Tan Jing Quee
Ho Piao’s life can be neatly segmented into three phases, all
interconnected and evolving. He was born in 1937, the year the
Pacific War began, with the Japanese incursion into North-east
China, which eventually led to the Japanese invasion of Malaya in
December 1941. Britain resumed its colonial control over Malaya
following Japanese surrender in 1945, and a brief period of peace
prevailed, until this was interrupted by the onset of the Malayan
Emergency from June 1948.
Ho Piao’s infant years were therefore intimately connected with
the Japanese invasion of Malaya and the Malayan Emergency,
initiated by the British against the Malayan Communist Party in
what the latter termed the ‘National War of Liberation’.
He entered Kong Yong Primary School, which was located at Upper
Serangoon Road, immediately after the end of the Second World War.
During this time, he obtained his subsequent facility in the
Chinese language, reinforced by constant usage and further studies.
It was in his primary school years that he first became conscious
of what he deemed to be the degrading effect of inequality and
class status.
Ho Piao came from a poor, though not impoverished family in the
economic circumstances of the time. His father was a sailor, and
his mother a housewife who also sold eggs in the market to
supplement the family income. Ho Piao was always extremely close to
his mother, and this bond was to last throughout his life. His
mother stood by him through thick and thin through all the years of
his long detention and struggles.
In his address at Ho Piao’s memorial recently, Lee Tee Tong, a
former long-term political detainee and trade union leader,
narrated an incident in Ho Piao’s boyhood, when Ho Piao and a few
of his classmates took a bus home. Along the way, a couple of women
boarded the bus carrying baskets of eggs. One of them was Ho Piao’s
mother; the other was a mother of one of Ho Piao’s classmates. Ho
Piao immediately ran to her. He noticed, however, that his friend
tried to avoid looking at his own mother because he was ashamed to
let his classmates know that his mother was a hawker. This incident
was etched in Ho Piao’s mind.
After spending four years in Kong Yong Primary School, his
family transferred him to Serangoon English School, where he
remained until he completed the Cambridge School Certificate
Examinations, which was the equivalent of the ‘O’ Levels now. He
did not take to physical contact sports like football and hockey,
but joined the Scouts movement and took to swimming and boating.
Under the active motivation and guidance of his scoutmaster and
teacher, Lloyd Fernando,[1] he
attained the level of Queen’s Scout.
His physical and mental development was impressive and in his
final year at Serangoon, he circled around the waters of Singapore
island in a rowing boat alone, an early indication of the grit and
tenacity which was to be a character trait.
When Ho Piao finished his school certificate examination, his
results were outstanding enough for him to obtain admission into
the pre-medical higher school certificate class in Raffles
Institution. At the end of 1956, he sat for the matriculation
examination for entry into the University of Malaya, and obtained
admission into the Science Faculty in 1957.
The mid-1950s were years of student and trade union agitation
against colonial rule, and this could not fail to fire the
imagination of a student like Ho Piao. Widespread repressions and
arrests occurred towards the end of 1956, including the arrest of
his cousin, Ho Boon, who was then a trade union leader in the
Singapore Motor Workshops trade union.
The arrest of Ho Piao’s cousin would have made an impact on the
youthful Ho Piao and propelled him into the reality of colonial
rule in Singapore at the time. It was at this period that he began
his initial association with the trade union movement, where his
command of the English language became an asset to hard-pressed
trade unions who were already short-handed after the arrests.
Accordingly, in 1957, he cut classes for his science course in
the university to attend to the pressing demands of trade union
work, to such an extent that he eventually withdrew from his
university education altogether. He went on to work full-time
in the trade union movement. In subsequent years, Ho Piao never
regretted this decision, and always believed that it was a choice
he had to make under the circumstances. In the context of the
anti-colonial struggle, it was the only
choice.
The People’s Action Party (PAP) came into power in 1959, and in
its early months, it articulated, if not pursued, an active
pro-labour policy, and tried to work with the trade union movement.
