He said action was taken against a handful of Myanmese in the republic after they persistently defied local laws in pursuing their political agenda over the past one year.

Wong said this in a written reply to a question raised in Parliament yesterday whether there had been any political pressure or requests from Myanmar to clamp down on anti-junta activists in Singapore and to deny residence to these activists.

In the reply which was released today, Wong mentioned one incident where a group of Myanmar nationals staged an illegal street protest outside a hotel during the ASEAN Summit held in Singapore last November.

He said the illegal protest was an unnecessary distraction to Singapore’s security forces and could have compromised the security arrangements for the summit delegates, some of whom were heads of ASEAN governments.

He said the protesters also repeatedly refused to heed police’s advice to use lawful channels to express their views and proceeded to stage demonstrations knowing that they were not permitted to do so. Wong said Singapore laws applied to everyone, whether local or foreign, adding that while the vast majority of the Myanmese community was law abiding, some chose to break the law and yet defiantly demanded the right to stay in Singapore as an entitlement.

The minister said they tried to politicise the issue through the media and through uninformed foreign groups and in the process distorting the actions to remove them from Singapore as being politically motivated. Wong said they hoped that political pressure would force the authorities to accede to their demands to continuing staying in Singapore. He said the immigration authority had rightly decided that such persons were undesirable and that they should leave Singapore upon the expiry of their present immigration passes. – BERNAMA

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