以下是读者推荐 2021年5月20日 Function 8(Facebook) 的文章（英中文版）：
Mr Lim Hock Koon passed away this month of May, two days short of the 13th, when 67 years ago, he was one of the key leaders who organised the Chinese middle school students’ resistance against mandatory registration for national service for males of call-up age.
On May 13 1954 about a thousand students, including females lined up on the pavement close to Government House (today’s Istana), where their representatives were scheduled to meet the Officer Administering the Government to discuss their petition for exemption.
Defenceless and unarmed, they were set upon by the riot police led by the police commissioner. Aside from The Straits Times, the English and Chinese-medium newspapers were highly critical of the excessive force used in response to the concern the youths raised about the disruption to their studies when a consultative process would have been more productive. The inherent violence of colonialism, particularly with the Emergency in place since 1948 was displayed for all to see.
This May 13 event has now been claimed as the beginning of the anti-colonial mass movement in Singapore. Up to the last decade, the only mention of the incident in history books, if at all, was that a communist-instigated student riot broke out on that day. The silence was broken in 2011, with a volume of Chinese-language documents of the student movement, and two books in English: A collection of essays The May 13 Generation: The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s (along with the Chinese-language version) and the translation of the Ju Lang (巨浪) into English：The Mighty Wave, a thinly-veiled novel which conveyed the experiences and perspectives of two key former student leaders Mr Lim Kim Chuan (He Jin, the author) and Mr Lim Hock Koon. The book was written to mark the 50th anniversary of May 13, 1954.
The launch of The May 13 Generation and The Mighty Wave was attended by about 300 mainly senior citizens. Among the speakers was Madam Loh Miao Ping, the vice-chair of the academic unit of the Singapore Chinese Middle Schools Student Union formed in the wake of May 13. Her responsibility was to organise voluntary student-run tuition groups. She excelled in mathematics. Madam Loh was arrested under the Preservation of Public Security Ordinance (PPSO) and imprisoned by the Lim Yew Hock government from 10 October 1956 to 1 October 1959. In the September 1963 general election, she stood as a Barisan Sosialis candidate in the constituency of Havelock and won. But even before she could take her seat in parliament, she was imprisoned from 1 October 1963 to 23 June 1970.
Until the 2011 launch of the two books, Madam Loh’s voice had not been heard addressing a public event for almost half a century.
Three years later, at the 60th anniversary lunch gathering to commemorate May 13 in 2014, the key speaker who had similarly been silent for decades, Mr Lim Hock Koon addressed about 800 people, including former middle school students settled in Canada, Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia and the region. It was a joyous affair. The hall was filled with movement and unrestrained chatter. The elderly were going around the 70 （80）odd tables seeking out their friends and greeting familiar faces with great gusto. Bursts of laughter and good cheer filled the air. It was the day when they could once again be proud of their role in the anti-colonial movement.
Mr Lim spoke of the anti-colonial fervour of the post-war period among the middle school students and the events of May 13, the failed attempt to occupy Chung Cheng High School on May 22 which was broken up by the police, the historic camp-in at Chinese High school on June 2, the hunger strike, and the colonial government finally agreeing to approve the postponement of enlistment to students of call up age from senior middle 1 to 3 who applied for postponement. The students dispersed victoriously on 24 June.
The elderly former students who were present were familiar with the chronology, for they had lived through it as well. Mr Lim concluded with recalling his late elder brother the prominent Barisan Sosialis leader and political prisoner Dr Lim Hock Siew who wrote in 2011:
In the political history of Singapore, May 13, 1954 stands out as a turning point in our peoples’ struggle for political freedom and social justice.
It was a spark that started a prairie fire!
It served to arouse the political awareness of students of that generation in Singapore which, hitherto, had stayed latent. Like a gigantic tidal wave, these activists swept the PAP into power in 1959, hoping that the newly formed political party would bring about political freedom and social justice to our people.
But it was not to be. Subsequent repressions conducted by the PAP after it came to power proved to be more ruthless and relentless than those carried out by the colonial rulers and they have to be seen through and through as a massive political betrayal in Singapore history.
The final sentence was Mr. Lim’s own:
‘Destiny is in our own hands, we must struggle and be prepared to sacrifice if we want to realise our dreams.’