During this initial phase of cordiality between the two bodies, the
government sent three young trade unionists for a trade union
course conducted in the United Kingdom. Ho Piao was one of the
three, the other two being S.T. Bani and Salauddin Ghouse, all
members of what was then perceived to be the left-wing trade union
movement.
Three months into the course, Ho Piao abruptly terminated the
scholarship and returned home, despite the earnest persuasions of
his two friends who went on to complete it. Years later, when he
was asked as to why he did not complete the course to obtain the
diploma which might have proved useful for his later trade union
career, Ho Piao would invariably reply that by the time he quit, he
was convinced that the lectures and courses they were given were of
‘bureaucratic trade unionism’ and had no connection whatsoever with
the type of work he was trying to do in the Singapore trade unions.
Quite characteristically, Ho Piao never regretted this decision
either.
Not long after his return to Singapore, Ho Piao joined as a paid
secretary of the Singapore National Seamen’s Union. He would later
recall that his involvement with the seamen’s union represented the
happiest and most meaningful part of his life, of which he had
particularly fond memories. He interacted well with the seamen on
board the ships and they in turn took to him with warmth and
affection. Ho Piao had a particular way and manner in dealing with
ordinary folks, to whom he never felt any distance. In fact, if
anything, his defences always went up when he was confronted or
faced with bureaucracy or with people in authority, to whom he
would be polite but always firm and obstinate from the viewpoint of
his adversaries.
This phase of his life
terminated with his arrest on 2 Feburary 1963, together with more
than 135 political detainees from all walks of
life. At the time of his arrest, he was just
26 years old, full of idealism and vitality, and with a clear
vision of what he intended to do with his life. He has always said
that he had found his true vocation in those years, of service to
the poor and downtrodden, against the intimidation and bullying
ways of those in authority. Ho Piao was always a fighter in his own
quiet and unassuming ways.
The second phase of his life began from the day of his arrest,
until his release some 18-and-a-half years later, in 1981, when he
was well into middle age. He had therefore spent the best part of
his youth in the network of detention centres and cells throughout
the island, ranging from the central police station, Outram road
prison, R.B. block in Changi Prison, the medium security detention
camp in Changi, and eventually in the newly constructed isolation
blocks known euphemistically as Moon Crescent Centre, which was
completed in the early 1970s to replace the various detention camps
in different locations within Changi Prison. Ho Piao’s long detention
under the infamous Internal Security Act (ISA) was cruel, inhuman
and a powerful statement of the condition of unfreedom in the
country.
Like all the other political detainees, he was never charged and
convicted for the violation of any specific law. Ho Piao’s life and
political activities was an open book, from the time he left school
as a Queen’s Scout and abandoned a university course to work in the
trade union movement. There was never any
suggestion of his involvement in any illegal organization or any
violent act to support such a long duration of political
detention.
More likely, Ho Piao, like
all the other detainees, was detained not because of his potential
for violence, but because of fear of the visions and ideas he
represented. Ho Piao probably suffered more
than most political prisoners in the cruel treatment he received
during his long years of detention. He was involved in a long
hunger strike in the early 1970s, when the prison authorities
sought to impose new rules and conditions, which forced further
restrictions on the terms of political detention.
There has been a virtual
censorship and news embargo regarding the hunger strikes, including
the treatment meted out to the political prisoners during the
strikes and the duration of the strikes, which have yet to
surface. The physical assault of Ho Piao and
other political detainees had been partly documented by a report of
Amnesty International in 1978.[2]
Ho Piao was released in 1981. He remained in Singapore for a
period of five years, during which time he married and started a
family, before he took his new wife and two infant children to
London to seek out a new direction in his life. The beginning of
his exile in London from 1986 heralded the third and final phase of
his life, which ended quite suddenly with his demise on
6th February 2007 in London. This period of exile in
London lasted 21 years.
