Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Yu-Mei is a good friend, and she gave me a copy of this, her debut novel. I read it over two afternoons and enjoyed it very much. It is tightly plotted, inhabited by memorable characters, and written in a lively style. A Singaporean on the run from the law encounters other overseas Singaporeans who are pursuing lives considered illicit in the country. It is a very clever conceit, executed with verve and pathos. It calls into question the untoward criminalization of Singaporean lives and loves.

To the Tune of “This Is Home, Truly” I am a Good Class Bungalow, You are a No Class Flat.    I live and work among the shmos, a natural aristocrat. I am a Good Class Bungalow And not a No Class Flat. I’m rich in show and hung with dough, And yet no caveat. I am a Good Class Bungalow. Don’t say, I No Class Flat. Just one slip of the tongue, you know POFMA’ed you will get. I am a Good Class Bungalow Supporting No Class Flats. That fairy tale from long ago Better believe or—SPLAT! I am your Good Class Bungalows, I am your No Class Flats. I am your River sung and flow Through zilch and ziggurats.

 This book of essays by Singaporean journalist and activist Kirsten Han is informative, clear-eyed, and nuanced. Every Singapore should read it.

A poem for the 70 individuals who walked to Singapore's Istana to deliver 140 letters to the PM on 2 Feb 2024, as part of the National Day of Solidarity with Palestine. 3 of them--Sobikun Nahar, Siti Amirah Mohamed Asrori, and Annamalai Kokila Parvathi--were ridiculously charged with disturbing public order by illegally organizing, or abetting with organizing, a public procession in a prohibited area. Walking to the Istana They do not need a head nor do they want a tail. They are all heads, all eyes, all mouths, all legs, all hands, umbrellas up against the onslaught of the sun. They are cool, and young as the crescent moon lighting up lovers' rendezvous and drinking parties and the unworldly debates of secret handshakes. They know of others who also walked such roads, when buses were divided into front and back, when a state was crossed to pick up a handful of salt. They understand they can easily be replaced by those coming up behind them, even younger, smarter, and stronger,...

 Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . The Straits Times, Singapore's main broadsheet,  reported  that some Singaporean parents are not sending their children to the US for college because of the ongoing campus protests. One student told the newspaper, "My parents dissuaded me from attending a university in the US because they felt I might get influenced by the culture to protest and get into trouble." A PSA to these parents: Your children do not have to leave Singapore to learn to engage responsibly with the world. Last Friday, 40 students and alumni of Singaporean institutes of higher learning delivered 40 letters to the Ministry of Home Affairs opposing the newly proposed Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill.  Their letter , a model of reason and clarity even if you don't agree with their stance, deserves an answer from the Ministry. It also shows clearly how student activism around Israel/Gaza has broadened to a critique of cens...

Weekly column for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . In September, in Singapore, migrant worker and domestic helper Parti Liyani was acquitted of 4 charges of theft against her. She had earlier been convicted by the State Courts of stealing more than $30,000 worth of items from the family of Mr Liew Mun Leong, the (former) Chairman of Changi Airport Group. This was overturned by the High Court. In his judgment, Justice Chan Seng Onn said the convictions against Ms Parti were “unsafe” due to the presence of an “improper motive” and that the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt.  How could the lower court and the prosecution have erred so badly, resulting in nearly 4 years of hardship to Parti Liyani as she underwent police investigations, stood trial, was wrongly found gulity, and then appealed against her convictions? She had to remain in Singapore throughout this time, but she could not hold a job, and so she had to depend on...

Singapore Unbound Public Statement  September 21, 2020  Singapore Unbound Urges Prime Minister's Office to Withdraw Police Complaint Singapore Unbound denounces the People's Action Party government's harassment of PJ Thum, the Managing Director of New Naratif, an independent news website reporting on Singapore and Southeast Asia. The Elections Department, Prime Minister's Office, has filed a police complaint against New Naratif, alleging that New Naratif published “paid advertisements that amounted to the illegal conduct of election activity under s83(2) of the Parliamentary Elections Act (PEA) during the recent 2020 General Election.” As New Naratif points out , the PEA is framed so broadly that almost any kind of paid public comment could be construed to run foul of it, including New Naratif's coverage of the General Elections, boosted as paid posts on Facebook. Judge for yourself: The PEA states that “…such material shall be election advertising even t...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Should writers support a particular political party, or should they stay above the fray of partisan politics? The question may appear ridiculous to Americans, whose writers routinely identify themselves as Democrat, Republican, Progressive, or what have you. However, the question is not a non-controversial one in Singapore. The People's Action Party (PAP), which has led the country since independence in 1965 and which has just won another election last Friday with more than two-third majority of seats in Parliament, has so dominated the country's institutions, economy, and culture that the line between party and state is blurred, if not erased. For many Singaporeans, Singapore is the PAP and vice versa. To be pro-PAP is to be pro-Singapore. To be against the PAP is to be partisan. In such a situation, writers who are pro-PAP can hide the fact of their partisanship by claiming to work for the whole, a...

