(Speech of the author, Teo Soh Lung delivered at the launch of her book, Beyond the Blue Gate on Saturday, 26 June 2010 at The Legends, Fort Canning Park, Singapore)
Friends, relatives, Dr Lim Hock Siew, my fellow former ISA detainees, a very good afternoon to all of you. Thank you so much for making time to attend the launch of my book.
I would also like to thank all my friends who have worked so hard to organise this event for me.
Today I am very happy because at long last, a manuscript which I wrote some 20 years ago need not be kept a secret anymore! It is a relief for me because I no longer need to smile and keep a dumb look when friends and young people ask me if I would write about my experience in detention. Now I can tell them that they can read my book to find out what happened in 1987.
Let me tell you why and how this book was written. In a way, I owe it to the ISD.
Before my release from detention in 1990, I asked senior ISD officers if I could take a holiday abroad. They assured me that it would not be a problem and they would give me permission in the shortest possible time. Accordingly, I applied for permission to leave for Australia soon after my release. The ISD asked me to show proof that I was really going abroad. Dutifully, I applied for a visa and booked a return air ticket to Australia. After some time, they rejected my application to leave Singapore.
What could I say to that rejection. My trip had been planned and I had received some money from my sister in Perth. I decided to put the money to good use. With the help of friends, I purchased a computer and learnt to use it. I thought it would be good if I knew how to use the computer as it would help me when I return to legal practice one day. So my friends gave me some free lessons. I learnt to use the computer and indeed it was very useful when I re-started my legal practice. It was while learning how to use the computer, that I decided to write about my prison experience.
In those days, I spent a lot of time reading documents about the marxist conspiracy that I could not read when I was in prison. I was pretty disciplined. I spent a few hours every day writing. I wrote furiously, putting down everything I could remember. The chapters were very long, not like what they are in the book today. I wrote and wrote and when it was done, I asked my good friend, the late Aileen Lau to read it. Thereafter, I just put the manuscript away. No one read the manuscript except Aileen and another friend. Many years later, I took the manuscript out but just could not read it. The secret manuscript however bugged me time and again. Friends and young people ask if I would tell my story. I decided that I must look seriously into the possibility of publishing my account so as to avoid all these queries. And that was one of the reasons why I retired from legal practice several years ago.
But I did nothing until one day, an old friend told me that since I have retired, I should try and write about my prison experience. She volunteered to edit my script. I accepted her offer. For several months, I laboured over the editing of my 20 year old manuscript. I gave my friend instalments of my writing and she was amazed at what I wrote and assured me that it was worthy of publication. Encouraged by her comments, I showed it to a few friends and they too said that it was quite interesting and that I should set the record straight for posterity.
Last year, one of my neighbours informed me that my name was mentioned in the Men in White. He asked if I would give him a lesson on Marxism! I told him that I have not read Marx and wished I am really a Marxist as alleged by the government! Out of curiosity, I decided to borrow the book from the library but before I could do that, my sister in law bought the book for me as a Christmas present! So I flipped the index and found that indeed my name and that of several of my friends were mentioned in the book. The authors did not interview me or my co conspirators. I think they did not even read available documents when writing the book. One glaring error is found at page 437 about my appearance and that of Tang Fong Har and Francis Seow before the Select Committee on the Legal Profession Amendment Bill. I quote the paragraph:
“Both Teo and Tang, together with Seow and several other witnesses, appeared at the select committee hearing at the Parliament House Annexe in October before a panel chaired by the speaker of parliament, Yeoh Ghim Seng. They faced relentless questioning by Lee, law minister E W Barker and Jayakumar. The proceedings, held over two days, were televised. At the end of the hearing, all were agreed that the Law Society should keep out of politics.”
If the authors had bothered to read the official report of the select committee, they would have discovered that the relentless questioning of the three of us was by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew alone.
Sometime in 2007, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew advised his MPs on the writing of memoirs. He said:
“When writing memoirs, you are talking to posterity. Among them will be historians who will check what you write against the accounts of others. Do not shade the past.”
My book is my account of what happened in 1987 and what I did before that. I leave you to form your own conclusion as to who is telling the truth, the men in white or me.
The alleged marxist conspiracy which saw the arrest and imprisonment without trial of 24 people in 1987 and 1988 have caused tremendous hardship and misery to many. Some of those arrested were young polytechnic students, 16 or 17 years old. You can imagine the trauma they experienced when they were arrested. Today, six of the 24 have left Singapore and several friends who were accused of instigating us are now living in exile. Many of us still suffer from the trauma of arrest and imprisonment and like rape victims, some still cannot speak about their experience to their families. They would rather be left alone and not be reminded of the episode.
As a victim of the ISA, and many in this audience are also victims, indeed victims who have suffered much more than me, I call for the ISA to be abolished. The ISA and its predecessors, the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance and the Emergency Regulations have destroyed and damaged many lives from British colonial days till today. We do not know how many have suffered under the ISA but it would not be wrong to estimate the figure as several thousands. To imprison a person without trial for an indefinite period of time is cruel and inhuman. Singapore as a rich first world nation cannot tolerate such a law. As early as 1955, Lee Kuan Yew in arguing against the passage of the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance said eloquently in the legislative assembly:-
“… If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him when you cannot charge him with any offence against any written law – if that is not what we have always cried out against the Fascist States – then what is it?”
(Hansard September 1955 Col 726)
Further in his speech he said:
“I believe that for seven years now we have developed an Emergency mentality. Many people believe that the only way to keep down any form of agitation, which anybody may have exploited for their own personal or political ends, is by the use of repressive laws, more policemen, and more arrests. But this has been proved false after seven years. I hate to think that after another three or four years, or whenever it may be when the Chief Minister decides to go back to the people, that it is again to be proved false. It is such a futile answer to the Communist challenge. If we are to survive as a free democracy, then we must be prepared, in principle, to concede to our enemies – even those who do not subscribe to our views – as much constitutional right as you concede yourself. My plea – to quote from someone in another context – is that the time has come in Malaya for an agonising reappraisal of strategy and strength. To go blindly in the hope that somehow or the other suppression can prevent latent social, economic and political discontents from manifesting themselves and disrupting the structure of society is a piece of folly to which my Party does not subscribe.”
It is my sincere hope that the Senior Minister will today reflect on what he said and believed in 1955. More repressive laws, more policemen and more arrests can never prevent latent social economic and political discontents from manifesting themselves and disrupting the structure of society.
Thank you.
