Not So Easily Forgotten

Today, 30 June 2015, marks the 100th day since the horrible person finally left this world for a better place where there is no COE, ERP, GST and Medishield Life premiums. For the record, champagne glasses across the island were clinked in rejoice on 23 March 2015. Just to prove that the daft are still around, some chose to commemorate the 100th day of his passing on the 28th - these folks can't even read a calendar.

Others choose 29 March 2015 as a significant date. That was the Sunday when the skies opened up to rain on their parade, and avoid the embarrassing semblance of a North Korean style mass send off. It was also the same day that 8 plain clothes police officers converged on a housing block flat unit to arrest a 16 year old boy. Since then, the child has been cuffed and shackled, strapped to an iron bed in a medical ward, deprived of sleep and, as we type, being probed vicariously in a mental institution.

There are those who prefer to turn a blind eye to the humna rights abuse in progress, but Penang civil society groups are not among them. To remind the Singapore authorities of the obligations as a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), they are assembling on 1 July 2015 (Wednesday) at their Penang Speakers' Square (Esplanade) to protest vociferously. Check the online coverage, the local media will be shunting it like a plague.

Another show of support from the international community comes from the Hong Kong University Students’ Union (HKUSU), who is organising a petition  “to demand the Singaporean government to release Amos Yee and stop any sentence due to one’s speech.” HKUSU made it clear in their statement, “Any act of trampling human rights and manipulating the freedom of thought must be condemned.” “Please, please,” begged prominent Hong Kong acitvist James Hon, referring to Singapore’s Prime Minister, “do not follow your father’s footsteps. Do not become another horrible person.”

Gad, what a horrible thought.

Shielding The Truth

The horrible person thought that by banning the private use of satellite dishes, he could maintain a sanitized version of world events. Thanks to the internet, we know there more important news than the rehash of the Phey Yew Kok blooper, whose train ride to freedom 35 years ago hardly raises an eyebrow. After all, he was the favoured trade union child of the day. A frustrated Dr Lee Siew Choh once pressed Jayakumar, then Home Affairs and Law Minister, for the amount spent on surveillance of Francis Seow in the United States when investigating officers only ventured out to Bangkok to hunt for Phey.

You'll never read about it in the 153rd ranked newspaper, but Taipei Times reported that on 26 June - International Day in Support of Victims of Torture - groups including the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), the Human Rights Covenants and Conventions Watch (CCW), the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare and the Judicial Reform Foundation marched on Singapore’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, and called on the government to observe the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that it has ratified and free Amos Yee immediately.

Wu Yi-cheng (吳易澄), head of Taiwan's Mackay Memorial Hospital’s department of psychiatry, said the misinformation dished out by the Singaporean government and the media about psychiatric disorders is “different from the psychiatry treatment guidelines we’re following now,” according to which patients “recover” rather than being “cured.”

“There are two sides to the [Singaporean government’s] deployment of psychiatry in this case,” Wu said. “On the one hand it seems humane to have those with mental illness receive proper treatment and maintain that they could thereby obtain lighter sentences; however, the [medical claim] could also be subjected to political machination and lose its altruistic essence.”

BTW, don't believe everything they are writing about Phey either. A "media consultant" by the name of George Joseph, is quoted saying "a riot took place at the PIEU office in 1974 when a university student and workers fought with union officers over failed union talks". Even judge T S Sinnathuray had stated in court proceedings that Tan Wah Piow was nowhere inside the room with overturned furniture ("You were standing across the road that day", AWAKENING, 1974, issue 19). It's a perversion of the "a person inside a polling station cannot be said to be within a radius of 200 metres of a polling station" illogic. No wonder the Straits Times is attempting a major rehash of their format this coming week.

Famous Last Words

Stalin was not the only one with a predilection for sending folks to the headshrinkers. It's just their horrible style of putting people down. And covering up their own foibles.

