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Chan Chun Sing Criticises Chee Soon Juan In Reply To The Huffington Post

SINGAPORE — Two articles by opposition politician Chee Soon Juan published in The Huffington Post have drawn a sharply worded response from Minister for Social and Family Development Chan Chun Sing, calling out the American news website for giving the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) secretary-general “considerable but undeserved attention and space”.

The two opinion pieces, Without Freedom There Is No Free Trade and Free The Singapore Media And Let The People Go, were published on Nov 13 and Dec 11 last year, respectively.

The articles criticised the Singapore Government for violating human rights through its trade processes and for its control over the media, which Dr Chee said “have put reason and
intellectualism to sleep”.

In the letter addressed to the site, Mr Chan did not address the opinions expressed by Dr Chee, but took issue with the website’s decision to publish the articles. “You perhaps believe he is a weighty political figure in Singapore. He is nothing of the kind,” said Mr Chan.

Describing Dr Chee as a “political failure” who had stood for and lost three elections, Mr Chan said: “The party he now leads, the Singapore Democratic Party, was once the leading opposition party in the country. But that was when it was led by Mr Chiam See Tong, a man everyone in Singapore — political friend and foe alike — regards as honourable.”

While it was Mr Chiam who brought Dr Chee into the SDP fold in 1992, Dr Chee later forced him out of the party. “Since then, the SDP hasn’t won a single seat in Parliament, although Mr Chiam went on to win elections repeatedly,” Mr Chan said.

He also pointed out that while Dr Chee “likes to trumpet in foreign media”, the SDP secretary-general had been sued by ruling-party politicians and did not mention that he had been sued by Mr Chiam “because it is embarrassing”.

Dr Chee’s dismissal from the National University of Singapore — where he was a psychology lecturer — in 1993 for misappropriating research funds and other misconduct, including secretly recording conversations with university staff, as well as his 1996 conviction of perjury by Parliament for submitting false statements all point to his failure as a politician, the minister said.

“It is because of these and other failings that Dr Chee is a political failure — not because he was persecuted, as he likes to pretend (to be),” said Mr Chan.

“His party is now one of the weakest political parties in Singapore principally because voters do not regard its leader as an honourable man.”

Mr Chan noted that Dr Chee, who was disqualified from contesting the past two General Elections because he was declared a bankrupt in 2006 for failing to pay damages for libel to
former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, has been campaigning to redeem himself in the public eye.

“As he has done in the past, he has looked to the foreign media for redemption, chiefly because foreign journalists don’t know him as well as Singaporeans and he believes he can beguile them into believing he is the Aung San Suu Kyi of Singapore politics,” Mr Chan said.

While Dr Chee has claimed that he has been forced to publish in foreign media as he has been silenced in local channels, Mr Chan noted that several sociopolitical websites in Singapore had run several articles by Dr Chee, while some of his letters had been published in the local press.

“Dr Chee’s problem is not that he has not been heard by Singaporeans; his problem is that they have,” said the minister.

The SDP was unable to respond as of press time.

MR CHAN’S LETTER TO THE HUFFINGTON POST IN FULL:

Your website has given Dr Chee Soon Juan considerable but undeserved attention and space. You perhaps believe that he is a weighty political figure in Singapore. He is nothing of the kind.

Dr Chee has stood for elections thrice – and lost badly all three times, once receiving just 20% of the vote.

The party he now leads, the Singapore Democratic Party, was once the leading opposition party in the country. But that was when it was led by Mr Chiam See Tong, a man everyone in Singapore, political friend and foe alike, regards as an honourable man.

Indeed, it was Mr Chiam who brought Dr Chee into the SDP in 1992. He mentored the younger man and promoted him. Dr Chee then proceeded to betray Mr Chiam, isolate him and force him out of the SDP, a party that he had founded in 1980 and had nurtured over 14 years. Since then the SDP hasn’t won a single seat in Parliament, though Mr Chiam himself went on to win elections repeatedly.

