Singapore happily shoots itself in the foot.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Alan Shadrake, the renowned British author, was arrested some weeks ago in Singapore for writing a book Singapore did not like. That itself was a big mistake. The world over has come to hear of it by now and has condemned it. Singapore's reputation as a police state intolerant of dissent has gone down ever further by 2 notches.

I would have thought Singapore would have realised they are hurting themselves, quickly dealt with him, and shipped him out, to save even further embarrassment.

But no, that is not what Singapore wants. It seems adamant to want to hurt itself even more. Instead of a quick trial, and deportation, they have postponed the case for 3 weeks, with a yet to be determined court date, while Shadrake remains in Singapore attracting even more publicity not only locally but also in the remotest parts of the world to which the shameful news may not have yet spread, perhaps to Azerbaijan or Siberia! Why, I really cannot understand.

Anyone with any sense of decency and common sense in this day and age will see Singapore has no leg to stand on in this. You simply don't go around arresting an author of a book merely for what he wrote. Civilized countries today have what is known as freedom of expression. You may be arrested in countries like Iran, North Korea, China or Burma, but they are countries which have never claimed to be democracies.

But for Singapore which claims to be a first world democracy (according to Lee Kuan Yew), which by the way we know it is not; to be deliberately behaving in this rather inexplicable manner by arresting an author for what he said in a book and then keeping him there for weeks and months, as if to make sure that the entire world knows about it, does not make sense at all.

Singapore in it's determination to have the entire world know about the arrest is in fact doing it's minuscule political opposition a great deal of good. The opposition, including myself, have been trying hard to expose Singapore for what it is, a one party state dictatorship under the grip of the aging Lee Kuan Yew and his son, through the government's smoke screen of outright lies and half truths put out by the state controlled media.

Singapore, by holding Alan Shadrake in Singapore with his passport confiscated, for a long time thereby allowing the world to know the complete details of his totally unjustifiable arrest, has been an unexpected blessing once again for all those who love freedom for Singapore.

Thank you, you bunch of Singaporean bullies for telling our side of the story. The longer you keep him detained in Singapore the better the story.

Gopalan Nair
39737 Paseo Padre Parkway, Suite A1
Fremont, CA 94538, USA
Tel: 510 657 6107
Fax: 510 657 6914
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/

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