政府必须给代号‘冷藏行动’下
被捕者及其家属明确的说法

THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD COME CLEAN WITH OPERATION COLDSTORE
by Teo Soh Lung

The Singapore Government's response to the public statement issued by 61 former political prisoners on the 60th anniversary of Operation Coldstore was reported in The Straits Times of Feb 3, 2023. It was most disingenuous. It claimed that the “allegations and assertions in the statement by the former detainees are not new.” It added: “The Government has addressed it comprehensively in past public communications, which are a matter of public record.” See https://tinyurl.com/2p8hajux for the full public statement and the government's response in https://tinyurl.com/mrxayffs.

Former political prisoners have never in the past demanded an apology and compensation from the government. They have called for the setting up of a commission of inquiry and the repeal of the Internal Security Act (ISA) before but they have never asked for an apology and compensation from the government.

In the public statement, the former political prisoners claimed that declassified archival documents in countries outside Singapore have confirmed that Operation Coldstore was mounted for political and not national security reasons. They thus demand evidence for their wrongful arrests and imprisonment. Till today, no evidence has been disclosed by the government to prove that they were arrested for national security reasons.

Sixty years have gone by since Operation Coldstore was mounted. It is in the interest of all Singaporeans for the government to produce evidence of what the Ministry of Home Affairs claimed in their response to the 2011 statement issued by 16 ISA survivors. The Ministry had claimed that “… the signatories were involved in “subversive activities which posed a threat to national security” and that they were not detained for their political beliefs but were “actively involved in Communist United Front activities in support of the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM), which was committed to the violent overthrow of the constitutionally-elected governments in Singapore and Malaysia”.

It is easy for the government to make wild allegations which repeated long enough would become truths if unrebutted. That was what Goebbels did in support of the crimes of Hitler. It took just the end of the war for Goebbels to kill his six children and commit suicide for the crimes he carried out rather than face the truth and be punished.

The lies in Operation Coldstore has been “truths” for 60 years. The government must come clean with what the former political prisoners are claiming now. It must produce evidence that they were dangerous subversives.

In the public statement, Dr Poh Soo Kai also raised an issue which is of utmost importance to him. This was the “Masai incident”. The government had alleged in 1974, that as a medical doctor, Dr Poh treated an injured bomber and extracted a “confession” from one of the persons arrested and beaten up by the secret police. This alleged incident was repeated in a more bizarre manner in 1977 when Dr G Raman, a lawyer who was arrested under the ISA was forced to confess that Dr Poh, his wife and he drove to Masai to treat an injured bomber. Dr Raman subsequently retracted his “confession” when he appeared before a senior public prosecutor at the Attorney General's Chambers. The intention of the Internal Security Department in sending Dr Raman to see the senior public prosecutor was to lodge a complaint against Dr Poh for misconduct under the medical code and to have him struck off the medical register. As a consequence of this retraction, it was reported in Hansard that Dr Raman's imprisonment was extended.

The government is fully aware that Dr Poh has never visited Masai in his whole life. The ISD could have verified this from his passport. The immigration check point would have records of whether his vehicle crossed the causeway. Yet the government was so confident that it could get away with a big lie because Dr Poh was in prison and had no knowledge of the allegations that were made against him. Dr Poh of course denied this allegation when he was released. But the government continues to falsely accuse him of treating an alleged terrorist in Masai.

Singaporeans don't need the government to reveal state secrets on this “Masai incident”. Just show us the passport of Dr Poh with the stamp of his entering and leaving Malaysia or the immigration checkpoint records of his entry and exit. What is so difficult about producing such evidence?

History will not forget Operation Coldstore. History will weigh the evidence and what the former political prisoners say about their arrests and imprisonment under Operation Coldstore and all the other so called national security exercises. It is best the government come clean or comply with the demands of these 61 former political prisoners – repeal the ISA, apologise and compensate them and their families for the sufferings they endured.