Category: Singapuraku

Vivian Balakrishnan: Singapore-Taiwan Arrangement Longstanding, Does Not Affect Singapore’s Adherence To ‘One-China’ Policy

Singapore will not allow any single issue to hijack its longstanding, multifaceted relationship with China, Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan said yesterday.

He also said that Singapore’s training arrangements with Taiwan are long-running and not a secret, and that a large number of Singaporean men have trained there since 1975.

“Everyone, including China, knows that we’ve had special arrangements with Taiwan for a long time and what we are doing there is no longer a secret,” Dr Balakrishnan said at The Straits Times Global Outlook Forum when asked about the seizure of Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) armoured vehicles at a Hong Kong port last Wednesday.

He added that he had told his Chinese counterpart that Singapore values its longstanding relationships.

The nine Terrex vehicles and equipment that were seized had been used in an SAF military exercise in Taiwan and were on an APL ship taking them back to Singapore.

The ship was in transit in Hong Kong. Following the seizure, China asked Singapore on Monday to adhere to the “one China” policy.

Separately, Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen said yesterday that “Singapore fully respects and supports the ‘one China’ policy… We play a positive role in cross-strait relations, and we will continue to do so”.

Speaking at a visit to a military camp, Dr Ng said officials from shipping line APL met Hong Kong Customs officials yesterday.

Mindef officials will monitor the meeting closely, he said. He hoped it will clarify the reasons and legal basis for the detention. Mindef will decide on the appropriate course of action based on its outcome.

Asked if the incident would affect Singapore’s training arrangements overseas, Dr Ng said the SAF will continue to train abroad based on bilateral agreements.

“We adhere to the ‘one China’ policy. Any training matters between us and other countries are bilateral, and we should not unnecessarily, until the facts come out, muddle the picture and impute various motives.”

Source: www.straitstimes.com

November 30, 2016
Mother Of Boy Murdered By Adrian Lim: I Had To Be Sedated

For some people, time heals. Not so, for Madam Daliah Aim, 66.

Though more than 35 years have passed since her eldest child was murdered, the mother of three still cannot talk about him without crying.

In fact, she was so devastated that this is her first interview since the murder in 1981.

She broke down several times during her interview with The New Paper, still deep in grief.

On Feb 6, that year, her first-born, Ghazali Marzuki, 10, was brutally killed by one of Singapore’s most notorious murderers, Adrian Lim, 39, abetted by his wife Catherine Tan Mui Choo, 26, and his mistress Hoe Kah Hong, 25.

Ghazali was their second victim. He was drugged, choked, then drowned. There were also burn marks on his back and a puncture on his arm.

Just days before his murder, Lim, Tan and Hoe also tortured and killed Agnes Ng Siew Hock, nine.

The trio were executed exactly 28 years ago today.

Speaking to TNP in her Bukit Panjang flat last month, Madam Daliah said she was so consumed by grief she suffered fainting spells.

She got better only about two years ago.

Dabbing tears from her eyes, the cleaner told TNP: “In the past, whenever I thought about him, my mind would suddenly go blank and I would feel everything turning darker.

“I’ve lost count of how many times I blacked out. I fainted at my workplace and on the bus. Luckily, there were always kind people around to help me.”

The widow said there were times when family members have tried to help her by advising her to let go of the past.

She told TNP: “I told them they would never understand what I’m going through.

‘BRUTALLY MURDERED’

“They’ve never had a son who died in such a terrible way. My poor Ghazali had been brutally murdered.”

Madam Daliah has two surviving children. Ghazali’s sister is now 41 while his brother is 39.

Both are married with their own families.

Madam Daliah will never forget the day Ghazali went missing after visiting his grandmother in Clementi during the Chinese New Year holidays in 1981.

Read also: Guilty As Charged: 20 crimes that have shaken Singapore since 1965

He had gone downstairs on Feb 6 to play with his two cousins.

But Ghazali was nowhere to be found when the two older boys came home later.

