Hi Dr Chee,
What is wrong with u?
U always post whatever articles mentioned your name in SDP
site.
But u forget post your Letter to Editor of STimes
and PUBLISHED by
STimes on 30.05.2008!!
Today 05 jun 2008 STimes,a reader questioned why u sent
letter
to ST when u claimed there is no freedom of speech in SG.
i am sad to know u blacken STime name once again.
STimes is controlled by LKY,as u said many times.
Yet u write to it!!
2.CSJ letter to ST and PUBLISHED
by ST on 30.05.2008:
http://www.sgpolitics.net/
By Dr Chee Soon Juan
Published in Straits Times forum page (Print edition), 30 May
08.
By Dr Chee Soon Juan
Published in Straits Times forum page (Print edition), 30 May
08.
IF TUNKU Abdul Aziz is concerned about the integrity of
Transparency International-Malaysia (TIM), then he must be careful
who he gives his awards to (’Ex-KL Transparency Int’l head rejects
Chee’s claim’, yesterday).
TIM’s website says that it depends on, among other things,
transparency, accountability, democracy, and respect for human
rights to ‘guide its work’.
Then it gives the award to Mr Lee Kuan Yew who has imprisoned
opposition leaders without trial, closed down newspapers and
amalgamated them under Singapore Press Holdings, introduced unfair
election rules, and continues to disallow speaking in public areas
and peaceful protests.
Mr Lee, when confronted with these facts, does not refute them.
Rather, he skirts the issue and says that without him and his style
of governance, Singapore would not have $300 billion in its
reserves, that the court would not have modern facilities, and I
would not be living in an HDB flat. The presumptuousness and
disingenuousness aside, it is clear that Mr Lee doesn’t deny that
he is no practitioner of democracy.
Reporters Without Borders ranks Singapore around 140th out of
about 167 countries in world press freedom.
Washington-based Freedom House rates Singapore’s press as ‘not
free’ and states in its annual report that ‘Singapore citizens
cannot democratically change their government’.
When I broached this matter with Tunku Aziz in a conference in
Sao Paulo, Brazil, he qualified that he didn’t give the award to Mr
Lee for his human rights record. This contradicts what is stated in
TIM’s website.
How Mr Lee can be given an award for transparency and
accountability while ignoring his human- rights record, which
includes crushing a free press, is incomprehensible. When I
approached Dr Peter Eigen of the Berlin-based Transparency
International (TI) at the same conference, he said: ‘We had nothing
to do with that (referring to Mr Lee’s award). It was our Malaysia
chapter that gave the award. We had nothing to do with it.’
When I pointed out that TI in Berlin had endorsed it, Dr Eigen
replied: ‘Everyone knows that Lee is no democrat. Talk to Tunku
Abdul Aziz about that. He leads the chapter in Malaysia. They are
autonomous as far as setting their own agenda.’
The point I raised in court on this subject was that the process
of vetting the nominee is not made clear. The TIM website, despite
its name, does not make the award process transparent. How much
Tunku Aziz admires Mr Lee is not quite the point.
The episode confirms my view that it is sad that Mr Lee will
cite an award whose process is not transparent and carries little
weight in the eyes of the international community.
Chee Soon Juan
Secretary-General
Singapore Democratic Party