The Fateful Knock Sunday, Jul 22 2007

The Fateful Knock: Internal Security Acts and Threats to Human Rights

by Michael Cheng, Commentaries, FORUM-ASIA
Friday, 20 July 2007

“The fateful knock came in the middle of the night, bringing me into a life without light. They took me away from my family. They threw away my rights and my dignity.”

Draconian Internal Security Acts (ISA) have long been used by governments to stifle peaceful political dissent. One of the more unfortunate legacies from British times, such acts are still in use in countries such as Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei.

Reginald Hugh Hickling, the British lawyer who first drafted the ISA, wrote in 1989, “I could not imagine then that the time would come when the power of detention […] would be used against political opponents, welfare workers and others dedicated to nonviolent, peaceful activities”.

ISAs are laws allowing the government to detain for a practically indefinite period anyone suspected of posing a threat to national security. According to critics, it is basically a free pass for the government to arrest anyone it likes, without any judicial review whatsoever. Considering the amount of criticisms levelled against ISAs, and the available evidence pointing to ISAs as a severe abuse of human rights and civil liberties, it is troubling to note that Thailand and the Philippines are now considering installing similar laws.

“The ISA has been kept in use all this time mainly because it is a very convenient tool at the disposal of the ruling coalition. It has served as an instrument of terror of the state and used consistently against dissidents who have defended the democratic and human rights of the Malaysian people,” said Dr Kua Kia Soong in 2005. He is a noted social scientist who is on the board of directors of the Voice of the Malaysian People or SUARAM, a leading human-rights organisation.

Originally created and used as a powerful weapon to bludgeon communist insurgencies in British colonial times, governments have used ISAs against political freedom and freedom of expression.

In Operation Lalang in 1987, 106 people were detained in Malaysia under the ISA for allegedly being involved in activities “prejudicial to the security of Malaysia.” The detained included Lim Kit Siang, leader of the opposition, and Dr Chandra Muzaffar, a prominent human rights activist (both detained for two years), as well as university lecturers, environmentalists, businesspeople and some members of the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO); all were critical of the government.

In April 2001, prior to a planned demonstration to mark the second anniversary of the sentencing of prisoner-of-conscience Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysian police detained nine opposition activists and a human rights defender under the ISA.

Chia Thye Poh, a former member of parliament for the Barisan Sosialis Party in Singapore, was detained without trial in 1966 for 23 years, making him the second longest serving prisoner-of-conscience at the time, after Nelson Mandela. Until today, he has denied government claims of being a communist.

It is worth noting that in 1962 (before Singapore’s independence), then Malaysian Prime Minister Tungku Abdul Rahman said that Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew “was taking advantage of an atmosphere of urgency to include a number of political opponents in lists of [ISA] arrests on purely political grounds.”

In 1987, 22 Singaporeans were detained for alleged involvement in a Marxist conspiracy. Most of these were English-educated professionals, hardly fitting the profile of those engaged in such activities at the time. The state claimed that they were out to topple the government by illegal means. Critics saw it as a political clampdown, especially when it came to light that many of those detained were volunteers or were in some way involved with the alternative Workers’ Party.

Today, with 9/11 casting its long shadow around the world, governments have justified use of ISAs on counter-terrorism grounds. There are currently around 40 terror suspects under detention in Singapore. In Malaysia, more than 100 terror suspects have been detained since 2000. None have been charged in a court of law. None have had access to legal counsel.

The ISA’s impact on Singapore society is a lamentable one. Its effect on stifling political dissent and freedom of expression is undeniable. At political activities not officially sanctioned by the government (rare as they are), it is not uncommon to start looking around to try and spot the officers from the Internal Security Department (ISD). Terms such as ‘ISA’ and ‘ISD’ in conversations whispered around the island still spark a certain morbid fascination. The climate of fear generated by the use of the ISA in the past have deterred many today from political activities.

Ms Braema Mathi, former president of Transient Workers Count Too (TWC2) put it succinctly, “What got ingrained was the power of the state and the instruments that the state could use. What we embraced was fear. This kind of thing takes a lot of time to shed.”

Think Centre President Sinapan Samydorai notes, “’If the intention was to break the backbone of a social awakening of people who could become politically active, then I think they [the government] – more or less – achieved it.”