In 1993, Dr Chee was dismissed from the National University of Singapore for misappropriating research funds and for other serious misconduct, including surreptitiously recording conversations with university staff.

He has been sued for defamation not only by ruling party politicians, a fact that he likes to trumpet in the foreign media, but also by the doyen of the opposition in Singapore, Mr Chiam, a fact that he doesn’t mention because it is embarrassing.

And in 1996, Dr Chee and three of his associates were convicted of perjury by Parliament tor submitting false statements to a Special Parliamentary Committee. This is the equivalent of Congress convicting someone of perjury, a most serious offence.

It is because of these and other failings that Dr Chee is a political failure — not because he was persecuted, as he likes to pretend. His party is now one of the weakest political parties in Singapore principally because voters do not regard its leader as an honourable man.

Dr Chee was disqualified from contesting the last two General Elections because he was declared a bankrupt in 2006 for failing to pay damages for libel to former Prime Ministers Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong. He was discharged from bankruptcy in 2012 after the former Prime Ministers agreed to accept a reduced sum in damages. Since then Dr Chee has been campaigning to redeem himself in the public eye in preparation for the next General Election.

As he has done in the past, he has looked to the foreign media for redemption, chiefly because foreign journalists don’t know him as well as Singaporeans and he believes he can beguile them into believing he is the Aung San Suu Kyi of Singapore politics. Dr Chee, however, claims he is forced to publish in the foreign media because he has been silenced in the Singapore media.

But this is false. There are several socio-political websites in Singapore, some with as wide a reach among Singaporeans as the Huffington Post has among Americans. They have run several articles by Dr Chee. The local press also has carried several of Dr Chee’s letters.

Dr Chee’s problem is not that he has not been heard by Singaporeans. His problem is that they have.

Sincerely,

Chan Chun Sing

Minister for Social and Family Development, Singapore

Source: www.todayonline.com

January 16, 2015
2 Reported Islamist Extremists Killed During Belgian Police Raid

BRUSSELS (REUTERS/AFP) – Belgian police killed two men who opened fire on them during one of about a dozen raids on Thursday against an Islamist group that federal prosecutors said was about to launch “terrorist attacks on a grand scale”.

Coming a week after Islamist gunmen killed 17 people in Paris, the incident heightened fears across Europe of young local Muslims returning radicalised from Syria.

But prosecutors’ spokesman Eric Van Der Sypt said the Belgian probe had been under way before the Jan 7 attack on French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo.

A third man was detained in the eastern city of Verviers, where police commandos ran into a hail of gunfire after trying to gain entry to an apartment above a town centre bakery.

All three were citizens of Belgium, which has one of the biggest concentrations of European Islamists fighting in Syria.

Other raids on the homes of men returned from the civil war there were conducted across the country, Mr Van Der Sypt said, adding that they were suspected of planning attacks on Belgian police stations.

Security had been tightened at such sites.

“The searches were carried out as part of an investigation into an operational cell some of whose members had returned from Syria,” he said.

“For the time being, there is no connection with the attacks in Paris.”

Describing events in the quiet provincial town just after dark, he said: “The suspects immediately and for several minutes opened fire with military weaponry and handguns on the special units of the federal police before they were neutralised.”

Earlier in the day, prosecutors said they had detained a man in southern Belgium whom they suspected of supplying weaponry to Amedy Coulibaly, killer of four people at a Paris Jewish grocery after the Charlie Hebdo attack.

After the violence in Verviers, La Meuse newspaper quoted an unidentified police officer saying: “We’ve averted a Belgian Charlie Hebdo.”

Two French brothers, who like Coulibaly claimed allegiance to Islamist militants in the Middle East, killed 12 people at the offices of Charlie Hebdo.

ISLAMIST STRENGTH

Belgium has seen significant radical Islamist activity among its Muslim population.

