The chapter of Singapore’s history the PAP doesn’t want you to know.

Recently, “To Singapore, with love”, a film about the lives of Singapore’s political exiles, was banned by the MDA. Unsurprisingly, this lead to an uproar among Singaporeans, especially on the internet. Why would the MDA ban a political film that has been internationally recognized, winning several awards and accolades. Obviously, the justification that the film is a “threat to national security” is a blatant lie. This move by the MDA is the latest in a string of measures to systematically silence the political opposition in Singapore; from the MDA licensing scheme, to the self-censorship framework for arts groups, to the banning of children’s books and now this.

The government conveniently used the “Communist threat” as justification for banning the film. This is not new. For decades, the government has been conveniently relying on the fear of Communism to discredit and demonize any political opposition in Singapore. This was especially so under Lee Kwan Yew’s time, during the height of the Cold War.

In the battle between Communism and Capitalism, either side would claim to be in a battle between “good and evil”. The PAP Government used the term “Communist” with such disdain. As long as they could brand any activist a Communist, it would be a convenient distraction from the real problems they weren’t interested in solving.

The late 40s, 50s and 60s are heralded as a defining point in Singapore’s history, in which the local Singapore and Malayan Governments, and the British Colonial Government, had succeeded in eliminating the “evil Communist threat”. But in reality, there was no such battle between good and evil during those tumultuous years. Both sides had the capacity for evil and both sides committed horrific war crimes in the process. Such was the example during the Malayan Emergency.

British War crimes during the Malayan Emergency

Throughout the conflict, it was common for British troops to detain and torture  villagers who were suspected in aiding the insurgents while attempting to search for them. Brian Lapping said that there was “some vicious conduct by the British forces, who routinely beat up Chinese squatters when they refused, or possibly were unable, to give information” about the insurgents. There were also cases of bodies of dead guerrillas being exhibited in public.

A young British officer commented that: “We were shooting people. We were killing them…This was raw savage success. It was butchery. It was horror.” British units also compete each other in competition who was going to kill more people or not. One British army conscript recalled that “when we had an officer who did come out with us on patrol I realized that he was only interested in one thing: killing as many people as possible”.

British troops were also unable to tell apart enemy combatants and civilians while conducting military operations through the jungles  as the guerrillas wore civilian clothing and sometimes had support from the sympathetic civilian population. These instances led to war crimes committed by the British, such as the Batang Kali massacre where 24 unarmed villagers were slaughtered. 

As part of the Briggs’ Plan devised by British General Sir Harold Briggs, 500,000 people (10% of Malaya’s population) were forcibly removed from the land, had tens of thousands of their homes destroyed, and interned in concentration camps called “New Villages”. 

Operation Spectrum

On 21 May 1987, 16 people were arrested in a pre-dawn raid carried out by the Internal Security Department. Over the next two months The Straits Times published numerous articles about the unravelling of what the Ministry of Home Affairs described as a “Marxist conspiracy” to “subvert the existing system of government and to seize power in Singapore.” According to the paper, the conspirators were “hybrid pro-communist types who augment traditional CPM (Communist Party of Malaya) tactics with new techniques and methods, using the Catholic church and religious organizations.”

On 20 June 1987, 6 more people were arrested, bringing the total number of detainees to 22. The mostly English-educated group was a mix of Catholic lay workers, social workers, overseas-educated graduates, theater practitioners and professionals. In April 1988, nine of the released detainees issued a joint statement accusing the government of ill-treatment and torture while under detention. They also denied involvement in any conspiracy and alleged that they were pressured into making confessions.