The terrorists, he warned, were seeking to increase operations in the region. The Prime Minister did not in any way indicate who these terrorists might be. But he did say that the five Singaporeans "recruited" had had the "good sense" to "withdraw contact with the foreign operatives."

He went on to make some broad-brush remarks about the fight against terrorism, regional dangers and Singapore's ties with the United States, and then slipped in the fact that the plot was discovered last year.

The announcement was duly front-paged by the press, who neglected to ask the obvious: Why announce only now a discovery, undoubtedly important, which was made at least 10 months ago?

The government - that is, the ruling People's Action Party (PAP), which has just been returned to power in the November 3 general elections - has always made a point of reminding its citizens that the island nation is vulnerable to regional upheavals, and also vulnerable because of its wealth compared to the rest of Southeast Asia. The media have followed in lockstep to juxtapose the city-state's authoritarian stability against perceived threats - to the north and south lie Malaysia and Indonesia, in the former the largest opposition is the Islamic Party of Malaysia, and the latter is the world's most populous Muslim country and riddled with secessionist movements.

At the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, Singapore is strategically located - it commands the Straits of Malacca, which is one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. Until the recession here deepened earlier this year, over 1300 foreign companies and multinationals operated from Singapore. But the island's ties to the West extend beyond direct investment. Singapore's naval base has one of only two deep-draft piers in Southeast Asia, allowing US aircraft carriers to moor. And it is also home to a US Air Force combat training squadron.

These are the regional and local forces which guide the editorial direction of the Straits Times, Singapore's paper of record, an English daily with a circulation of around 340,000. It's owned by Singapore Press Holdings, the company that publishes eight of the nine newspapers in the island (the ninth is a free commuter paper published by Singapore's broadcast monolith, Media Corporation, itself government-controlled).

In the weeks since October 7, the Straits Times has covered the bombing of Afghanistan with banners reading "Counterstrike Against Terrorism," below which come news agency reports about US military actions, colorful graphics depicting weapons and military tactics and half-page maps showing where bombing runs have been carried out and what the US Department of Defense wants to hit next.

The pictures carried at the top of these pages have tended to be those of US and British warships and warplanes, of US military personnel preparing for missions, of racks of bombs and missiles.

"A bomb for every occasion" ran the title of a large eight-column graphic, which explained the "menu of munitions" that could be used in Afghanistan. A cluster bomb was featured on that graphic, but missing from it was an explanation of what a cluster bomb does to humans. "Boom! A direct hit," said the caption for a photo, a picture of flames shooting up into the sky after a bombing raid.

In its editorials, the Straits Times has called the action against Afghanistan "essentially a campaign for all humankind" and has also said that "if need be, let Mr Bush knock heads to impose peace." The overall tone has, with a few exceptions, been an indignant and self-righteous one. There have been the obligatory calls by government leaders to avoid inflaming communal passions in multiracial Singapore, and every few days the leaders of Muslim and Malay community organizations are quoted. But in Singapore, where 15 percent of the resident population follows Islam, these efforts at media balance read more like products of political correctness rather than a genuine attempt to reflect grassroots feeling.

Why does the content, packaging and delivery of the coverage look as if it were directly imported from, say, CNN's newsdesk, I asked a member of a Muslim civil society group here in Singapore. He gave me a couple of reasons: one, that within the context of Singapore's "liberalism" - which he said is a wholly imported construction - "whatever the USA does must be good; and two, that the notoriously self-censoring local media seeks to propagate an 'alternate reality,' that adequately tackling community reality is not its mission."

Reporting the community reality now needs to include unambiguously the fact that Singapore's Muslims feel increasingly uncomfortable in a post-September 11 world. One rare reference was made to this in a recent letter to the Straits Times. "I applaud your editorial," commented reader Sirhaan Hyder. "You are right in saying that Muslims should not feel that they are under siege or be defensive, following the tragic September 11 incident. But... we are made to feel under siege by your paper's constant practices of prefixing 'Islam' to any act of terrorism, rebellions, bombings, killings, kidnappings and tragedies that happen all over the world."

