f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or
Correspondence
The Constitution does not address privacy rights. The Government
generally respected the privacy of homes and families; however, it
has a pervasive influence over civic and economic life and
sometimes uses its broad discretionary powers to infringe on these
rights. Normally the police must have a warrant issued by a court
to conduct a search; however, they may search a person, home, or a
property without a warrant if they decide that such a search is
necessary to preserve evidence. The Government has wide-ranging
discretionary powers under the ISA, CLA, MDA, and UPA to conduct
searches without a warrant if it determines that national security,
public safety and order, or the public interest is at risk.
Defendants may request judicial review of such searches.
Law enforcement agencies, including the Internal Security
Department and the Corrupt Practices Investigation Board, have
extensive networks for gathering information and conducting
surveillance, and highly sophisticated capabilities to monitor
telephone and other private conversations. No court warrants are
required for such operations. It is believed that the authorities
routinely monitor telephone conversations and the use of the
Internet; however, there were no confirmed reports of such
practices during the year. The law permits government monitoring of
Internet use. It is widely believed that the authorities routinely
conduct surveillance on some opposition politicians and other
government critics; however, no such reports were substantiated
during the year.
In pursuit of what it considers the public interest, the Government
generally enforces ethnic ratios for publicly subsidized housing,
where the majority of citizens live and own their own units. The
policy is designed to achieve an ethnic mix more or less in
proportion to that in society at large (see Sections 1.d. and 5).
When a housing development is at or near the limit for a particular
ethnic group, the policy could mean owners find it difficult to
sell their apartments, or must sell at a lower price.
Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:
a. Freedom of Speech and Press
The Constitution provides for freedom of speech and freedom of
expression but permits official restrictions on these rights, and,
in practice, the Government significantly restricted freedom of
speech and freedom of the press. The Government's authoritarian
style fostered an atmosphere inimical to free speech and a free
press. Government intimidation and pressure to conform resulted in
the practice of self-censorship among journalists; however, there
continued to be some limited progress towards greater openness
during the year, including a moderate level of ongoing debate in
newspapers and Internet chat groups on various public issues.
Under the ISA, the Government may restrict or place conditions on
publications that incite violence, counsel disobedience to the law,
have the potential to arouse tensions in the country's diverse
population, or might threaten national interests, national
security, or public order. While the ISA has not been invoked in
recent years against political opponents of the Government,
political opposition and criticism remained restricted by the
Government's authority to define these powers broadly. Occasional
government references to speech that it considered "out-of-bounds"
were understood to be implicit threats to invoke the ISA; however,
these limits are not codified, and journalists and others generally
believed these limitations have shifted toward greater tolerance in
recent years.
The country's defamation laws make it relatively easy for
plaintiffs to win substantial judgments for damages and legal
costs. Conviction on criminal defamation charges can result in a
prison sentence of up to 2 years, a fine, or both. Threats of
defamation actions often persuade newspapers and others to
apologize and pay damages for perceived slights, a situation which
prompts general caution in expressing criticisms. Critics charged
that government leaders used defamation lawsuits or threats of such
actions to discourage public criticism and intimidate opposition
politicians and the press. The unbroken success of government
leaders' suits in the last decade has fostered public caution about
political speech and a culture of self-censorship within the news
media, and has inhibited opposition politics. During the last
decade, ruling party leaders sued opposition politicians J.B.
Jeyaretnam, Chee Soon Juan, and Tang Liang Hong for defamation
several times. The Government argued that these individuals had
repeatedly defamed ruling party leaders, who then acted to clear
their names. At the end of 2001, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew and
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong sued opposition leader Chee Soon Juan
for defamation, based upon comments Chee made during a campaign
stop prior to the November 2001 general election. During the 2001
campaign, Chee issued a public apology, which he later retracted,
then countersued the Senior Minister for calling him a "liar" and a
"cheat." In August 2002, a court ruled that Chee's earlier
statements effectively had conceded the defamation charges, but
ordered a hearing to set the amount of damages. Chee represented
himself in the hearing after being refused permission to retain
foreign counsel (see Section 1.e.). The court has yet to
decide the amount Chee will have to pay the two
ministers.
In 2002, the Bloomberg news service publicly apologized and agreed
to pay $340,000 (S$595,000) in damages to Prime Minister Goh and
Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew for an Internet-distributed Bloomberg
column that accused them of nepotism. The column alleged that Ms.
Ho Ching, Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong's wife, was
promoted to the senior position in the main government investment
holding company because of her relationship with the senior
leadership. Also in 2002, police seized the computers of two men as
part of a formal investigation into whether their Internet postings
the previous month had constituted criminal defamation. These
postings also had raised the issue of nepotism. One of the men,
Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff, later left the country for Australia,
asserting that the country's judicial system was biased
politically. The other man complained that, 2 weeks after
seizure of his computer, authorities had compelled him to stay in a
mental facility for more than a week; authorities claimed his wife
requested that he be committed to the facility. In 2001,
other criminal charges against the man for an Internet posting were
dropped after a government consultant told the court he had
longstanding mental problems, and his wife agreed to send him for
treatment. No further developments in the police investigations
were reported at year's end.
In 2001, the SBA ordered Sintercom, which ran an online discussion
forum that included some political postings, to register with the
authorities as a political website. Registration as a political
site underlined the responsibility of organizers to ensure that
site content complied with the Code of Conduct. After an
unsuccessful appeal, Sintercom complied with the request. Soon
thereafter, the founder and sponsor of the site shut it down,
citing fatigue after 7 years on the job. In May 2002, an anonymous
editor resurrected the Sintercom website, hosting it on servers
outside of the country. The site was still operating at year's
end.
