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YOURSAY 'There is no denying S’pore's success. But do S’poreans lead happy lives?'

 

Remembering my mum, Lim Geok Lian

Haveagreatday: Thank you, Teo Soh Lung for this touching and personal account of your mother. Doubtless your family and those other families of former Internal Security Act (ISA) detainees will not share my respect for the late former Singapore PM Lee Kuan Yew (LKY).

 

No, this is not to gloss over the mistakes and the violation of human rights during his autocratic rule. But that will be for another set of discussions.

 

For now I am looking at that mortal, who guided Singapore to its position in the family of nations.

 

Anonymous_1371527725: No doubt, LKY was a great thinker, an intellectual, a politician and statesman who had earned the respect of the world. However, no man is perfect.

 

What Teo had described was genuine, so was her mother's pain and suffering to see her child being subjected to such oppression.

 

LKY deserved the respect accorded to him, but let us also not idol worship him but see him in a balanced light. Sometimes, the end does not necessarily justify the means.

 

Swipenter: "She asked if the prime minister and the government knew the hardship of raising and educating children. She questioned about detention without trial and asked what would satisfy the government. Did they care or bother about the suffering of families of detainees who were deprived of the comfort and support their children were supposed to give them?"

 

Kuan Yin is the Goddess of Mercy and many detractors of the late LKY dubbed Kuan Yew as the 'God Without Mercy'. Let history be the judge.

 

Chew Swee Yoke: Teo Soh Lung is a gentle soul with a great sense of justice and charity.

 

After I helped the Bar Council to start our legal aid centre in Malaysia, she contacted me for information because she was planning to assist the Law Society of Singapore to start theirs.

 

I believe she helped to achieve that goal. To have incarcerated a gentle soul like that was sinful and heartbreaking. She became the victim of what I call 'Singapore without a soul'.

 

There are many stories similar to Soh Lung's, some of them very harrowing to hear and painful to recall. At least, Soh Lung seems to have survived her trials and remained sane by all accounts. Others were not that fortunate. Their stories are well-documented in the history of Singapore.

 

History is also a harsh judge and it marches on relentlessly. What is certain is that the truth will come out and the true heroes and heroines will eventually be recognised.

 

Tok Karut: Ms Teo, thank you for sharing. I would rather have your late mom avoiding Lee in that forever place. She should rest in peace. God Bless.

 

YouAreNotAlone: Ms Teo, I sympathise with your mother's plight. But during that time, there are lots of cassettes tapes also selling Hokkien songs, stories, VHS tapes with Cantonese dramas, you can still do your part to have your mother entertained.

 

LKY is doing what he needs to do for the whole country. So I urge you to try to have that big heart and be understandable by putting yourself in LKY's shoes.

 

LKY is a true selfless giant. Take his children, Lee Hsien Long for example, he loves technology, computers but he cannot choose his own career and life all because his dad LKY wanted him to continue his footsteps setting aside personal gain and interests for the good of Singapore and Singaporeans.

 

Now their hard work has borne fruit and many Singaporeans are indebted to them, including yourself and your family.

 

Lenin: Dear Teo, I am truly sorry for your loss. I see that you get your guts and willingness to stand up from your beloved mother. Many Singaporeans and others are in fact LKY apologists who tend to gloss over his wrongs.

 

Regardless of his achievements, a wrong is a wrong and there were injustices in the name of so-called 'Asian values'. The result is a mostly spineless and cowed population with a compliant judiciary doing the bidding of the executive.

 

Singapore also has a dark side, that of the alleged regional money launderer, where else do you think the Burmese drug lords launder their funds? Or even the North Koreans, crooked Malaysians, Indonesians and what not?

 

I am no apologist for Malaysia, however when it comes to hypocrisy, Singaporeans are hard to beat.

 

Versey: My aunt told me that in the early 80s, when she started her first job in Singapore after returning from the UK, and on one occasion took a taxi back home from work. She could only speak English and Cantonese, so she couldn't understand the taxi driver who kept speaking to her in Hokkien.

 

Though the taxi driver knew the address, he cursed her for speaking Mandarin and dumped her quite a distance from where she stayed. My aunt said she couldn't speak Hokkien, but she could understand a bit of his utterances and that it was extreme.

 

She testifies that LKY's government never prohibited people from speaking their own dialects at home and in actual fact, some of her friends were speaking their own dialects at home for generations till now.

 

One can't deny the fact that LKY had a very strong will and was a pragmatic leader, he successfully transformed Singapore, whose SGD$1 is now worth about RM2.67 despite Malaysia being so much richer than Singapore in natural resources, to the extent of "exporting" talented human resource to Singapore.

 

KCW: There is no denying Singapore's economic success. But do Singaporeans lead happy lives? Is economic and material wealth the main criteria in evaluating 'success'? How many percent of Singaporeans succumb to mental illness, suicide and depression?

 

Waktamnoko: Should Malaysia also take a leaf out of LKY's policies and ban all vernacular schools in Malaysia?

 

Surely the other races, particularly the Chinese, can accept it in Malaysia, seeing that they accept what was done in Singapore?

 

Anonymous_1397685399: We all chose our paths. Some thought LKY was wrong and disagreed strongly. He thought some of these detractors were getting in his way. LKY played by the rules he himself made.

 

Chia Thye Poh, Said Zahari and Francis Seow are some notables who paid heavily. Look at the end result. Of course, folk who lived through the 50s to 80s had to endure the repression. LKY has thwarted the intent and meaning of "ends justifying the mean". But that's him.

 

Teo, I'm sorry to learn of your detention. The ISA is a bad law when used after the Emergency period. Your dearly departed mum had every right to be mad, being deprived of the only entertainment and perhaps a huge chunk of her "social" moments too.

 

You, too, have played your role in the Singapore Story.

 

Bad Feng Shui: This was the nasty side of LKY which his fans seem to gloss over. Lim Hock Siew was detained without trial for 20 years, Chia Thye Poh for 32 years.

Nothing can justify such cruel use of the ISA to silence the opposition.


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