Singapore Democrats, 17 Sep 2008, Gandhi Ambalam
The specter of the Internal Security Act (ISA) has again been hoisted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Speaking at the 60th anniversary dinner of the Internal Security Department (ISD) recently, Mr Lee traced the "internal security concerns" over the years and went as far back as 1950 to cite the Maria Hertogh incident of that year to the detentions in 1987. It was an exquisite exercise of distortion and simplism.
First, the incident that culminated in the custody battle over a 13-year-old girl, Maria Hertogh, in 1950 was described by Lee Jr as one of race riots in Singapore. It most certainly was not. The Maria Hertogh episode was one of the first uprisings against British colonialism after the end of the Second World War.
This was clear from the fact that the unfortunate victims of the riots were all from the colonialist class. I repeat: The Maria Hertogh riots were not race riots but a revolt against the undemocratic system wrought by the British. To distort a struggle for independence that reflected the yearnings of the locals for justice and freedom from their colonial masters, and to label it as race riots is mischievous, to say the least.
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