During this period, he came back to Singapore on four or five
occasions, according to family members, the most recent one being
on the occasion of the death of his beloved mother on
11th January 2001. Many of his friends from his
university and trade union days did not see much of him during
these two decades or so, when he was in exile in London. Only those
friends who made occasional visits to London met up with him at
all, and they invariably reported not only his continued concern
with the political developments at home but also his continuing
commitment to the struggle for social justice and equality
internationally.
He was deeply concerned and knowledgeable about the areas of
conflict in the Middle East and Asia, and he continued expressing
optimism on the durability of his socialist vision despite the
current international confusion and division. He was extremely critical of
current political developments in the People’s Republic of China,
as representing a sharp departure from the egalitarian vision of
the early years of the Chinese Revolution. He remained a Chinese
Singaporean and not a Singaporean Chinese, as he laboured to
explain to his children.
During much of his years in the United Kingdom, he had spent
much of his years at Sudbury Avenue, in Middlesex, north of London,
a few minutes away from the underground of the same name. He lived
in a modest house, almost identical to the houses in the
neighborhood, from the exterior. However, on entering the
house, one would have a sense of entering a home in Singapore.
There was a large sitting room with a set of Chinese rosewood
furniture and the walls were draped with Chinese
paintings. The living room opened to the
lawn at the back of the house, which he used for entertainment. The
dining room consisted of a rosewood round table and chairs. A
marble-topped table lay in the kitchen for breakfast and informal
dining.
His office was located a short drive away. He spent long hours
at the office and was known to return late at night or in the early
hours of the next morning. He had built up strong links with his
close friends and relatives and some friends from Singapore, in
particular Francis Khoo and his wife, Dr. Ang Swee Chai, and
several others.
Besides this, he had built up some business contacts and links
with some colleagues, and many friends from the Middle East, where
he also had some commercial ventures. His wife and their daughter,
He Xin, were surprised by the large number of Middle Eastern
friends who came to the ICU when they heard news of the massive
stroke he suffered while dining with some friends. He Xin mentions
that her father spent a lot of time at home writing and that he had
written numerous English and Chinese poems which have not been
sorted out and assembled. She learnt that several of these poems
had in fact been published in some Middle Eastern countries.
Ho Piao was survived by his wife and three children – his
daughter He Xin, and two sons, He Hao and He Jie.
Part II
I first met Ho Piao when I was detained in October 1963, and was
sent to R.B. block. Ho Piao, S.T. Bani and myself were the only
English-speaking political detainees in the block which then
consisted of about two dozen political prisoners.
I have several enduring images of Ho Piao during that time. He
was of medium height and build, spoke softly, precisely and with a
sense of gentle humor. He wore a gentle smile most of the time and
liked to greet his friends with a formal prefix, like ‘Mr Tan’, or
just their surnames, but never by their personal names.
This was an eccentricity his friends had come to accept and
ignore, as no amount of protest would change his mode of address.
The political prisoners at R.B. block were confined in ten separate
cells within a block, which had a further set of locks which opened
to a yard used for exercise and recreation.
There would be a ‘muster’ every morning, in which the
superintendent of the prison or other senior officers would walk
through the block to verify the numbers of political prisoners.
Following the morning muster, the padlock to the block would be
opened for access to the field. A similar ‘muster’ walkthrough
would take place in the evenings, after which the access to the
field would be locked, and the political prisoners confined to
their cells.
Ho Piao had obtained permission from the prison authorities to
rear a couple of rabbits, which he kept in carton boxes. Ho Piao
would usually be among the first to proceed to the yard to tend to
his rabbits, clad in his cream-coloured pyjama trousers with a
white round-neck t-shirt and wearing his Japanese slippers.
A binding image I had was Ho Piao holding a rabbit in his arms,
sweat streaming down his brow and with a smile on his face. As the
rabbits multiplied, a problem arose. I remember an occasion when
one of his friends playfully suggested to him that perhaps he
should surrender one of the excess rabbits to be roasted and eaten.
Ho Piao glared at him and turned away with his rabbits.
