It is my contention that the purpose for the arrests in 1987 was to curtail young intellectuals and professionals from identifying themselves with the political opposition in a world simmering with democratic ideals.
– Tan Tee Seng
The 21st of May marks the anniversary of Singapore’s 1987 “Marxist conspiracy”, codenamed Operation Spectrum. A total of 22 people were detained without trial over the course of several weeks.
These young men and women were allegedly attempting to “subvert the existing social and political system in Singapore, using communist united front tactics, with a view to establishing a Marxist state.” Their photos, alongside these allegations, were splashed across Singapore newspapers and TV screens.
Who they were
The names and professions of the 22 who were detained are:
- Vincent Cheng Kim Chuan, Church worker
- Teo Soh Lung, Lawyer
- Kevin de Souza, Lawyer and Church worker
- Wong Souk Yee, Researcher and journalist
- Tang Lay Lee, Lawyer and Church worker
- Ng Bee Leng, Church worker
- Jenny Chin Lai Ching, Journalist
- Kenneth Tsang Chi Seng, Advertising executive
- Chung Lai Mei
- Mah Lee Lin, Polytechnic graduate and Church worker
- Low Yit Leng, Project manager
- Tan Tee Seng, Sales executive
- Teresa Lim Li Kok, Publisher
- Chia Boon Tai, Engineer and businessman
- Tay Hong Seng, Translator and subtitling editor
- William Yap Hon Ngian, Translator and subtitling editor
- Tang Fong Har, Lawyer
- Chew Kheng Chuan, Harvard University graduate and Businessman
- Chng Suan Tze, Polytechnic Lecturer
- Ronnie Ng Soon Hiang, Polytechnic student
- Fan Wan Peng, Polytechnic student and president of the students’ union
- Nur Effendi Sahid, National serviceman
Many of those arrested were associated with the Catholic church and involved in affiliated social and welfare organisations. Four were Law Society Council members. Many of them did not know one another, but all were said to be masterminded by a man named Tan Wah Piow, who was sitting almost 11,000 kilometres away in Oxford University as a second year law student.
Over a decade earlier, Tan had been the president of the University of Singapore Students’ Union and had been imprisoned for eight months. Shortly after his release, Tan fled to the UK.
Tan’s co-conspirator in Singapore was said to be Vincent Cheng, the Executive Secretary of the Justice and Peace Commission of the Catholic Church.
Cheng had been very active in the community organising scene in the 1980s. He worked with a variety of groups that assisted domestic helpers, prisoners, and Malaysian workers. A guiding principle for Cheng was that charity was not enough to solve societal problems. As he put it in the 2017 book, 1987: Singapore’s Marxist Conspiracy 30 Years On:
I believe in social justice. Charity work is commendable and necessary, but often doesn’t tackle the root causes of problems nor does it bring about true social change. Charity work carried out without analysis and discernment can foster mental enslavement and perpetuate entrenchment of the status quo.
Cheng went on to say that he found it is necessary to:
identify and analyse social problems that affected especially the poor in Singapore, and to boost solidarity and expertise among church organisations that work with the common people.
Volunteering with the Workers’ Party
Cheng and others had also volunteered with the Workers’ Party and their publication The Hammer. According to the PAP’s official biography, these volunteers sought to “disseminate anti-government propaganda and stir up dissatisfaction.”
J B Jeyaretnam, the first opposition member to defeat a PAP candidate in Singapore’s independent history, flat out rejected such allegations:
The biggest hoax that the PAP put out in 1987, that we were being infiltrated by Marxists (pp. 436-437, Men in White).
Government justifications
In Parliament, Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said that it “is difficult to uncover Communist conspiracies because they work in cells secretly, furtively, unseen, like termites.” Nevertheless, Goh and his cabinet colleagues were satisfied with the recommendations by the Internal Security Department and had these 22 people detained without trial. Goh continued:
[I]f we do not destroy them now, they will destroy us later…. [I]n the future … these plotters could press the button and destabilise the whole place. Our decision was not to take chances with the lives of Singaporeans. Do not risk the prosperity
Behind closed doors, however, there were disagreements. S. Dhanabalan, who was then the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for National Development, did not approve of the arrests which ultimately led to his exit from the Cabinet. As Dhanablan has written:
I resigned from Cabinet because I had a great difference of view over the use of the Internal Security Act in the 1987 arrests. Lee Kuan Yew thought that mine was a Christian view, because he knew I was a Christian. But it was not a hard-headed political view. We had a difference and the whole Cabinet knew. … Whether it [the Marxist conspiracy] was a real danger or not remains to be seen.
