Unknown Rants

Attention: Singapore has a Secret Police.

I knew about the ISD all along but I didn't realise the reality of the organisation. I was reading an article in Wikipedia.com and got to know about the operations they carried out since the independence of this great country. Firstly, if some of you readers do not know what is the ISD, it stands for Internal Security Department. It was set up before we merged with Malaysia, having an aim which was to remove the remnants of communist fragments in the early politics of Singapore. However, after 1965, the secret organisation was still kept intact by the government, aiming to remove political dissidents who might be a threat to the security of this country.

An example of such is Chia Thye Poh, a member of the Barisan Sosialis, was detained without trial for 32 years under the ISA. He spent the last nine years under house arrest in the resort island of Sentosa. He was the 2nd longest serving political prisoner, after Nelson Mandela.

In 1987, in a security operation known as Operation Spectrum, 22 Roman Catholic church and social activists and professionals were detained under the ISA. They were accused of being members of a dangerous Marxist conspiracy bent on subverting the government by force and replacing it with a Marxist state.

My Opinions:

Singapore is very well known for its rigid political structure and the lack of freedom for its people. What I think about Ops Spectrum is that how the hell could 22 educated, pious Catholics be suspected at Marxist militants bent on taking over this country? As of my knowledge, Communism is already failing in the mighty USSR by 1987 and how the hell could these fellow Singaporeans be a threat to this country? Subversion? Revolution? Secret propaganda? Militant action? IN SINGAPORE?

Well... Maybe they should be commented on the arrests of the Jemaah Islamiah militants in which the threat was very real. Detained without trial? And the 22 'marxists' and Chin Thye Poh stated that the ISD personnels tortured and humiliated in order to get 'answers' from their mouths. And yet the State denies it. That is so KGB. So Gestapo. So restrictive. So anti-human rights.

I might get arrested for this. Right.