"Why keep picking on the media," Straits Times editor Leslie Fong retorted, "when the people you should be indignant with, publicly, if need be, are those who give Islam a bad name by resorting to terrorism?"

I asked one Muslim media critic if the island's media reflect a bias against the minority community. "The press in Singapore does not reflect our reality, and I mean ours as Singaporeans and ours as in the Muslim community," he said. "The press and the government walk hand-in-hand. It's the old thesis about a lie repeated many times becoming the truth."

Singapore Press Holdings does have a Malay daily in its stable, Berita Harian ("daily news" in Malay), but many in the Muslim community see it as following the government line rather than listening to the community.

The difference between community thought and the published perspective is best illustrated by comparing the Singaporean Malay paper with its counterparts in Malaysia - the Malaysian Berita Harian, Harian Metro and Utusan Malaysia ("utusan" is messenger).

Almost every day since the start of the US-led strikes on October 7, the Malaysian papers have carried pictures of dead or injured Afghans on their front pages. These have been accompanied by reports from their own correspondents on assignment in Pakistan, and the overall tone of their coverage has been visibly anti-American and anti-British.

While Singapore's Berita Harian uses headlines like "Afghanistan under bombardment for the third day," the Malaysian papers headline their stories with "America bombs a mosque," "America bombs a village, 200 civilians killed" and "America, Britain want to wipe out Muslims in Afghanistan." There is no doubt manipulation at work here, but this point of view resonates not only with the Malay in Malaysia, who make up about 60 per cent of the population there, but also with the Malay in Singapore, though such an admission may be made only privately.

It has not helped that the Straits Times political commentators and columnists have unadvisedly repeated a "call" to "Muslim moderates." The problem with the press here calling for "moderate" Muslims, I was told, is that the Singaporean Muslims will feel that they must call themselves moderate in order to show that they are as much a part of this society as anyone else. "This is what I don't want to see happen, this creation of a problem of identity among the Muslims," said one critic.

It has helped even less that one of the Times' leading political writers, who recently joined the ruling party, is seen as having suggested that there are "extremist" elements within Singapore's Muslim community and that the "moderates" should prevail. Straits Times reader Hyder wrote that he finds "shocking" the manner in which local media has been "fanatically pushing and shoving a religious agenda for the terrorism through various reports, both foreign-sourced and locally manufactured."

The point, however, is that Singapore Press Holdings and its broadcast counterpart, Media Corporation, do have their own agendas to push. The well-known former opposition politician and lawyer, J B Jeyaretnam, once said in parliament that "we pretend we have a national press when we do not... we have a PAP press."

There is enough machinery in place to deliver that push. At Singapore Press Holdings, the executive president is Tjong Yik Min. From 1986 to 1993, Tjong was Singapore's most senior secret policeman, for he ran the feared Internal Security Department, itself a relic of Singapore's colonial past, but now wielded by the PAP government as an effective deterrent to opposition.

He isn't the only one with an ISD past. The Straits Times' most senior political columnist and its Jakarta correspondent are both ex-ISD too. It appears to be an open secret in Singapore's media, but the implications are considerable. Tjong for example was at the helm of the ISD during 1987, the year when 22 Singaporeans were detained for being suspected "Marxists." Some were beaten and tortured while in detention. The charges were subsequently found to be so patently false that the government backed away from them somewhat. But the draconian provisions of Singapore's Internal Security Act remain firmly in place.

Singapore's Muslim community is today feeling besieged even beyond the "climate of fear" that keeps Singapore the way it is: four million people subservient to the will of the ruling party, shackled to their isle by the promise of a standard of living that has become an end in itself.

It is an isle whose rulers have portrayed it as an oasis of calm and competence within a volatile and downright dangerous region, and who have used that portrayal to ruthlessly strengthen capitalist authoritarianism. In this they have been amply aided and abetted by a willing press. But the burden in the end is borne by the average Singaporean, who stays uninformed within and frightened of what lies without.

- Paramita Sarkar is the pseudonym of an independent writer living in Singapore.

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