"You must confess to something so that Lee Kuan Yew can tell the public why you were detained so long," the late Singaporean activist Lim Hock Siew quoted a police interrogator as telling him during his two decades in prison. Thirty years later, similar attempts to coax confessions to non-existent crimes are familiar to many imprisoned dissidents in China, rights groups say.
China's Communist Party is seeking to follow Singapore's example, hoping to prolong its rule for at least another decade by suppressing organised opposition while liberalising but controlling the economy. As the party's new leaders attempt to "live up to the people's trust" and tackle "potential dangers" identified by outgoing leader and state President Hu Jintao at Thursday's opening of a crucial party congress, they are looking to Singapore for guidance. Full story
