Dear PM Lee, History is a 2-Sided Coin

I do not for a moment believe that just because Lee Hsien Loong labels Dr Poh Soo Kai a communist then he is a communist.

Even if he were a communist there is no justification to imprison him for 17 years. Neither is there any justification for the incarceration of Dr. Lim Hock Siew and Chia Thye Poh for more than 20 years.

Such calumnies were perpetuated long after communism has lost its favour in Singapore and in the world. According to Hock Siew his ISD tormentors told him “why don’t you admit your are a communist and give some face to the old man so he can set you free!” To his dying breath Dr. Lim would stand firm: “why should I lie to gain freedom by giving him face.”

It was the same with Chis Thye Poh the longest political prisoner in the world even longer than Nelson Mandela. He refused to admit to lies and for that he was incarcerated for close to 3 decades. In the end they had to set him free with no television confessions

I see Dr. Poh Soo Kai as a heroic anti-colonial fighter who was charged for sedition by the British colonialists when he was a student at the then University of Singapore. His “crime” then was to publish an anti-colonial article in the Fajar newspaper. And who defended him as an assistant lawyer but his father Lee Kuan Yew. But it was DN Pritt the Queen’s Counsel who managed to set all 9 Fajar defendants free without a trial.

In the old man’s memoirs he did not even mention by name those brave anti-colonial students who stood up for a just cause. The suppression of simple facts like these makes me to always suspect the validity of the official version of history.