ORAL ANSWERS TO QUESTIONS - REPORT OF FOREIGN CORRESPONDENTS ON DETENTION OF LOCAL JOURNALISTS
No government or international financiers have told us officially or unofficially that they have lost confidence in the Singapore Government as a result of the recent arrests in Singapore. So I do not know what Mr Shawcross is talking about. As regards the Member's second half of the question, I am not quite sure what the hon. Member means when he asks whether "foreign correspondents resident in Singapore have any role to play in the foreign relations of the Republic." Perhaps what the Member has in mind is, to me, the astonishing conduct of some foreign newsmen in Singapore and the even more astonishing reaction of certain British publications to the arrest and confessions of Mr Arun and Mr Raman, among others. The coverage in a number of British papers of the public statements of Arun and Raman have not been so much factual reports as sceptical and selective evaluations of what was said by them. The general tenor of the reports was such as to leave in the minds of their readers the impressions that the confessions were rigged and that the people arrested were not really communists or communist supporters but victims of PAP intolerance. Yet, Mr Speaker, Sir, when the foreign press was invited to question Arun and Raman over TV, their silence was deafening. If Western pressmen really believed that the whole show was stage-managed, that the two gentlemen concerned had been either tortured or terrorised into admitting things they had not done, then one would have thought that here was an opportunity for the Western pressmen to expose by sharp and in-depth questioning of the two that the whole thing was rigged. Here was an opportunity. Sir, I can think of many occasions in Europe and America when newsmen were not averse to coming into TV studios, were not deterred by studio lights and batteries of TV cameras from grilling subjects who could provide them with news and, in this case, indeed most startling news had the newsmen been able to expose these confessions as a fraud. It was not that we had put any kind of restraints on the questions the newsmen could ask. There were none. In fact, the Chairman. Mr James Fu, had repeatedly asked the foreign pressmen to put questions and all this was greeted with what I can only describe as "studied silence". Clearly, the foreign newsmen had come determined and convinced that the cause of press freedom or some other cause could best be served by not being provoked into asking questions. This, in my view, is odd behaviour for men who earn their bread and butter and their reputation by asking awkward questions. I can only make a guess at this inexplicable lack of curiosity over confessions which had already been portrayed by sections of the Western press as manifestations of a police state. My guess, Mr Speaker, is that the Western newsmen sensed from the evidence given to them that an intense grilling of Mr Arun and Mr Raman, far from weakening the Government's case, would only have strengthened it. It would have shattered the myth so elaborately built up in sections of the Western press that the PAP Government was dedicated to stamping out all dissent, crushing all political opponents and building up a totalitarian state. Had there been an intense cross-questioning by foreign pressmen of Arun and Raman, what would have in fact emerged was that we had detained a journalist who had knowingly played along with the communists, and a lawyer with affiliations with British Marxists, not averse, according to Mr Raman, to using violence to bring down the PAP Government. Had the Western newsmen actively participated in the interview, then they would have had to report it as such and report what actually happened and that would have left an impression in the minds of readers in the Western world that the detention was justified. So better keep quiet and leave undisturbed the impression that the TV press conference was rigged. Hence The Times of 18th March could with apparent honesty editorialise as follows: "The televised statements by Mr Raman and Mr Senkuttuvan, both of them hollow-sounding recitals with a dictated air - by whatever means they were extracted ...", That is, "the whole thing is phoney. Do not question. Just report what you think happened." Incidentally, Sir, the same paper dismissed the recent Singapore general elections in a couple of obscure paragraphs. It would not have suited The Times' carefully nurtured image of a tyrannical PAP Government to have given importance to the fact that it had instead won all seats for the third time and with an increased majority of the votes cast. So tuck it away. Similarly, thanks to the silence of the Western pressmen, the Economist of 19th March, the next day, permitted itself this little bit of detached comment, and I quote: "Roll up for yet another public showing of the uglier face of Singapore's police state. On March 12. the Government persuaded two of the men arrested ... to confess to the error of their ways in a press conference on live television." Neither of the two journals concerned mentioned the pertinent fact that the Western pressmen were there at the conference and that they had not made the slightest attempt through interview to get at the facts, to get at the truth. Sir, the truth had already been arrived at before the press conference in the editorial offices in London and any fresh and conflicting evidence would be most unwelcome. Since the PAP Government and the voters of Singapore appear to be adamant in doing what they think is good for Singapore, the Sunday Times and Mr Shawcross have now carried British journalism into the murkier grounds of blackmail. Since they cannot persuade us by threats, what about blackmail. So he warned Singapore that (and I quote): "as Singapore depends on the international money market for its prosperity (the arrests) can prove counterproductive." Telling us if we do not do what they say we must do, no more investments. That is how I read it. Mr Shawcross wants us to believe that were Singapore to release known and self-confessed Communists, stop broadcasting revelations by Communists and pro-Communists how they go about their furtive business of subversion, give immunity to those who, under cover of free speech, breach the laws of libel and slander and scrap the detention laws for which we have popular mandate then, according to Mr Shawcross, foreign investors would be streaming into Singapore, pockets full of money and with joy in their hearts. Perhaps Mr Shawcross has a pretty low opinion of Asian intelligence and especially of Singapore intelligence. On the contrary it is because we have not been following Mr Shawcross' advice that foreign investors have shown a growing interest in Singapore and increasing nervousness about those countries where the remedies Mr Shawcross suggests have been applied. Mr Speaker, Sir, I have my own views as to why certain sections of the Western press, and in particular the British press, are going beyond the bounds of journalism to pressurise the Singapore Government into adopting policies which the people of Singapore know would bring back the lawlessness, violence, rioting, and economic stagnation which were features when the Communists and pro-Communists were allowed to run around. The Western press knows, including the Western pressmen here, that we are not crushing opposition. In the recent elections there were any number of parties. We are not crushing opposition which is lawful and constitutional but Communist opposition which is unlawful, and for the suppression of which we have full mandate from the people. And yet they go back, even now, and say we are crushing opposition, never saying we are crushing Communist opposition. So, Mr Speaker, Sir, under the pretence of upholding human rights and democracy in darkest Singapore, what this section of the press, of the British press in particular, is agitating for through distortion and even blackmail is rights for Communists and pro-Communists to run around once again in Singapore knowing full well what the consequences would be for Singapore. Is it that they want a revival of the old Singapore? Why is the press doing this? Well, Mr Speaker, that is another story for some other time. Are then the foreign correspondents resident in Singapore suspect? In my view, and I know many of them, most of them are just being straightforward newsmen. But some presumably are specially selected by their editors, including local journalists, for more than mere reporting. For example, Mr Derek Davies of the Far Eastern Economic Review has a flair (it must have been a well developed one, a very unusual flair) for choosing local malcontents for correspondents. I must assume that Mr Davies has carefully assessed their character before appointing them. He must therefore know that he will get biased, blunted and false reports from them. Mr Speaker, you may recollect a British press baron, Lord Northcliffe, if I am right, who said he never had to tell his editor what to write because the man he chose made this unnecessary. Or as a British poet put it more pungently (and I quote): `You cannot, thank God Bribe or twist A British journalist But seeing what the fellow will do Unbribed There's no occasion to.'