Public television RTBF showed video of a building at night lit up by flames, with the sound of shots being fired.

“When we began running, we heard three or four big explosions and shots,” she said. “It was really startling.”

Another local resident said “machineguns were firing for about 10 minutes.”

A third witness said he saw two young men apparently of North African origin “dressed all in black carrying a bag of the same colour,” adding that the pair looked terrified.

Three Islamic State militants threatened attacks on Belgium in a video broadcast on Wednesday, the Belga news agency reported.

Belgian investigators said earlier on Thursday they were probing whether an arms dealer sold weapons used in the Paris attacks, after confirming supermarket gunman Amedy Coulibaly sold the man a car belonging to his partner Hayat Boumeddiene.

There was no immediate confirmation of any link between the Coulibaly investigation and Thursday’s raid.

The man, Neetin Karasular, from the airport city of Charleroi in French-speaking southern Belgium, is in detention on suspicion of a possible link to the weapons used in the Paris attacks.

“The issue of weapons is under investigation,” Mr Van der Sijpt told AFP earlier in the day, adding that Karasular was under suspicion for “arms trafficking Belgian prosecutors are working with French authorities to establish any “possible link” to last week’s Paris attacks.

Coulibaly, who was killed by police on Friday, is also believed to have shot dead a policewoman in another Paris attack.

Mr Van der Sijpt added that the Belgian suspect “bought the car belonging to Coulibaly’s wife.”

Karasular handed himself into police on Tuesday, saying he had been in contact with Coulibaly in recent months and had tried to “swindle” the Frenchman over the car deal, but was scared after the Paris attacks.

Investigators searched his house and found documents proving the sale of the vehicle and papers showing negotiations with Coulibaly about arms and ammunition, including a Tokarev pistol of the sort used by the Frenchman during the supermarket attack, Belga said.

Karasular will appear before a magistrate in Charleroi on Monday who will decide whether he will remain in custody.

Spain, meanwhile, opened an investigation Thursday into Coulibaly and Boumeddiene’s visit to Madrid shortly before the attacks.

Turkish authorities say Boumeddiene crossed into Syria on Jan 8 from Turkey.

She had arrived in Istanbul on a flight from Madrid before the Paris attacks took place.

Per head of population, Belgium is the European country from where the highest number of citizens have taken part in fighting with Syrian rebels in the past four years, data compiled by security researchers has shown.

Belgium has taken a lead in EU efforts to counter the threat perceived from the return of “foreign fighters” from Syria.

The Belgian government believes about 100 of its nationals have come back from there, while a further 40 may have been killed and about 170 are still in the ranks of fighters in Syria and Iraq.

Belgium is part of the US-led coalition fighting Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and has six F-16 aircraft taking part in bombing raids on Syria and Iraq.

A court in Antwerp is due to deliver its verdict on 46 people accused of recruiting young men to join militants or of becoming militants in Syria – Belgium’s largest Islamist militant trial to date.

The court was to have given its verdict this week, but it was delayed for a month after the Paris violence.

In Germany, police arrested a suspected supporter of the insurgent group Islamic State who was recently in Syria, federal prosecutors said.

The 26-year-old German-Tunisian suspect, named as Ayub B, is thought to have entered Syria via Turkey last year to be trained in ISIS combat and recruiting, before returning to Germany in August, the German prosecutor said in a statement.

The German authorities have not uncovered any evidence of concrete preparations for an attack on their soil. Berlin estimates that some 550 German nationals have gone to fight in ISIS ranks in Syria and Iraq.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

January 16, 2015
Pope: Free Speech Should Not Involve Insults On Others’ Faith

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE (AP) — Pope Francis said Thursday there are limits to freedom of speech, especially when it insults or ridicules someone’s faith.

Francis spoke about the Paris terror attacks while en route to the Philippines, defending free speech as not only a fundamental human right but a duty to speak one’s mind for the sake of the common good.

