Singapore island which has no more than 2 million local citizens, publishes in their state controlled newspaper Straits Times the report "Attorney General's Chambers acts against Leslie Chew" dated July 25, 2013.
In line with their usual silly pastime of persecuting anyone who criticizes their government, their victims have included, British author Alan Shadrake, Chee Soon Juan an opposition politician and myself in 2008 for writing a blog they did not like, they have now targeted for punishment a cartoonist for a drawing in Facebook they did not like. According to them, the cartoon showed their judiciary, which has by now lost all credibility whatsoever, due to their own actions, in bad light.
Their Attorney General states in the report the need to punish this man because his judiciary is an essential pillar of public service and any attempt to malign it cannot go unpunished. It is rather difficult to follow his argument since if it has already lost all credibility whatsoever and have publicly shown themselves to be Kangaroo courts used to suppress dissent in the island, how they are going to instill confidence in this body by punishing this cartoon drawer is puzzling.
But one thing is sure, which is, this prosecution is going to make Lee Kuan Yew and his son who run the island look even more a bunch of clowns than they already are, being notorious the world over some bizarre rules, such as criminalizing chewing gum, beating people in their backsides as an official punishment and executing petty drug moles.
And the public lamenting they routinely do about the huge brain drain from the island, the non existent birth rate and the fast disappearing tiny population of just 2 million locals will only get worse, because even more local Singaporeans will leave the island in protest against punishing this poor innocent cartoonist as a means to defend Singapore's judiciary, an indefensible prospect.
It is like Adolf Hitler throwing anyone who criticized his courts in jail in order to protect the Nazi court's reputation. I think both Hitler and Lee Kuan Yew would first have to establish that their judiciary's had any integrity in the first place. Throwing this poor cartoonist in jail is not going convince him nor me, nor any other Singaporean with a head on his shoulders that the island's judges had any merit. In fact this action by them will just prove what everyone else have believed all along, that they are a bunch of Kangaroo judges in their Kangaroo courts.
I attach below the report from the state controlled Straits Times
Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
A Singaporean in exile
Fremont, California, USA
Tel: 510 491 4375
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com
Attorney-General's Chambers acts against cartoonist Leslie Chew
Published on Jul 25, 2013
The Attorney-General's Chambers has commenced legal proceedings in the High Court against Chew Peng Ee, better known as Leslie Chew, for a series of comic strips published on Facebook. -- PHOTO: ATTORNEY-GENERAL'S CHAMBERS WEBSITE
He is alleged to have committed contempt of court by scandalising the Judiciary of the Republic of Singapore. The AGC said in a statement issued Thursday: "The present legal proceedings are aimed at protecting the administration of justice in the Republic of Singapore and upholding the integrity of one of our key public institutions."
The case will be heard before the High Court on Aug 12.
Chew is the illustrator behind Demon-cratic Singapore, a Facebook page that was started in May 2011.
5 comments:
These judges are simply puppets.
My first expat boss, a German, upon experiencing Singapore, had this message for me: Those to whom evil is done, will do evil in return.
Maybe it has something to do with suicide rates. Not a far stretch.
For months, a cable station 34.5% owned by the government, Starhub, has been bombarding viewers with “Happy Everywhere” propaganda films to depict that despite rising stress, people are still smiling and dancing everywhere.
. . .
The merry-making propaganda obviously reflects the government’s concern about correcting an image of unhappy Singaporeans demoralised by over-crowding and stress in recent years.
The latest statistics are not encouraging.
Singapore’s suicide rates for 2012 jumped by a significant 30%.
The number of people ending their lives reached a 20-year high of 467, a rise of 30%, the highest proportion being youths aged 20-29 years old.
Source: http://www.littlespeck.com/content/people/CTrendsPeople-130720.htm
If the Singaporean government wants to establish its credibility: sue me. I will gladly come to publicly defend my case. I have made charges that approximately $500 billion SGD are missing from public funds and while Singapore becomes one of the most publicly indebted countries in the world, the government sues a political cartoonist. It is a cowardly act to sue a cartoonist while attempting to ignore the $500 billion idea. It seems unlikely Prime Minister Lee and his lovely wife have the courage to file that lawsuit. I have the courage to respond if they are willing to file.
http://www.baldingsworld.com/2013/07/29/the-words-you-cant-say-in-singapore/
To Anonymous who said
"If the Singaporean government wants to establish its credibility: sue me."
How in Heavens will they do that if you are anonymous! But if you are the author of baldingsworld, you have to be physically in Singapore for him to do anything. He has no confidence he will win outside. So don't worry. He won't sue you. Neither will he sue me.
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