tang Fong Har, to participate in a discussion on domestic politics.
It said the organisers had arranged for them to do so from outside Singapore’s jurisdiction, allowing them to be involved in domestic politics at a public assembly in Singapore without being physically present and accountable.
SDP’s Assistant Treasurer Vincent Wijeysingha on his Facebook in response to this news:
And I returned home to the ludicrous news that the police are investigating the ISA forum yesterday. MHA is quoted as describing Mr Francis Seow as a “fugitive from justice” and Ms Tan Fong Har as a “foreign national”.
Let’s see: Francis Seow went to Whitley Road Detention Centre to take instructions from his detained client, Teo Soh Lung, in1987 and was arrested and then held for 72 days and tortured. For no crime whatsoever. And HE’s the fugitive from justice?? I was always aware that Teo Chee Hean had substandard English ad a poor grasp of logic but this is poor even for him.
And let’s see some more: If Tang Fong Har is a foreign national, is it not because the government refuses to allow the renewal of her passport although she has never been tried and convicted in a court of law nor any evidence produced in 24 years since her arrest.
The police investigation of the event is designed to do two things:
(a) intimidate the organisers and
(b) belittle the words of the participants.Has this administration not learnt anything from the General Elections. People are weary of this ridiculous, ham-fisted, bullying style of government. We the organisers will not be intimidated and I daresay the participants’ words will withstand the scrutiny of any inquiry, even one likely to be as incompetent as our police force is capable of mustering. Or perhaps they will torture us to produce a false confession? We will keep everyone on Facebook updated of the ‘police investigation’; please copy to your own pages so that the government is not able to operate in secret the way it did with the detention of the 22 in 1987.
Filmmaker Martyn See on his Facebook, commenting on Ministry of Home Affairs’ response:
At last, the new normal gives way to the old abnormal.
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