Part 30: A first-hand account of life in detention in Singapore’s draconian ISA

A narrative about injustice: ISD's instruction: Don't challenge the status quo

A continuation of Zulfikar’s account of life under Singapore’s ISA

The first two years, I requested to meet with the Australian consulate several times. My family met with consulate officials to discuss my detention and to get support regularly. We were told that consulate officers tried to meet me repeatedly but their requests were denied.

In October 2018, my mother told me that the Australian consulate suggested I make a formal request to ISD to meet with them. I relayed the request to Iqbal and was told to write a letter to the director. About two months later, in January 2019, Krishnan came to meet with me.

“Your request to meet the Australian embassy is rejected. You are a Singapore citizen. We won’t allow you to meet.”

“Then I renounce my Singapore citizenship.”

I wanted the Australian government to know what was going on. No one knows what went on inside detention. The more access I had to non-ISD persons and organisations, the better.

I was also worried that I may lose Australian citizenship if I remained a dual citizen. My family lived in Australia and as much as I loved Singapore, I love my family more. About a year before I was detained, Australia passed a law that allowed the government to strip someone’s citizenship if they were dual citizens and was convicted of terrorism.

I was not tried, let alone convicted of terrorism. But I was worried if the Australian government believed the PAP’s claims and stripped me of my citizenship. That would mean the ISD would have absolute power to do anything they wanted to me and I would be separated from my wife and children for years more. If not permanently.

Krishnan told me that it would not make any difference if I renounced my Singapore citizenship. “You will still have to serve the detention.”

“But I can meet with the Australian consulate.”

He was surprised. He thought I wanted to renounce my citizenship so that I would be released. He did not realise it was mainly because I wanted to meet someone who was not from ISD.

“Then we won’t allow you to renounce.”

Iqbal regularly told me that my discussions of democracy was an attempt to “impose Australian politics on Singapore”. ISD officers and psychologists argued that “Singapore is different.”

Singapore did not need democracy. I was told that the Singapore system works differently. I told them that the PAP was anti-democratic.

Iqbal asked me why I criticised the Singapore government but not the Australian government. I told him, there were three reasons. First, I am a migrant to Australia. Migrating to Australia meant that I accepted the Australian system as it was. It did not make sense to migrate to Australia to change it.

However, after migrating, I had the right to seek changes as I learn more and see areas and policies to improve. As for Singapore, I was born there. The Singapore system is a collection of views and preferences of every Singaporean. Because I was a Singaporean, the Singapore system should reflect my beliefs too. If it did not, then I had the right and responsibility to seek changes.

Second, there were a lot of Australians who spoke up and campaigned on various issues. They spoke louder than I did. There were lobby groups for almost every issue. My call to speak up and campaign on issues was not needed. Everyone was doing it.

Third, there were independent institutions for Australians to seek redress for any grievance. In Singapore, the PAP controlled every policy and institution. Any grievance would go through them. In Australia, we could seek review and redress through tribunals and various organisations.

Basically, my push for democratisation and active politics were not needed in Australia.

The idea of Singapore exceptionalism kept coming up. Whether it was Iqbal, Ajitpal, Roslinda or Hafiz, I was regularly told that Singapore was unique. It was different. Democracy would not work. Hafiz repeatedly told me not to challenge the status quo.

I asked Hafiz what he thought of Gandhi. “Terrible man. He broke up India.”

I was amazed by his statement. Gandhi was against partition. I let it go. I wanted to discuss status quo, not India.

“What about Mandela?”

“Terrible. I went to South Africa and met the blacks. They said life under Mandela is worse than under the whites.”

I let that go too.

“Martin Luther King?”

“He was a good man.”

“You know he challenged the status quo?” I asked him.

Hafiz argued that the PAP had done very well for Singapore, especially given how little resources there were. Singaporeans are constantly reminded how the government developed the country out of a malaria infested swampland with no natural resources. Singapore’s development was a result of the PAP’s ingenuity.

“You know that Singapore in the 1950s was already one of the most economically
developed states in Asia? We were second, right after Japan. Our GDP per capita was higher than Korea.”