(With apologises to Morgan Chua, illustration from his book "Political Cartoons")

Prodigal Son Comes Home

Will wonders never cease! Former chairman of the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and People's Action Party (PAP) Member of Parliament for Boon Teck (1972 - 1979) Phey Yew Kok popped up in court on Wednesday 24 June, after being on the lam for almost 36 straight years.

Phey was the key instigator behind the American Marine incident, wherein Tan Wah Piow was fixed for allegedly inciting a riot inside the premises of the Pioneer Industries Employees' Union (PIEU). It mattered not to judge TS Sinnathuray that Tan was not anywhere within the vicinity of the frame-up. When the political winds changed direction, Phey was nabbed for 4 counts of criminal breach of trust involving a total sum of $83,000, and 2 counts under the Trade Unions Act for investing $18,000 of trade-union money in a private supermarket without the approval of the minister.

Although released on bail, Phey was conveniently allowed to hang on to his passport. Even in those pre-internet days, rumours were rife about powerful friends who facilitated his flight from justice. Devan Nair actually believed in his innocence, and pressurised the CPIB to review the case. When shown the dossier compiled, Nair decided otherwise about supporting the crooked man. SR Nathan makes mention of Phey in his book as some sort of trade union protege. In his heyday, Phey was a powerful union leader credited with convincing Chinese unions to join the NTUC during the 1970s.

Mysterious sightings subsequently placed him eking out a miserable existence as a fugitive in Thailand, while others claimed he was living it up as a kingpin operating a transport company in Taiwan. Authorities are telling us Phey had simply left Singapore for Kuala Lumpur by train on Dec 31, 1979. Well, at least that's more credible than Mas Selamat bin Kastari floating across the Johore Straits on a rubber ducky.

It is not clear why Phey surrendered himself at the Singapore Embassy in Bangkok on Monday. Maybe he was seduced by the promises of the Pioneer Generation Package (PGP) and goodies in the SG50 Seniors Package. Man, is he in for a surprise!

Also not clear was why, in response to media queries, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said: "He has been charged in court, and the law will have to take its course." Note that the media never queries the prime minister about the saga of Amos Yee.

Caught Between A Rock And a Very Hard Place

On 2 June Amos Yee was sent back into remand for an additional 3 weeks because District Judge Jasvender Kaur wanted more time to contemplate his suitability for the Reformative Training Centre (RTC). While she was thinking, the boy was cuffed spread eagle to an iron bed. Well, come Tuesday 23 June, the report is in, and it says the kid is physically and mentally suitable for reformative training. The monkey wrench in the works is that on Monday 22 June, the United Nations Human Rights Office had asked Singapore courts to "drop the demand for sentencing (Yee) to the RTC" and called for the "immediate release of (Yee) in line with (Singapore's) commitment under the UN Convention on the Rights of Child".

So a Dr Munidasa Winslow suddenly pops up to suggest that Yee may be suffering from autism-spectrum disorder (ASD). Now ASD is a complex disorder of the central nervous system, which often first appears as delayed speech in children around 18 months of age. Anybody who has seen and heard the articulate boy pontificating on his YouTube videos, including the one about the horrible dead guy who kicked the bucket, will wonder if Winslow has his head screwed on right. More important, the SingHealth website openly declares that there is no known cure for autism. Therapies do NOT cure autism, although they MAY bring about marked improvement.

This Mandatory Treatment Order (MTO) which the learned judge is juggling with is merely an option that could be meted out in lieu of imprisonment. Introduced as part of a series of community-based sentencing (CBS) options implemented since January 2011, the positive experience of this route - how we hate this phrase - is that the criminal record will be rendered spent, and the offender deemed to have no record of a conviction whatsoever. In other words, the child is no longer a criminal under the infamous Singapore system of justice, and the United Nations can call off their intervention force with the famous blue helmets.

But that does not change an iota about Madam Mary Toh's precocious son having to spend 3 + 3 + 2 weeks in a lock-up - the last sojourn in a mental institution with electroshock therapy options. Judge Kaur has painted herself in a corner, and a notorious niche in the international hall of shame. Bet you she's willing to forgo her SG50 $500 bonus and have someone else assigned to the case.