Try telling that to this chap:
(words of Chia Thia Poh)
“They tried very hard to break prisoners, to extract confessions
from them, to have them confess on television. They made me pay a
very high price for not kowtowing to them.
In 1966 they put me in a dark cell and said some people had gone
insane under such circumstances. Sometimes you could hear people
kicking the doors as if they had gone insane. I went from one
prison to another and was in solitary confinement several times.
Sometimes I was deprived of reading material for months at a
stretch. They said that there's no end to this, that it will go on
year after year if I don't confess, that even if I'm made of steel,
they have means to break me.
I told them that I had nothing to confess, and that if the
government had the evidence it should try me in an open court,
where I could see the evidence against me and defend myself.
There were day-long interrogations in a freezing cold room. They
pressurised my family. But I always thought, no matter how long
they keep me in this way, some day they will have to release me,
because I'm innocent and I have support. It's part of the broad
struggle for democracy all over the world.
When you are in solitary, there is nothing in the cell. But you can
explore, and see faint scribblings from previous prisoners. I still
remember one of them. It was a poem in Chinese:
”Ten years behind bars
Never too late
Thousands of ordeals
My spirit steeled.“
When you were alone and helpless, and you saw things like that, you
were encouraged.”
“The best part of my life was taken away just like that, without
even a charge let alone a trial in the court.”
-Chia Thye Poh 1998
Oops, who is Mr Chia??, anyway,
In politic, who dare wins, i guess during that time, it was
in a critical stage of power struggle, a stage whereby our nation
was still in it infant,very fragile and skeptical to chaos,
therefore, whoever lead will try to down his opponents and put
peace in to it, as peace is essential for a nation as it
is one of the building pillar.
Let say if Mr Chia was the govt and head of the state, do
you think he would not imprison LKY and torture him??? I guess
it will be the same or more worst. What you see is only one side of
the story, what really happen, nobody knows, we must therefore be
more liberal in looking at an issue, and you have to agree me, that
we make mistakes in our life, a part of all human nature. But
given what LKY did for our country, bring us as a little red dot to
a world class cosmopolitan, a shelter with comfort zone, work,
play, peace and harmony, he deserve to be respected.