He was talking to the younger Singaporeans present, some of whom were actors who played middle school students in the 1950s in a short film commissioned for the event.
That Mr Lim Hock Koon was invited to speak at the 60th anniversary of the event was landmark recognition by the organisers of his leadership.
In his view, shared with his late fellow student and lifelong comrade He Jin, and told in Ju Lang,
May 13 cannot be understood as purely orchestrated by the communists, the version which the CPM and the PAP, otherwise deadly foes, have continued to adhere to. While the CPM regarded the event as anti-colonial resistance which it directed, the PAP saw it as a communist-instigated riot that aimed to disrupt the country’s road to nationhood. The middle school students were nigh irrelevant in their narratives, without any agency or initiative.
Ju Lang is a controversial book. There were former student leaders who were upset that the author was a member of the CPM, thus flagging that the CPM members were involved in May 13.
At the same time, Ju Lang highlighted the fact that the CPM leader whom Mr Lim and He Jin worked with turned out to be a rogue who betrayed his charges.
He was out of contact when they needed to consult him, made away with party funds, sexually abused his female subordinate who had been an activist student, and finally sold out to the Special Branch. While making the point that not all communists were good guys, the novel at the same time featured dedicated CPM leaders and members who withstood torture, and were upright and selfless anti-colonialists. Nevertheless the CPM would not have been used to its members making known the organisation's shortcomings.
Mr Lim Hock Koon's credibility as a student leader was impeccable. He joined Chung Cheng High School in 1951 as a junior middle one student. The following year, he headed the Student Aid Fund for his level of studies, administered by students to give financial support to those in need. He was also the editor of a newsletter comprising student writings, circulated to all middle schools. In 1953 he organised the junior middle school graduating class cultural concerts which for the first time was a combined schools affair. The fund-raising event for the building of Nanyang University was enthusiastically supported by the public. In 1954, Mr Lim was in senior middle one and was 19 years old, of conscription age. He led the Chung Cheng delegation to meet the governor on the students’ petition for exemption from national service.
Mr Lim traced the anti-colonial fervour of the students to the humiliation of the British in World War Two, the inspiration of China successfully getting rid of western imperialism in 1949, and the post war liberation movements in the colonial world. For the middle school students in Singapore, this was centred on fighting the suppression of Chinese education, of the moral fibre of the community, including turning a blind eye to vice, and the exploitation of the underclass.
Mr Lim Hock Koon and He Jin were members of the Anti-British League, the underground organisation that kept the anti-colonial movement alive after the CPM was banned under the Emergency imposed in 1948. With their outstanding performance in the anti-conscription agitation, they immediately became persons of interest to the Special Branch. To avoid arrest, they were accepted as CPM members, left school, and went underground.
Mr Lim was arrested in 1971, and became a political prisoner up to 1979. He was severely tortured and kept in a cell above a furnace. This took a toll on his health.
He and He Jin have remained the only Singapore members of the CPM to have given an account of their lives as middle school students in the 1950s.
Their message was a challenge to the domination of the restrictive narratives on the left-wing student movement in the 1950s. Mr Lim said succinctly in a December 2014 interview that he resolutely opposed a statement attributed to a former student leader who is a CPM member that for May 13, the CPM was behind the student leaders.
Instead, he claimed a central role for the politically active Chinese middle school students in the 1950s in Singapore history. Even the English-educated undergraduates in the University Socialist Club (USC) came to understand the conditions of life of the majority of the population from May 13. His elder brother Hock Siew had been critical of his activities as distraction from studies, and courting of trouble with the authorities. The May 13 incident led the undergraduates to appreciate the causes that the students defended on the side of the poor and oppressed.
When Dr Poh Soo Kai was told of the passing of Mr Lim, he affirmed that he and the USC had supported the May 13 students in 1954, which was carried in an article in the Club’s organ, Fajar.
Mr Lim Hock Koon’s life and his life-story is an alert to historians that they have much work that awaits them. With what he had bequeathed, Singaporeans now should have a better sense of what the fight against colonialism involved, and equally the successive regimented structures on the left and right that constitute our history and reality.