When asked where he was, they refused to answer.

The truth only emerged after their parents slapped them – demanding answers.

It turned out Ghazali had followed a woman – later revealed to be Hoe – who had asked him to help her with some errands.

The family searched frantically around the neighbourhood without success.

Madam Daliah told TNP: “I always warned him not to follow strangers, and he’s usually such an obedient boy. I don’t know why he did that.

“I even went to several mosques asking for divine help.

“After prayers were done, one man told me to prepare for the worst. I was devastated.”

The next day, police officers came to her home to say Ghazali’s body had been found in Toa Payoh.

She told TNP: “I totally lost it. I was so consumed by grief that I had to be sedated.”

She recalled falling in and out of consciousness several times over the next few days.

Her husband did not allow her to go to Ghazali’s funeral and from then on, tried to shield her from details of the gruesome way in which he was killed.

Source: http://news.asiaone.com

November 29, 2016
M Ravi: J B Jeyaretnam Was Initially Admirer Of Lee Kuan Yew

A dinner in memory of the first opposition member to be elected to parliament, Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam (JBJ), was held yesterday evening (27 Nov) at Ban Heng Restaurant in Harbourfront Centre.

The event organised by friends and well-wishers of the Reform Party was attended by several prominent members of the opposition and the civil society.

One of the keynote speakers for the evening was human rights advocate, M Ravi. Mr Ravi said in his speech that JBJ was the inspiration to a whole generation of Singaporeans including Mr Low Thia Khiang, , Mr Vincent Wijeysingha, Dr Chee Soon Juan and Ms Teo Soh Lung.

In his speech, Mr Ravi further claimed that JBJ was initially an admirer of Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and that he later turned a arch-nemesis of Lee due to his lack of regards for workers’ rights.

“In fact, he was initially an admirer of Lee Kuan Yew, who started out as a lawyer for labour claims and workers. What motivated him to join and revive the Worker’s Party was his observation that the Government was moving further and further away from giving and supporting the workers and their claims. And the erosion of basic rights of workers and society at large.” – M Ravi

Mr Ravi also described JBJ a man of true principle, grit and determination who truly believed that it was the duty of an opposition MP to check, question and hold the government to account. He reminded the audience that the powers that be didn’t like this and went out of their their way to destroy JBJ, even going to the extent of mocking him for raising issues such as human rights and freedom.

Source: http://theindependent.sg

November 29, 2016
China Lodges Official Protest Over Singapore’s Military Ties With Taiwan

China has made an official protest to Singapore over its military ties with Taiwan after nine Singaporean military vehicles were seized in Hong Kong, in a sign of escalating tensions as the city-state draws closer to Washington.

The Terrex armoured personnel carriers were en route from Taiwan to Singapore when they were impounded by Hong Kong customs as “suspected controlled items” last week.

“China has already made representations over this to the Singapore side,” foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said at a press briefing on Monday. China also “demanded” that Singapore abide by Hong Kong’s relevant laws and co-operate with the local government on follow-up work, he added.

The spat over the military vehicles comes as Beijing is showing a new assertiveness towards its Asian neighbours. After decades of following a foreign policy of “keeping a low profile”, China has begun to actively court US allies such as the Philippines and Thailand, while putting pressure on countries such as Singapore and South Korea that are deepening ties with Washington.

Singapore has strengthened its military ties with the US over the past year, agreeing to boost co-operation on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions as well as cyber-security. Singapore allowed US Poseidon surveillance aircraft to operate from the city-state last December.

For decades Singapore sought to remain neutral in the confrontation between China and self-governing Taiwan, and hosted a landmark summit between their leaders last year. But it continues to have defence ties with Taipei despite strong Chinese objections.

The armoured carriers appeared to be part of training exercises held in Taiwan by Singaporean troops, which have taken place regularly under a previously secret defence agreement signed by the two countries in 1975 and reported in the Chinese and Taiwanese press.