A beguiling collection of four stories, slim but not insubstantial. The storytelling is surefooted, the whimsy is put to profound questioning of religious belief—is loyalty the same as faith, asks the dog of the camel—and a sly eye is turned on human foibles and social customs. Since so much Anglophone Singaporean writing is oriented towards the West, especially now when many younger writers study creative writing in the UK and the US, it is refreshing to read a writer so at home in the English language, but with his cultural references turned towards the Malay and Arabic worlds, towards the eclectic blending of Islamic and animistic beliefs.

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Holding a one-person protest for just enough time to take a photograph gets you into trouble in Singapore. This, labor and rights activist Jolovan Wham learned, when he did just that . His action was undertaken in support of two young climate activists who are being investigated by the police, and it landed him in a police station too. The Public Order and Safety (Special Powers) Act, which took effect in 2018, is the draconian legislation that authorizes such anti-democratic measures against peaceful protests. To show support for Jolovan Wham, a few friends posted on social media photographs of themselves holding up the same smiley face as he had done. The posts have since started a movement of sorts, with posters not only hashtagging themselves #smileinsolidarity but also expressing their thoughts on why freedom of speech and assembly are so vital to a true democracy. Jolovan is compiling these photograp...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . On Monday, Singapore's High Court dismissed all three legal challenges to Section 377A, the law that criminalizes the LGBTQ community. After ten years of Pink Dot, the annual mass rally for equality, after the increasing show of support from straight allies and local companies, after influential political leaders such as the former ambassador to the US and the brother to the Prime Minister called for change, after a former Chief Justice and two former Attorney-Generals wrote public critiques of the law, the High Court's judgment has not budged a millimeter from the 2014 judgment of the Apex Court. Most infuriating is the High Court argument, which agrees with the government's, that Section 377A "serves the purpose of safeguarding public morality by showing societal moral disapproval of male homosexual acts." The fight for equality must continue. Already one of the plaintiffs has filed ...

Weekly column for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . From the age of seven to twelve, I attended a primary school at the foot of Mount Faber. The wrongly named mountain was a mere hill, and the school was so small that you could have missed it when you drove past to the scenic views at the top of the second highest point of Singapore. There were only two classes at each grade level, and so almost everyone knew almost everyone, and the teachers knew us all. I didn't know then how lucky we were. We had so much attention and so many opportunities to do stuff because there were so few of us. One of the things stuck in my mind was a stage production of "Three Little Pigs." I wanted to be the Wolf, I was certainly tall enough, but I was the Little Pig who lived in a house made of brick. For consolation, I got to boil the pot of water that killed the Wolf, after which I joined hands with my two fellow Piglets and danced around the pot and sang "So Who'...

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . I wrote to Yale's president after Alfian Sa'at shared his version of events about the cancellation of his "dissent" module at Yale-NUS in Singapore. Please consider writing to Yale's president to ask for the re-opening of the inquiry with an unbiased representative, now that there is fresh and convincing evidence that the Yale report is wrong. His email is president@yale.edu. Please feel free to share my letter with friends and media contacts.  Dear Yale President Peter Salovey: I hope it has come to your attention that the narrative and analysis of the Yale report on the cancellation of the Yale-NUS learning module "Dialogue and Dissent in Singapore" has been refuted by the instructor concerned, playwright Alfian Sa'at. According to the administrative leadership of Yale-NUS, the learning module was cancelled because of (1) insufficient academic rigor and (2) the legal ri...

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  An advertisement created to encourage e-payment in Singapore featured a Chinese actor in brownface, dressed up variously as an Indian man with a curly wig and a Malay woman in a headscarf. It was widely, and rightly, condemned as racist. Mediacorp, the agency responsible for the advertisement, gave a half-hearted apology and withdrew it. When comedian Preeti Nair, known as Preetipls, and her brother, rapper Subhas Nair, released a rap video criticizing the advertisement, however, they were judged by the Law Minister to have crossed a line in attacking the dominant Chinese majority in Singapore and the artistes were subjected to a police investigation. The state's action is not only heavy-handed but also unfair, because it is patently clear from the video that the duo are not attacking Chinese Singaporeans per se, but Chinese racists for their racism. Although the refrain goes, "Chinese people always o...