悼念林福坤（1935年3月30日—2021年5月11日）
孔莉莎博士
林福坤先生于2021年5月11日与世长辞了。离开1954年5月13日，也就是67年前，他组织华校中学生反对国民登记征召华校生服兵役的‘513反对兵役斗争’还差两天。
于1954年5月13日，近千名男女学生列队到总督府（也就是现在的总统府）外行人走道上等待他们的代表计划与当时的殖民地总督讨论申请免役。
警方的镇暴队在警察指挥官的领导下对毫无自卫能力和手无寸铁者进行镇压。当时，除了《海峡时报》以外，所有中英文报章都强烈抨击警方超越权力用于回应这些年轻人提出征兵役干扰他们学习的问题，因该提出何时实施征兵役计划的建设性。殖民主义者固有的暴力，特别是在1948年颁布的《紧急法令》展示给大家看。
1954年5月13日事件现在已经被视为是拉开新加坡反对殖民主义运动的帷幕。直到近10年，如果有的话，唯一提到有关此事件的历史书籍，就是描绘这一天是一场共产党煽动学生暴动的事件。这一段描绘当年历史事件的说辞一直到2011年，一本有关学生运动的华文文献和两本英文书籍才揭开了历史的事实。英文书籍：The Chinese Middle Schools Student Movement and Singapore Politics in the 1950s（中文版书名：《情系五一三》），以及 The Mighty Wave《巨浪》，翻译成英文由当时两位重要的学生领袖林金泉（作者：贺巾）和林福坤传达了有关513事件的重要经历和观点。这本书的出版为了纪念1954年5月13日‘513事件’50周年。
《情系五一三》和《巨浪》正式发布仪式的出席者大约300人，他们都是年长者。在发布会上发言者有卢妙萍女士。她是当年成立的新加坡华文中学生联合会（简称‘中学联’）学习股的副主任，‘中学联’是“513事件”后成立的。它的任务是组织同学补习小组。卢妙萍女士在《维护公共安全法令》(（Preservation of Public Security Ordinance (PPSO)）下，于1956年10月10日被林有福政府逮捕，监禁至1959年10月1日释放。于1963年9月举行的新加坡大选。她在新加坡社会主义阵线旗帜下，参加合洛选区竞选，并赢得当选。但是，在她尚未宣誓进入国会，她在1963年10月1日被逮捕入狱，直到1970年6月23日获得释放。
在2011年这两本书出版之前几乎近半个世纪，在公共场所再也没有听到卢妙萍女士的声音。
3年后，也就是2014年举行的纪念1954年5月13日‘513事件’60周年庆祝会。会上主要的发言者，也是同样沉默了几十年的林福坤先生向与会近800名出席者发言。参与此盛会的出席者包括了旅居加拿大、香港、澳门、马来西亚和本区域的前华校中学生。这是一个充满欢愉的盛会。会场大厅弥漫了与会者的互动和交流。长者们穿梭在近80张餐桌当中寻找他们自己的老友，大家与旧交欢欣互相祝福。这是他们又有幸欢聚在一起为自己在反对殖民主义运动中扮演的角色。
林先生在演讲中谈到了战后在华校中学生的反殖民地热情，以及‘513事件’中与5月22日警方冲进中正中学驱散学生的事件，以及华校中学学生在于6月2日在学校集中及绝食事件。最终殖民地政府被迫同意延期征召高中1到高中3学生入伍。于6月24日同学们宣布胜利解散。
那些出席纪念会的前长者同学们非常熟悉当时的历史，他们也经历了这段历史。林先生在结束演讲前引用了他的胞兄，前社会主义阵线杰出领导人和政治拘留者林福寿医生在2011年写下的一段话：
在新加坡的政治史上，1954年5月13日这个日子凸显的是我们人民争取政治自由与社会公正的斗争过程中的一个转捩点。
这是星星之火可以燎原的最佳体现！
也就在这个时期，他们掀起了一股强大的政治热潮，并于1959年把人民行动党拥戴上政治权利的宝座。他们期望于这个政党，期盼它能为人民带来政治自由和社会公正。