But he said there were limits.

By way of example, he referred to Alberto Gasbarri, who organizes papal trips and was standing by his side aboard the papal plane.

“If my good friend Dr. Gasbarri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch,” Francis said half-jokingly, throwing a mock punch his way. “It’s normal. You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”

His pretend punch aside, Francis by no means said the violent attack on Charlie Hebdo was justified. Quite the opposite: He said such horrific violence in God’s name couldn’t be justified and was an “aberration.” But he said a reaction of some sort was to be expected.

Many people around the world have defended the right of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo to publish inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in the wake of the massacre by Islamic extremists at its Paris offices and subsequent attack on a kosher supermarket in which three gunmen killed 17 people.

Others, though, have noted that in virtually all societies, freedom of speech has its limits, from laws against Holocaust denial to racially motivated hate speech.

Recently the Vatican and four prominent French imams issued a joint declaration that, while denouncing the Paris attacks, urged the media to treat religions with respect.

Francis, who has called on Muslim leaders in particular to speak out against Islamic extremism, went a step further Thursday when asked by a French journalist about whether there were limits when freedom of expression meets freedom of religion.

“There are so many people who speak badly about religions or other religions, who make fun of them, who make a game out of the religions of others,” he said. “They are provocateurs. And what happens to them is what would happen to Dr. Gasbarri if he says a curse word against my mother. There is a limit.”

In the wake of the Paris attacks, the Vatican has sought to downplay reports that it is a potential target for Islamic extremists, saying it is being vigilant but has received no specific threat.

Francis said he was concerned primarily for the safety of the faithful who come to see him in droves, and said he had spoken to Vatican security officials who are taking “prudent and secure measures.”

“I am worried, but you know I have a defect: a good dose of carelessness. I’m careless about these things,” he said. But he admitted that in his prayers, he had asked that if something were to happen to him that “it doesn’t hurt, because I’m not very courageous when it comes to pain. I’m very timid.”

He added, “I’m in God’s hands.”

Source: https://sg.news.yahoo.com

January 16, 2015
Ustazah: Allah Gave Permission For Girls To Hug K-Pop Idols

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 15 — The three Muslims girls who have been vilified for hugging K-pop stars during a concert last week actually had “Allah’s permission”, a Muslim religious teacher claimed.

The young woman, who did not provide her name and was identified by some YouTube accounts as an “ustazah” or religious teacher, said that the three girls would have been stopped by God from going onstage if there was no divine permission.

“They were onstage with Allah’s permission because in this life, Allah gives us one thing—that is choice. Allah gives us the choice. Allah gave us the choice whether we want to go or not, do something consciously or not,” the tudung-clad woman explained in a YouTube video that is 5:42 minutes long.

“And they chose to go and Allah permitted them to go; they chose to stand up there and Allah permitted them to be onstage,” she added in the video carried by YouTube users like Pen Merah Dot Com and Siakap Keli.

In the same video that surfaced yesterday, she also trained her guns on “keyboard warriors”, calling them out for their alleged holier-than-thou attitude and abusive words.

“But behind Allah’s permission for this to become viral, Allah actually wants to test us who are so good in becoming keyboard warriors to abuse, to speak ill; as if you are all so good since you were born until now,” she said.

She also pointed out that the three Muslim girls could end up being far better than their critics by learning from this incident, also saying that the girls and their families and friends were already suffering shame from this controversy.

She said love should be shown to the three girls instead, and sounded exasperated when noting how Muslims and Malays have been squabbling online over this incident.

The controversy erupted after a video of the meet-the-fans session here for K-pop band B1A4 on Saturday was uploaded online, prompting thousands of angry Facebook users to share and comment on a three-minute viral video of the artists hugging and embracing the tudung-clad Malay girls on stage.