However, Beijing has said it is losing patience with this practice, particularly since Singapore and China established diplomatic relations in 1990.

Singapore did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the seized vehicles. Hong Kong’s customs agency said the case was “under investigation”.

Meanwhile on Monday, China’s Global Times, a hawkish state-owned newspaper, said in an editorial that Singapore was supposed to have suspended its military co-operation with Taiwan in 2012. “However, the recently detained vessel with its cargo of armoured vehicles reveals Singapore’s hypocrisy,” it said.

“For quite some time, Singapore has been pretending to seek a balance between China and the US, yet has been taking Washington’s side in reality,” the newspaper said. “It is no longer reasonable for Singapore to continue … any kind of military exchange with Taiwan.”

Earlier this year the Global Times and Singapore became embroiled in a public spatafter the newspaper accused Singapore of unnecessarily pressing the issue of the disputed South China Sea at a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Venezuela — a charge Singapore denied.

A Singapore military team arrived in Hong Kong on Saturday to ensure that the army personnel carriers are being held securely amid fears military secrets were at risk. The nine vehicles are being held in a Hong Kong customs depot.

Source: www.ft.com

November 29, 2016
Ambassador-At-Large Bilahari Kausikan: Singapore Cannot Be Intimidated By China’s Posturing

Nine of Singapore’s armored personnel carriers (APCs) were quietly making its way from Taiwan to Singapore. For some strange reasons, the ship they were on stopped at Hong Kong. That’s when things got really interesting really fast.

Our nine APCs were impounded by Hong Kong.

That sparked off much discussion online about China-Singapore relationship. Is this move because China is super buay song with Singapore?

And what better way to understand what’s happening here than from picking the brains of ~~resident grass-cutter~~ ambassador-at-large and former permanent secretary of Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), Bilahari Kausikan?

Just in case you’re not following him on Facebook, or if you’ve missed reading his comments here, we’ve lifted some of the more ‘colourful’ ones here.

Someone said that this move is because China is showing its displeasure at Singapore for holding military exercises in Taiwan. To that, Ambassador Bilahari said:

“Open displeasure is meant to intimidate Singaporeans because they have realised that with or without LKY the government cannot be intimidated. They are trying to intimidate Singaporeans in order to get Singaporeans to pressure the government.”

Another person said this incident is because China is unhappy with Singapore speaking up on the South China Sea issue. She wondered if China would leave us alone if we had kept quiet. Ambassador Bilahari disagreed:

“Of course not. If we had stayed quiet on an issue of such importance they would have asked for more: that we speak out in support of their position and play the role Cambodia plays for them in ASEAN (even Laos is not as bad). They know we are far more credible than Cambodia internationally and thus want us to be their mouthpiece. Of course, we do on occasion support them when it is in our interests, for example on Hong Kong and the Western Regions project at Chongqing that we undertook at Xi Jinping’s request. But we cannot be just their mouthpiece which is fundamentally what they want and what they mean when they refer to us, despite our constant denials, as a ‘Chinese country’. If we do that our credibility with the US, Japan, India, Australia among others would be entirely destroyed and we have important interests with these countries too.”

Ambassador Bilahari went on to explain that it is important that the way we interact with China is consistent with the way we interact with any other countries:

“Our government is not rash but the considerations are not just relations with China. If we allow ourselves to be intimidated by Beijing what do you think our immediate neighbours will think?”

But surely it’s not easy to remain so principled when dealing with such a huge power. Especially since we are such a small country. To do that, we would need a certain “bad-boy” streak. Or as Ambassador Bilahari put it:

“I am well known among the pandas as very KL or whatever the equivalent is in Mandarin!”

And:

“No skill involved just indifference to death.”

This incident reminds us that we cannot take our relationships with other nations for granted. Thankfully, it seems that there are enough people who have this “indifference to death” working to advance Singapore’s interests abroad.

Source: www.unscrambled.sg

November 29, 2016