Singapore ranked 141 out of 169 in press freedom
Reporters Without Borders
Singapore - Annual report 2007
Area: 620 sq. km.
Population: 4,326,000.
Languages: English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil.
Head of government: Lee Hsien Loong.
The government headed by Lee Hsien Loong, with his father Lee Kuan
Yew behind the scenes, has been engaged in a fierce battle with
several foreign publications and at the same time has cracked down
on Singaporean bloggers and cyber dissidents.
While hosting a World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF)
meeting in October 2006, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong spoke out
against the international media, which he said were trying to
impose their norms and their standards on the country in relation
to freedom of expression. The head of government justified control
on the press in comments in July when he said that Asian countries
who got the best financial results were those whose media was less
aggressive.
The opposition was given very little opportunity to get its message
across during the legislative election campaign in May. The
Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) was given two and a half minutes
air time on TV channels while many pro-government media spread
false information about opposition candidates. And the government
used a number of ruses to silence critical voices. Before the
campaign, they banned political podcasts which are increasingly
popular in Singapore.
Under threat of a defamation suit brought by both father and son
Lee, the printer of The New Democrat, the SDP newsletter, was
forced in April to apologise and promise not to print it again. To
intimidate him still further, local pro-government newspapers
published rumours about his private life. Police summoned SDP
secretary general Chee Soon Juan on several occasions for selling
The New Democrat in the street.
After the ruling PAP comfortably won the election, one leader, Baey
Yam Keng speaking in November called for more debate in the
national media. When I read commentaries in the press and those
published on blogs, it seems to me as though they come from two
different populations speaking about two different countries, he
said. There was no reaction from the government.
The authorities tried to browbeat the foreign press into submission
in 2006, in particular the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER).
After the paper carried an article about opposition leader Chee
Soon Juan, which it called the countrys martyr because of the
numerous legal suits which he has had to face, the prime minister
unleashed a series of retaliatory measures against the Hong
Kong-based FEER. Lee Hsien Loong and his father brought a
defamation case at the end of August against editor Hugo Restall
and the magazines publisher. They were also told to conform to
section 23 of the law on newspapers and the written press which
obliges foreign media to recruit a legal representative in the
country and to pay a deposit of 200,000 Singapore dollars (100,000
euros). Four other English-language newspapers the International
Herald Tribune, Time, the Financial Times and Newsweek, all
received instructions to comply with the same rules when their
licence expired. The FEER decided not to give in and, on the
contrary, its editor announced that he planned to fight the
government in the courts. At the end of September the FEER was
banned from circulating in Singapore.
The Singaporean press is relatively independent as far as regional
and international news goes. But it clearly operates
self-censorship on domestic politics. In July the weekly column of
blogger Lee Kin Mun, alias "mr brown", in the daily Today was axed
after a criticism of a member of the government. The blogger had
received several warnings.
In 2006, the government struck hard at the Internet. Several legal
cases were launched for posting news, podcasts or videos on the
Web. SDP activist Yap Keng Ho was sentenced in November to a fine
of 2,000 dollars for posting a video of an illegal gathering of his
party on his blog. Since the blogger refused to pay the fine, it
was commuted to a prison sentence and he was jailed the same day
for a period of ten days.
http://www.singaporedemocrat.org/articlersf5.html