The clip, which was posted on the Sukan Star TV Facebook page, was suggestively titled “Perempuan melayu dicabul atas pentas oleh mat kpop semalam” (Malay girls molested on stage by K-Pop artists last night).

But B1A4’s management firm WM Entertainment has since then denied claims that its artistes “molested” the three Malay girls, saying that they were mindful of local Muslim sensitivities and said the consent of the three had been obtained.

The mini-concert’s organisers TGM Events have also denied the molest claim, pointing out that the event company was run mostly by women and were against “molestation or sexual harassment.”

The organiser also said the fans were told beforehand not to “touch” or “get too close” to the B1A4 members, adding that the selected fans had given their full consent to appear on stage.

On Monday, JAWI said it is investigating the girls for public indecency and outraging Muslims, and would probe the matter under Section 29 of Shariah Criminal Offences (Federal Territories) Act 1997.

Section 29 of the Act allows for a fine of up to RM1,000 and imprisonment of no more than six months upon conviction.

Yesterday, Utusan Malaysia reported that JAWI said it will apply for an arrest warrant if the Malay girls refuse to turn themselves in for investigation within a week, but the department’s official told Malay Mail Online that they may be spared prosecution and sent for rehabilitation instead if they are underage.

Source: https://sg.news.yahoo.com

January 16, 2015
Charlie Hebdo’s Muslim Tragedy

There is a self-inflicted tragedy in the Muslim response to Charlie Hebdo.

In the discussions of Charlie Hebdo and the events surrounding it, one divide between the west and Islam was clear.

While the cultural west (those who identify culturally and/ideologically with values that grew out of the West) cry out the attack on Charlie Hebdo as an affront to freedom of speech, Muslims reiterate the demand that the Prophet not be depicted in any form.

The issue is not about violence. It is not about response to the cartoon. Any attempt to refer to the issue as though it is about violence is akin to saying the Christian response to abortions is to bomb its clinics. That violence have occurred is a secondary event. It resulted from other concerns that have not been sufficiently explored.

What need to be investigated is the difference in values. It is this difference that determined our action and reaction.

While the west claim freedom of speech as an absolute right, Islam does not confer a similar position to speech.

Instead, in Islam, freedom is qualified to only what is good. We have the freedom to do what is good, not to participate in conduct that are evil or criminal.

The west however, has struggled in framing the discussion within a coherent discourse. It claims to grant absolute freedom to speech. But it admits that freedom to speech cannot impinge on another person’s rights or represent public menace.

The concept of “shouting fire in a crowded theatre” is traditionally seen as a limit to speech. To falsely shout fire in the theatre may cause a panic resulting in stampede, death and destruction. The person’s right to speech then, does not include his right to be a menace.

But that is not where the limits are now. While France and its cultural allies claim to believe unequivocally in freedom of speech, to deny the holocaust, performing the quenelle and other expressions deemed to be anti-Semitic lay outside of this freedom.

The limit to freedom is therefore not only in relation to public menace but also on who it applies to.

While Islam provides an objective and clear standard, the west’s limit is subjective. It demands some groups to be protected while denying others of that right.

But what is interesting in the discussion the last week is how Muslims are internalising western cultural values. Muslim leaders have come out in support and promotion of freedom of speech as though it is an absolute. And this support is subsequently promoted and universalised.

Tony Abbott’s response to Keysar Trad’s comments is a case in point. Trad, an Australian Muslim community leader claimed to reject Charlie Hebdo’s caricature of the Prophet but recognise their right to offend. This was promoted by the media and the Prime Minister with the added demand that Muslims who took umbrage should emulate Trad’s stance.

Western values are not theirs. It is ours.

The right to offend and insult is now a given. It does not merit further discussion. It is universalised and we are to adopt it as our values.

Islamic values do not exist independently anymore. It only exists if it is compatible with the west.

That is the self-inflicted tragedy of the Muslim response to Charlie Hebdo.

Source: www.almakhazin.com

January 16, 2015