ISAs are a prime example of unjust laws that have no place in a democracy. Any basic premise of innocence until proven guilty is thrown out the window. The government does not bring charges against a suspect in a court of law. How then does a suspect have access to legal redress?The suspects are denied access to lawyers, family visits and independent medical care. They are also at grave risk of police brutality and abusive interrogation methods. Numerous accounts exist of humiliating verbal and physical abuse.

Incredibly, there are some who do not realise, or choose to disregard, the fact that ISAs are unconstitutional. As members of the United Nations, states have an inherent obligation to respect and observe all UN Conventions. Thailand and the Philippines, for instance, have even ratified the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. They are clearly going against the grain of internationally accepted behaviour. In showing no regard for the conventions signed, the governments have also brought down their standing in the international community.

Governments are threatening to violate human rights and deprive citizens of their civil liberties by enacting anti-terror bills and ISAs. We need to be constantly aware and wary. In the global war against terror, it is easy to be swept up or intimidated by government rhetoric. We must never give the slightest inch in allowing our governments to embark on actions that threaten our human rights.

There are now movements in several countries campaigning for the abolishment of ISAs. If civil society does not speak up against ISAs, rights will continue to be eroded. Governments will be given the right to knock on your door and take you away, removing all human dignity and rights.

Michael Cheng is the Deputy Secretary of Think Centre, a FORUM-ASIA member and an NGO in Singapore that aims to critically examine issues related to political development, democracy, rule of law, human rights and civil society. Think Centre’s activities include research, publishing, organizing events and networking.

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Taking it at face value and keeping quiet AND Singapore’s Guantanamo

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Eaten By Singapore Sunday, Jul 22 2007

by Stephen Mayne, 22 July 2007, Opinion, The Age

WHEN shareholders in Perth-based energy utility Alinta Ltd gather to vote on the $15 billion carve-up of the company on August 13, few of them will realise the remarkable historical event they will trigger.

In accepting $4.5 billion of cash from Singapore Power for a suite of Australian electricity and gas distribution assets, Alinta shareholders will lift the total value of Australian business assets controlled by the Singapore Government to almost $30 billion.

This will exceed the value of commercial assets owned by our own Federal Government, which is surely an unprecedented situation for any First World country. How can a foreign power own more of Australia than our own government?

While ordinary Singaporeans have limited democratic rights and still don’t enjoy benefits such as Australia’s minimum wage (the world’s highest), the Singapore state has amassed an empire worth more than $200 billion — and it has now put more of it into Australia than any other country.

The investments come from two discreet vehicles. The $100 billion-plus Government Investment Corporation (GIC) invests Singapore’s foreign reserves around the world while Temasek Holdings owns the shares in government-controlled businesses such as Singapore Airlines, Singapore Power, Singtel and the giant DBS Holdings financial conglomerate.

Few people realise how much these two vehicles have ploughed into Australia since 1995, buying many sensitive and prestigious assets such as Optus, Myer Melbourne and large parts of the old State Electricity Commission of Victoria.

This compares starkly with the Howard Government, which has raised about $65 billion from privatisation — the biggest chunks coming from selling 83 per cent of Telstra ($45 billion), 50.1 per cent of the Commonwealth Bank ($5.15 billion) and the nation’s airports ($8.5 billion).

With Medibank Private also slated for sale next year, the Government is left with only Australia Post, which made a net profit of $370 million in 2005-06 and is therefore worth about $7 billion. The residual 17 per cent stake in Telstra is worth $10 billion but the Government doesn’t control it.

While other nations such as China, Singapore, Russia, Korea, Kuwait and Norway build up huge sovereign funds, Australia, with its world-beating dowry of natural assets, still has a Federal Government with a negative net worth of $10 billion in the middle of an unprecedented commodities boom.

Even including the $52 billion in the Future Fund and all land and defence assets, these assets do not exceed the $50 billion in outstanding federal debt and $111 billion in unfunded superannuation liabilities as at June 30, 2007.

The contrast with Singapore is stark indeed. This island nation of just 4.4 million people in a land mass broadly equivalent to Melbourne has amassed vast public wealth, although its private wealth is nowhere near the $8130 billion that the federal Treasury and Australian Bureau of Statistics estimate Australia’s 21 million citizens have accumulated.

So how did this happen? It all started when Singapore Airlines wanted to buy the cornerstone 25 per cent stake in Qantas offered by the Keating Government in 1993, but lost out to British Airways. It took the defeat very badly.