可是他们却没料到事情与愿违。人民行动党在取得政权之后，紧接着便对这一代政治活动分子进行残酷的、毫不留情的迫害，而其惨烈的程度，竟比殖民地统治者有过之而不及，这在新加坡的政治史上，不能不等同于最严厉的政治背板。
林先生在演讲的最后一段话是：
命运掌握在我们自己手中，如果我们要实现自己的理想，我们必须进行斗争和准备做出牺牲。
他向新加坡现在的年轻人说，在宴会中放映的一部短片片中扮演了1950年代的中学生活动。
林先生受邀在纪念“513事件”宴会上的讲话，是大会组织者对他领导能力的里程碑式的认可。
他的看法和自己的老同学和久经考验的战友贺巾的著作《巨浪》中分享了有关“513事件”一样。他说，
不可把“513事件”纯粹理解为共产党在幕后指挥的。这是马来亚共产党和行动党所持有的观点。马来亚共产党把这起事件视为是他们领导的反对殖民主义斗争；行动党把这起事件定性为是共产党幕后操纵的一场暴动，他们否定了华校中学生在这事件的角色。
《巨浪》是一本具有争议性的书。前学生领袖们有的对于作者是一名共产党员感到是严重。这等于默认了马来亚共产党涉及“513事件”。
与此同时，《巨浪》突出了一个事实：林先生与贺巾共同的马来亚共产党领导背叛了他的指控。原来他是一个恶棍。
当他们需要与他联系时，他失踪了。他卷走了党的活动基金，性侵一位积极活动的女性学生党员，最终他投靠政治部，出卖自己的同志。在阐述观点时说，不是所有共产党员都是好人。小说也同时描述了马来亚共产党领袖的献身精神和党员被捕时经受了折磨虐待，是正直无私的反对殖民主义战士。
林福坤先生作为一名学生领袖是无可挑剔的。他于1951年进入中正中学就读初中。接着下来，他领导了同级同学组织的同学助学金会，作为筹措经费援助贫穷的同学。他同时也是由学生作品组成的时事通讯的编辑。这份时事通讯在所有的中学同学中广泛流传。于1953年，他组织了初中班毕业同学文娱表演。这是第一次结合学校的事务。为南洋大学筹措建校基金受到了公众的踊跃响应。于1954年，当年19岁时念高中，是适于服兵役的年龄。他领导中正中学同学组成一个代表团觐见当时的英殖民地总督，递交要求免服兵役请愿书。
林先生追溯了在学生们热议着反殖斗争在第二次世界大战中英国人收到的羞辱、中国人在1949年成功地把西方帝国主义赶出中国高昂情绪，以及战后殖民地国家的民族解放运动。对于新加坡的华校中学生来说，他们集中在反对压制华文教育、社区的道德品行，包括了反黄运动及对底层人民的剥削。
林福坤先生与贺巾都是马来亚抗英同盟的成员。1948年《紧急法令》颁布后，马来亚共产党被封闭后，抗英同盟转入地下继续进行反殖民主义的活动。由于他们反征兵活动中的杰出表现引起了政治部的注意。为了逃避被逮捕，他们加入了马来亚共产党，离开学校转入地下继续活动。
林福坤先生于1971年被捕，并成为了政治拘留者。直到1979年获得释放。被捕期间他经历残酷地虐待，被监禁在炽热的牢房里。这就造成了彻底摧毁了他的身体健康。
他和贺巾仍然是马来亚共产党员在新加坡的党员讲述着自己在50年代中学生生活的仅存者。
他们的信息是对50年代左翼学生运动局限性的叙述支配的挑战。于2014年林先生在一次访谈中简洁地叙述了，他坚决反对一位是马来亚共产党员的前学生领袖说，‘513事件’是马来亚共产党在幕后领导的。
反过来，他声称，华校中学生在50年代新加坡历史上扮演着主角。即便是在马来亚大学社会主义俱乐部（University Socialist Club (USC)）受英文教育在籍学生也从“513事件”中了解了大多数人民的生活。他的哥哥林福寿医生一直批评他的活动是会分散学习的注意力。学生们辩护说，这是站在穷人和被压迫者一边。
当傅树介医生知道林福坤先生去世时，他强调他和马来亚大学社会主义俱乐部支持1954年5月13日的学生。这个支持就刊载于马来亚社会主义俱乐部机关刊物《花惹》（Fajar）。
对于历史学者来说，林福坤先生的经历和历史是一个警戒，他们还有许多工作要做。从他遗留下来的一生事迹，新加坡人对反殖斗争的牵涉范围应该有更清楚的了解。