Govt bullied opposition last
year: US report
Straits Times. Feb 2, 1998
THE United States' State Department has said in its latest report
on human rights worldwide that the Singapore Government generally respected
the rights of its citizens last year, but increased its bullying of opposition
politicians.
"The Government stepped up its intimidation of the opposition in 1997, an election year," said the report, available from the State Department's Internet home page .
It said People's Action Party (PAP) leaders filed "a number of potentially ruinous defamation suits against opposition parties and their leaders" after the Jan 2 polls last year.
"The ruling party's continued use of the judicial system for political purposes highlights concerns about the independence of the judiciary in cases that affected members of the opposition, or that had political implications," said the report.
The report noted that a group of PAP leaders, including Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, sued defeated Workers' Party candidate Tang Liang Hong for his responses to their claim that he was an "anti-Christian, anti-English-educated, Chinese-language chauvinist" during the hustings.
Mr Tang, who fled Singapore immediately after the polls, was ordered to pay a record $7.175 million in damages to the PAP leaders.
The High Court's ruling drew mild criticism from the US State Department last May, but the Singapore Government responded by saying that recourse to legal action against defamation was a "democratic and conclusive" way to settle disputes and thus maintain high standards of truth and honesty in politics.
Last November, the Court of Appeal reduced the award against Mr Tang to $3.63 million.
The State Department report also noted the 33 counts of criminal tax evasion against Mr Tang, the seizure of his wife's passport and its later return, and the lawsuits by the same PAP leaders against Workers' Party chief J.B. Jeyaretnam for telling an election rally that Mr Tang had filed police reports against them.
The report said opposition politicians had been unable to challenge the PAP's domination seriously since the late 1960s due to the threat of libel suits, which could lead to bankruptcy, barring them from holding parliamentary seats under Singapore laws.
The annual report also surveys fair trial; freedoms of speech, assembly, religion and travel; as well as political, women's, worker and minority rights.
On human rights violations last year, it noted torture and arbitrary arrest in China, extra-judicial murder and rape in Myanmar, prison ill-treatment in Nigeria and totalitarian repression in Cuba, North Korea and elsewhere.