Its first major successful move came in 1995 when a Singapore government body, Capita Land, bought a controlling interest in Australand, the property developer that built the Commonwealth Games village. This stake is now worth $1.1 billion.

After staying out of the original $30 billion energy sector privatisation program in Victoria, Singapore Power, which is fully owned by the state, picked up the monopoly electricity transmission business Powernet for $2.1 billion in June 2000.

This was quickly followed by Singtel’s $14 billion bid for Optus in 2001. Singtel is 56 per cent government-owned, so Optus is now more publicly owned than Telstra — albeit by a foreign power. I, for one, switched my mobile phone contract from Optus to Telstra as a small consumer protest when Australian drug trafficker Van Nguyen was executed by the immovable Singapore authorities in 2005.

The next big bite was Singapore Power’s $5.1 billion acquisition of TXU’s Australian energy portfolio in April 2004, although $2.2 billion of retail and generation assets were on-sold to China Light & Power in March 2005. Late in 2005, 49 per cent of the remaining Australian power assets were floated in a vehicle called SP Ausnet, raising $1.3 billion.

This reduced the total power sector investment to $3.8 billion, but now we have the huge Alinta deal in which Singapore Power is offering $4.5 billion in cash to become the monopoly gas distributor in NSW and the largest distributor of electricity in Victoria.

It will even own 50 per cent of ActewAGL — the company that keeps the lights on at Parliament House in Canberra.

Coinciding with the Alinta deal has been a recent splurge of property investments. Frank Lowy sold to GIC a 50 per cent stake in Westfield Parramatta, Australia’s third-most valuable shopping centre, for $717 million in May.

An even more prestigious purchase last month was the Myer Melbourne complex, which is now one-third owned by GIC after it teamed up with the Myer family and the Commonwealth Bank to buy it for $600 million.

GIC already owns the Park Hyatt hotel in Melbourne, along with Sydney’s Queen Victoria Building and the Strand Arcade, and there’s been recent press speculation that it will buy into Westfield’s Doncaster Shoppingtown to help fund a $400 million redevelopment.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Even child-care behemoth ABC Learning, which receives $3 million a week from Australian taxpayers to look after 40,000 children and has former children’s minister Larry Anthony on its board, this month issued 12 per cent of its shares to Temasek for $401 million.

In some countries, child care is provided by the state, yet our Government is now funding a company which has a foreign government as its largest shareholder to deliver this service. All this must make for interesting discussions when John Howard catches up with his Singaporean counterpart, Lee Hsien Loong, or his autocratic father, Lee Kuan Yew, who is still “GIC chairman minister mentor” at the ripe old age of 83.

Peter Costello was busily showing Lee Kuan Yew around Federal Parliament a few weeks ago and, given the 2003 Free Trade Agreement, it’s fair to assume relations remain close.

The same can’t be said for Singapore and Thailand. In January 2006, Temasek bought control of Shin Corp — the family company of Thailand’s former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra — for $US1.9 billion ($A2.1 billion) in a deal that sparked widespread protests and a military coup.

The generals have since crippled Shin Corp’s telecoms and satellite business to the point where Singapore has dropped well over $1.5 billion and relations between the two countries are severely strained.

Could Singapore’s financial imperialism ever cause tensions here? The only time Singapore has faced any takeover resistance in Australia was in 2000 when Peter Costello blocked a proposed bid for Westpac by financial conglomerate DBS Holdings, which is 28 per cent owned by Temasek.

However, Singapore Airlines remains bitter about losing almost $500 million in the Ansett collapse and being denied access to the lucrative Pacific route, which might explain why it is now funding Tiger Airways’ assault on the Australian domestic market in an attempt to damage Qantas.

Planes, child-care centres, shopping centres, department stores, satellites, hotels, power lines, gas pipelines and mobile phones: the Singapore Government owns all that and more in Australia yet this is barely mentioned in public debate.

Does anybody else out there feel a little uneasy about this phenomenon, especially given the secretive, autocratic and undemocratic tendencies of the Singapore Government?

Australian companies, let alone our Government, would never be allowed to buy equivalent assets in Singapore. And all this investment didn’t even give us the leverage to save Van Nguyen from the gallows.

Stephen Mayne was founder of Crikey.com and Kennett government spin doctor responsible for privatisation from 1992-1994.

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