Goh Chok Tong also felt that Dhanabalan disagreed with the other Ministers due to his Christian faith. As Goh said in an interview for the book Men in White: The Untold Story of Singapore’s Ruling Political Party:
At that time, given the information, he [Dhanabalan] was not fully comfortable with the action we took … His makeup is that of a very strong Christian so he felt uncomfortable and thought there could be more of such episodes in future. So he thought since he was uncomfortable, he’d better leave the Cabinet. I respected him for his view.
Released and detained again
Several months after the arrests, detainees were given conditional releases in waves. In April 1988, nine of the detainees got together to issue a joint statement. Early on, the statement said: “We categorically DENY the Government’s accusation against us.” A few notable sections of the statement are reproduced below:
We have never propagated, in words or in action, a communist state for Singapore. Rather, we had, through open and legitimate organisations and legitimate means, advocated more democracy, less elitism, protection of individual freedoms and civil rights, greater concern for the poor and the less privileged, and less interference in the private lives of citizens. …
Absurdly, it seemed to us that we were arrested and detained for the legitimate exercise of our rights as citizens through registered and open organisations. We did not infiltrate these organisations, but joined them as members, volunteers, and full-time workers. Neither did we use these organisations as fronts to propagate subversive activities. All activities carried out by these organisations are legitimate, open and approved by elected executive committees, whose numbers clearly stand in their own right as capable, autonomous and intelligent individuals. …
TREATMENT DURING DETENTION
During our detention, we were subjected to treatment which should never be meted out to any person under interrogation. …
We were threatened with INDEFINITE detention without trial. Chia Thye Poh, who is still in detention after twenty years, was cited as an example. We were told that no one could help us unless we “cooperated” with the ISD. …
We consider ourselves nothing less than some of the most loyal and responsible citizens of Singapore. We greatly regret not our past actions but the fact that our Government felt it necessary to malign our good names and arrest, detain, and abuse us for what we did or did not do.
The next day, eight out of the nine signatories of the statement were rearrested. The one who escaped was lawyer Tang Fong Har, who was visiting her husband in the UK — she remains in exile till this day.
The need for a Commission of Inquiry
According to the book The Scripting of a National History: Singapore and its Pasts:
Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong promised to set up a commission of inquiry on the detainees’ allegation of physical and psychological abuse while in captivity, but this offer was retracted about a week later (p. 144).
Lee Hsien Loong would also deny such allegations:
We don’t ill-treat people. We don’t beat people. In fact, the detainees who came out said they were well treated. Said that not only to the domestic press but to the foreign press. And one of the mother’s said “my daughter’s put on weight!” (laughter)
Doubts from Tharman
Senior Minister (SM) Tharman Shanmugaratnam is the most prominent member of Singapore’s establishment who not only has doubts about the so-called Marxist conspiracy, but has close ties with some of those involved.
When SM Tharman was a young man in the 1970s, he had been in awe of Tan Wah Piow’s activism and political imprisonment — it inspired him to join politics.
As a student at the London School of Economics in the late 1970s, Tharman was an active organiser. He quickly befriended Tan Wah Piow and worked with him to organise study groups among “anyone who looked vaguely Singaporean or Malaysian.”
Upon his return to Singapore in 1982, his passport was seized and he was taken in for questioning by the Internal Security Department. During Operation Spectrum in 1987, Tharman was interrogated for a full week — but he escaped detention.
Regarding the Marxist conspiracy, Tharman has said publicly that “although I had no access to state intelligence, from what I know of them, most were social activists but not out to subvert the system.”
Time for a COI to uncover the Truth
Operation Spectrum took place just 35 years ago today. Those detained without trial are still with us — some of them in exile.
People like Vincent Cheng, who was detained without trial for two years, have spoken about possibly suffering from PTSD. Many were too scared to speak for over two decades.
No independent inquiry has been set up to look into the dubious basis of these arrests.
Scepticism about the so-called Marxist conspiracy is widespread, from politicians to journalists, lawyers to playwrights.
A former PAP MP, Charles Chong, was also reported to have expressed doubts about the Government’s narrative.
The accounts of the political detainees are as shocking as they are terrifying.
This critical event in Singapore’s history should not be swept under the rug with the passage of time. It should be examined with the full force of an independent inquiry, which takes into account testimonies from all those involved — politicians and detainees alike.
You can learn more about Operation Spectrum by either reading this book or watching this documentary, or both!
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