I asked Hafiz to imagine a scenario. “What if, at independence, there was a massive climate change event. The whole island was flooded. But through some incredible foresight, the government was able to build another Singapore, an exact copy, brick by brick, wood by wood, on another island. But the island is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Every Singaporean is transported to that island. So that island, a New Singapore is exactly like the original Singapore. Same infrastructures. Same people. Same government.

Do you think it would have the same economic development as the original Singapore?”

“No” he admitted.

“Why not?”

“Because we won’t have the busy port and neighbouring market.”

“Exactly” I told him. “Singapore’s natural resource is our location. You take that away and you won’t get the economic development we’ve had.”

I told him what I remembered from secondary school history. “By 1826, 7 years after Raffles took over Singapore and 40 years after Francis Light took Penang, Singapore’s GDP overtook Penang’s.”

I was told to stop thinking about politics, even as they talked to me about it. Iqbal regularly argued that all I knew was theory. “You only read books. What do you know?” The government he claimed, had to deal with real issues.

“Yes, I work on theories. Theories are a coherent set of assumptions. Without theories, all you have are assumptions. You assume a policy is good because you want to believe it is.”

“How many books have you read? Have you read 500?” Iqbal queried.

“In detention? I think I’ve read about 300.”

“No your whole life.”

“I don’t know. Maybe a couple thousand?”

The fact that I read a lot was a source of criticism.

From the first week of my detention, I was told that I was too intellectual. Hafiz asked “why would someone want to be an intellectual” as though it was a mental disability. He however noted that my mind and my emotions could be detached. I can be critical about an issue or debate someone without it affecting my emotions. I do not dislike those I debate or criticise.

I can intensely debate someone while still liking and appreciating them.

“That is not normal” he told me.

“Is that bad?”

I was curious why they thought it was a problem. Charlton told me in the second week of my arrest that he would recommend my detention because my heart and my mind were not connected.

“Most people are not like that.” I was told that intense disagreement tended to mean dislike. I do not feel that way.

For Hafiz, for me to be released, I needed to be like everyone else. That meant, in Singapore, for me to be deferential to the PAP, not discuss politics and focus on making money for my family.

Focusing on my family was regularly discussed. Iqbal told me about his colleague who died on the day he retired. He had worked so hard and on the day he was supposed to begin life with his family, it ended.

He also repeatedly talked about the Tabligh, a Muslim group that travelled overseas for missionary work. He said he knew a Tabligh man who went overseas, leaving his wife and children without sufficient money and supplies.

“What he thinks he will go to heaven? If this guy goes to heaven, then I don’t want to go to heaven” he declared.

I agreed that the man should have provided for his family. But for a Muslim to decide who should or should not go to heaven was extreme arrogance. And to state that he would not want to be in heaven if this other man was, was almost blasphemous. We accept that heaven is solely Allah’s prerogative. It was not for any of us to declare who should or should not be rewarded.

As he told me his views, I was reminded of the story of a man who told a sinner that he would not go to heaven. On judgement day, Allah asked the man, upon whose authority did he make that declaration? The sinner was subsequently granted heaven by Allah’s mercy and the man sent to hell for his arrogance.

I understood his intention. He wanted me to not discuss politics. He wanted me to end my activism. Focus on my family. Keep quiet. Don’t get involved.

But that was not his responsibility. There was nothing that I did that was a threat to security. Not Singapore’s not Australia’s.

I reminded Iqbal and Hafiz that my discussions of Singapore politics were not illegal. And neither were my discussions of international politics.

And my criticisms of colonialism in the Middle East, were made in Australia, as an Australian citizen. Nothing that I said was illegal in Australia.

Iqbal however argued that it did not matter that I was an Australian citizen discussing in Australia. I was also a Singaporean.

“If a Singaporean goes to Thailand and smoke ganja, when he comes back to Singapore he will still be arrested. If he say he was not in Singapore then I will say to him lanjiao1. I will still arrest him.”

“I guess that is the privilege of Singapore citizenship.”

“What?”

“The privilege of being arrested.”

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