荒谬与难以置信

LUDICROUS AND INCREDULOUS
by Teo Soh Lung

I find it ludicrous and incredulous that both Kirsten Han and Rocky Howe are now being investigated for two additional offences. See https://tinyurl.com/5e5sjv9p

I was walking with or behind them when they crossed the road to the Bedok Police Station yesterday. They had been summoned there for investigation into two alleged offences of "unlawful assembly" outside the Changi Prison. While they were wearing t-shirts with anti-death penalty slogans, I was wearing a checked shirt. The police cctv record would show that I was either walking behind them or beside them. Would that make me part of their imaginary “unlawful procession?”

If the Bedok police officers have deemed it fit to seize the t-shirts of Rocky and Kirsten, I offer my shirt to be seized too. I also offer myself to be interrogated.

I was seated inside the police station reading William Wan’s Through the Valley, the Art of Living and Leaving Well when I received a call from Kirsten asking me to buy a t-shirt for her because her investigator wanted to have her t-shirt. What a weird request. I asked if the police were buying her t-shirt. She said no, they were going to seize it. What! Seize her t-shirt? In that case, I won’t buy a t-shirt for her. She then said that if I didn’t buy the shirt, she would either have to ask someone else to buy it or be stuck in the police station.

We all know that the police have the power to detain a person for 48 hours while they sleep on their job. It used to be 24 hours during colonial times until the PAP decided that their police force needed more time because they are not up to the mark or because they are sadistic and wanted to punish alleged offenders by ensuring that they spend 2 full days in the lock up.

Ludicrous as it sounded, I walked to the market to buy a t-shirt. As I was about to cross the road to the police station, I received another call from Kirsten asking me to buy a shirt for Rocky! What is happening! Just a few hours earlier, I was nearly refused permission to enter the police station and now I have become their useful clerk. The guards had earlier denied me entry. After checking my identity document, they had called someone and told me that I could not enter the police station. I was puzzled. I have never been refused entry before. Why should Bedok Police Station behave in this way? So I asked to see a senior officer. After a few phone calls and making me wait at the exit for at least ten minutes, I was allowed in.

Until I read what Kirsten wrote, I had no clue what she was being investigated for. All these had happened after she had given her statement for the alleged two offences of gathering outside Changi Prison on the day two prisoners who they had failed to save from the gallows were hanged.

So which enthusiastic, overzealous senior officer had instigated the investigation of this incredulous offence of unlawful procession? He or she ought to be dismissed from service. Such an officer imagines too much and is a danger to society because innocent people may be arrested for walking in the streets and crossing roads.

The police may be unhappy with Kirsten and Rocky for daring to wear t-shirts which proclaim the cause they strongly believe in. They may appear defiant and their intention may be to challenge the authority. That however does not empower them to abuse their power as police officers investigating the alleged offences of unlawful assembly as stated in the letters to them. Neither does it empower them to summon an officer from the cybercrimes response team to intimidate them. What has the holding of an alleged vigil and gathering outside Changi Prison on two dark nights or mornings got to do with cybercrimes?

Singaporeans may be powerless for the present. We are subjected to all sorts of oppressive laws. But we are not yet dead. We keep watch of all that is happening around us.

Below is the acknowledgement for 2 t-shirts.