Ladies and Gentlemen,
The respected Foreign Policy Magazine, Washington DC Magazine of May 07, 2010, has voted Gopalan Nair one of the "World's Top Dissidents". Among others voted are Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma; Simar Samer, Afghanistan; Arnold Tsunga, Zimbabwe; Anwar Ibrahim, Malaysia; Shirin Ebadi, Iran; and Gopalan Nair, Singapore.
This is what Foreign Policy Magazine said about Gopalan Nair, Singapore:
Gopalan Nair: Nair, a former opposition politician, is known throughout Singapore's embattled blogosphere for his fierce promotion of human rights and blunt criticism of founding leader and current "minister mentor" Lee Kuan Yew. In September 2008, Nair was sentenced to three months in jail for defaming a judge in a blog entry. On March 6, he published a hoax post on his blog indicating that Lee had suffered a heart attack and had been brought to Singapore General Hospital. Nair's motive? It was, he says, "a deliberate attempt to highlight how tenuous Singapore really is, with all power in the island vested in one man, and the dire consequences to the island of his parting. And especially so as [Lee] is 87." Nair lives in California and has been a U.S. citizen since 2004.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/05/07/the_worlds_top_dissidents?page=0,6
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/
Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.
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17 comments:
Congrats! It's a great honor indeed! Well done!
This kind of recognition is invaluable.
Thank you Gopalan Nair for your tiredness effort in keeping the tiny freedom flame alight for Singaporeans.
I am sure America is proud to have an adopted citizen like you.
congrats
Haha, one in the eye for LKY and well deserved, Gopalan! You sail in illustrious company. See? If you'd quit blogging like you announced you were going to some time ago, you'd never have known that non-Singaporeans were keeping an eye out for you.
For them to have acknowledged you as a true 'dissident' and not merely a 'protestor' speaks volumes about the rigid and repressive controls over the social, economic and political life of the Republic of Singapore, courtesy of one Lee Kuan Yew, tin-pot tyrant. It's getting more and more difficult for him to don the fig-leaf of democracy. More power to your elbow, mate.
America loves you, and Singaporeans are in awe of you. Slowly but surely, those of us in the US are finding out about the Singapore we never knew existed. How dare the Singaporean government do what they did to you, and others that speak out. You should be listed as a Hero in modern times. You just do not realize the many people that your blog actually reaches.
Well done!
Foreign Policy is a well regarded magazine in our local academic community - see what the NUS leadership said about their awards....
http://newshub.nus.edu.sg/headlines/1110/thinkers_29Nov10.php
Congratulations on being recognized by Foreign Policy as one of the "brave men and women leading the global fight for freedom and democracy."
Pity that the Empress, the real power behind the throne, was not around to hear the news.
gynte
A timely tweet on foreign policy as follow:
SINGAPORE - Singapore on Tuesday denounced WikiLeak's decision to release secret US diplomatic cables as "damaging" as it joined global criticism over the whistle-blowing website.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) "expressed deep concerns about the damaging action of WikiLeaks," a ministry spokesman said in response to media queries on WikiLeaks' release.
According to British newspaper Guardian, a WikiLeak document reported MM Lee's thoughts on the North Korea regime and its "flabby old chap" of a leader, referring to Kim Jong-Il.
Said the MFA statement issued to the press: "It is critical to protect the confidentiality of diplomatic and official correspondence, which is why Singapore has the Officials Secret Act."
The statement said: "[T]he selective release of documents, especially when taken out of context, will only serve to sow confusion and fail to provide a complete picture of the important issues that were being discussed amongst leaders in the strictest of confidentiality."
LKY has freedom of speech in the diplomatic channel. Why is the fear if his conscience is clear by saying the "flabby old chap"?
Congratulations Mr. Gopalan Nair!
I hope that you still have contacts in the Singapore government who are honest and have concern for the common good. If they have access to classified documents related to industry or government transactions, they can leak such material to Wikileaks. They say that just actions can only call from just information, and as we know, evidence is irrefutable.
Congratulations again.
i will recommend your blog to my friends. write on !
The other top notch journal is Foreign Affairs. The Singapore leadership adopted ideas from the Foreign Affairs. The concept of developing Singapore into a cosmopolitan city with a HDB "heartland" was adapted from one of the issues in 2000 and was in the keynote address by then Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong when he spoke on Singapore becoming a more gracious society.
nair
you are truly singapore freedom fighter
This should bring back memories for you GN.
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/12/toc-exclusive-alan-shadrake-instructed-lawyers-to-begin-proceedings-for-malicious-prosecution/
Can anyone shed some light on this Gestapo agent, Kwok Charn Kong.
Singapore’s death penalty use debated in UK House of Lords
http://theonlinecitizen.com/2010/12/alan-shadrake-singapores-death-penalty-use-debated-in-uk-house-of-lords/
This is what LKY's goons did to Francis Seow:
As I walked through the doors of the interrogation room, a freezing coldness immediately wrapped itself around me …
I had lost all sense of time. I had been standing there under the pitiless glare of the spotlights. I felt the urge to go to the toilet. I told them. Two Gurkha guards appeared and escorted me to the toilet. Having stood motionless at one spot for so long I had great difficulty walking. I found myself rooted to the ground – a term more descriptive of the reality of the situation than a mere figure of speech. My limbs were stiff all over. I was unsteady. The two Gurkha guards on either side of me supported me under my arms. I staggered out of the interrogation room, half carried by them, along the dark corridors up two flights of stairs to the ground level of Block C, along a corridor, to a toilet located in an empty cell in Block D. I blinked at the unexpected harsh light of day. I was quite shocked. The urge to go the toilet forgotten for a moment. I asked one of the two Gurkhas for the time of day, …I was astounded. It was 11.30 in the morning. I then realized that I had been standing in the interrogation room for about sixteen hours warding off questions thrown unremittingly at me. It seem incredible to me that I could have stood at one spot, almost motionless, for that length of time. I recalled with shame that, when my detainee-clients had previously complained to me that they had been deprived of sleep and forced to stand for as long as 72 hours at a stretch, without sleep, I had great difficulty in believing them. I thought they were exaggerating; but now I was, incredibly, undergoing a somewhat similar experience!…
I noticed, too, dried sunburnt blisters peeling from the skin of both arms. I could not at first comprehend how I could have acquired them until I realized that I had been burnt by the powerful rays of those spotlights, which had also dried up the moisture in my eyes. Cold rashes had broken out all over my atrophied limbs under my clothes. Unlike many people who are sensitive to sunburn, I am susceptible to cold rashes. It was always troublesome for me whenever I had perforce to travel abroad during winter. In this instant case, as if signaled by a faithful built-in thermometer, the rashes broke out in chilling confirmation of the coldness of the room. My interrogators had swaddled themselves up in warm winter clothes and left it, time and again, whenever they could no longer withstand the wintry cold.
Lee’s Betrayal of PAP and Singapore
http://seelanpalay.blogspot.com/2010/11/cv-devan-nair-lees-betrayal-of-pap-and.html
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