Weekly column written for the Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . Congratulations to Chris Huntington on receiving Honorable Mention for his lovely poem "Lorca (6)" in the 2019 Hawker Prize for Southeast Asian Poetry, awarded by Sing Lit Station! Chris's poem was first published in SP Blog as third-prize co-winner in the 4th Singapore Poetry Contest. Read "Lorca (6)" and the other winners of the Hawker Prize here . As the editor of SP Blog, I was interviewed by Sing Lit Station on Chris's poem, Singapore, and the work of Singapore Unbound. Asked about my judge's comment on "Lorca (6)" about the "essential loneliness" that pertains to Singapore, I had the chance to expand on the thought: "I've always thought that a writer's first reader is himself. He writes to himself to hear himself speak, to assuage his loneliness, to fill the blank air with sound. Singapore cannot assuage this existential lonelin...

Weekly column written for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here .  On Sunday more than a million Hong Kongers took to the streets to protest against the passing of a bill that will extradite suspected criminals to China for the first time. The protesters suspect that the bill will be used to target political dissent and so accelerate the erosion of their civil liberties. Pictures of the protest march moved many Singaporean on-line commentators to praise Hong Kongers for their love of their freedoms and to wish that Singaporeans would be just as active and passionate about theirs. Faced with government intransigence over the extradition bill, Hong Kongers mounted a second, smaller, protest on Wednesday, which was met by police tear gas and rubber bullets. 72 people had been hospitalized by the end of the day. Together with other civil-rights organizations, Singapore Unbound condemns the use of excessive force by the government to suppress a people movement. As expected, the...

Weekly column for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . The Singapore government's proposed anti-fake news law has been heavily criticized by local and international media and rights groups for investing too much arbitrary power in government ministers to decide what is fact or otherwise. Most recently, a group of 59 academics, with expertise, experience, or interest in Singapore and Asia generally, have joined in the chorus of criticism by issuing a joint public statement and sending letters to the Education Minister and Singapore University Leaders. Other professional groups with a stake in free speech and democratic process should do likewise. Unfortunately, the Law Society of Singapore has been gagged by a 1986 law from commenting on legislative proposals unless they are invited to do so by the government. Singapore's creative writers are not so proscribed. Individual writers have spoken up but they could make a far bigger impact if they would speak together, as...

Weekly column for Singapore Unbound newsletter. Sign up here . To expand its surface area, Singapore has become the world's largest importer of sand for its land reclamation projects. A documentary video made by environmental activists shows how sand dredging in Cambodia to meet Singapore's insatiable demand for land has destroyed coastal ecosystems and the livelihood of Cambodians who depend on harvesting shrimp and shellfish from the mangroves. When the video was posted on Facebook yesterday, it attracted a range of comments. One Singaporean dismissed the video by writing, "Willing buyer and willing seller. The solution is for Cambodia not to sell anymore [sic] sand to anyone." The remark springs from a purely transactional view of the world and ignores the harm that Singapore is complicit with. Under pressure from activists, the Cambodian government has banned the sale of sand to Singapore, but activists suspect that illegal smuggling is still carrying on. ...

A Selected Poems, spanning 1967-1977, by the foremost Singaporean Malay poet Mohamed Latiff Mohamed, A Crackle of Flames, A Circle of Rainbow (Ethos Books) is worth the read. The poems are from two collections, the first bearing the same title, the second titled When the Butterfly Breaks its Wings . This is a fighting book of poems, passionate and plainspoken, often lambasting the New Malays for not fighting for their own dignity, culture, and history, but giving it all up instead to serve Chinese dominance in Singapore. Yet the high rhetoric often ends with a lyrical, and sometimes mysterious, image. For instance, "Poetry of Song" begins unsparingly: if what i say hurts you then that is what I intend because i like to tell stories exposing harlotry as it is right before our very eyes... and ends with: the tears of the wretched who have lost everything at dawn on the blue petals of pomegranate the call to prayers reverberates love and longing overlap and the m...

The column below is written for Singapore Unbound's weekly newsletter. Sign up here .  Social change activists are often perceived as trouble-makers. This happens not only in Singapore but all around the world. However, this wrong perception is even more egregious in Singapore because Singaporeans have forgotten or suppressed their own local tradition of activism. The mistake is thus prevalent and stubborn. To unearth the history, theory, and practice of Singaporean activism, the news magazine New Naratif interviews former student activist TAN Tee Seng and civil rights activist Jolovan WHAM in their podcast series Political Agenda . In the interview, New Naratif's THUM Ping Tjin referred to a theory of activism propounded by Bill Moyer. This is not the beloved American political commentator. This Bill Moyer (without an 's" at the end of his last name) was a United States social change activist who influenced Martin Luther King Jr. and James Bevel to focu...