No one dared to raise the suggestion again. Ho Piao eventually
found a way out of this problem by arranging to send some of his
rabbits to political prisoners in the other detention centres in
Chang Prison, through the prison warders, and also to friends and
family outside the prison. Ho Piao and his rabbits have become part
of the legend of the political detentions in the 1960s and 1970s.
It is also a fitting symbol of contrasting images to the stark
reality of the long detention experienced by those like Ho
Piao.
Ho Piao was fluent in the three languages of English, Chinese
and Malay. His reading, however, was quite selective rather than
wide-ranging. He was acquainted with four Chinese classical novels,
although his clear favorite was Sui Hu Zhuan. He read Gorky, but
was less impressed by Dostovsky. Of the Malay poets, his favorite
was Usman Awang, although he had also read most of the Malay
classics in the course of his learning of the language and
literature. I remember vividly Ho Piao reciting Malay
pantuns and speaking in Malay formal sentences to the
bemused warder who by chance came to the block on some duty.
‘Courage’ is one of those words that comes readily to the mind
when one thinks of Ho Piao. It is not however the courage of the
aggressor who seeks to bully and to exercise power over a weaker
victim, but the quiet, unobtrusive courage of a man prepared to
stand his ground in the view that he is in the right. Ho Piao was
unyielding and principled to those with him, but obstinate and
stubborn to those who opposed him.
Dr Poh Soo Kai, in his account at Ho Piao’s memorial in
Singapore on 10th March 2007, recounted an incident
involving Chan Fook Hwa, another political prisoner, who had been
diagnosed with cancer of the liver during detention. One morning,
the prison warder came to the cell block with an order to remove
Chan Fook Hwa to Changi prison hospital, from the cell block which
he was occupying together with Ho Piao and Dr Poh.
The political detainees knew that the conditions in the prison
hospital were worse than that in the cell block because the
detainee would be held in total isolation within a cage to which
only the doctor and authorized medical personnel would be granted
access at their convenience. It is akin to being held in solitary
confinement. Ho Piao asked Chan Fook Hwa politely whether he
preferred to stay with his other colleagues in the detention block
or to allow himself to be removed to the prison hospital.
Chan Fook Hwa replied that he would prefer to remain where he
was. Ho Piao then proceeded to inform the warder that they would
not allow Fook Hwa to be removed from the cell, and the prison
warder had no alternative but to leave after failing to carry out
his instructions. Ho Piao was prepared to stand firm on his ground,
clearly knowing that disobedience of an order from the prison
authorities might land them in a confrontation with the prison
authorities.
Three days later, however, the prison warder returned with a new
order to remove Chan Fook Hwa to the general hospital. After some
discussion, Fook Hwa said he would be prepared to be so removed as
he would possibly be in a better position to have medical treatment
in a hospital.
Accordingly, Chan was removed and when his condition
deteriorated, he was released and died within a week following
this. This incident indicated clearly the extent to which Ho Piao
was prepared to go to defend the rights of his friends when he felt
that such a defence was the correct and proper thing to do.
Ho Piao belongs to that select group of political prisoners in
Singapore who spent long spells of imprisonment without trial.
They include Chia Thye Poh,
Dr. Lim Hock Siew, Dr. Poh Soo Kai, Said Zahari and Lee Tee
Tong.
Their long incarceration and travails is a sad and tragic
commentary on the state of political unfreedom in a nascent state
emerging from colonial rule. In most countries, these men
of conscience would be a national asset and powerful spokesmen for
the community rather than continuously demonized, vilified and
marginalized.
A nation and a state which is
intolerant and oppresses dissident views of honest men and women
can hardly aspire to evolve and develop into a humane society and
civilization. Vibrant political, intellectual and artistic life
cannot ever hope to grow and flourish under conditions of political
repressions.
Notes
[1]
Lloyd Fernando later became a Professor of English in the
University of Malaya, until his retirement, when he began to
practice law.
[2]
Report of an Amnesty International Mission to Singapore, 30
November to 5 December 1978
http://s-pores.com/2007/04/ho-piao/
