Singapore Press Freedom Case

Re “Singapore Watch: Face in the Mirror,” editorial, Jan. 12:

The action against Christopher Lingle, the International Herald Tribune and others has nothing to do with “intolerance” and “insecure and repressive regimes.” The attorney general instituted prosecution only because of the passage in the article which referred to a “compliant judiciary.” The court upheld the attorney general’s argument that this constituted contempt of court.

Comments that are “nothing more than the ordinary political expression permitted in democratic countries worldwide” have undermined the respect for and the integrity of key institutions like the judiciary, the legislature and law-enforcement bodies in Western countries. Why should Singapore not take steps to protect its key institutions and to ensure that they are not similarly unjustly maligned and denigrated?

Those familiar with the “quality of Singaporean justice” should know that the 1993 World Competitiveness Report published by the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Singapore first among the newly industrialized economies in terms of public confidence in the fair administration of justice. Anyone “seeking to do business . . . in Singapore” should note that Business Environment Risk Intelligence, a U.S. organization, ranks Singapore’s work force in 1994 as No. 1 in the world. The WEF Competitiveness Report 1994 ranks Singapore as the second most competitive economy after the U.S. Those who are “seeking . . . to travel to Singapore” can take comfort in the fact that Singapore received more than 350,000 U.S. arrivals in 1994.

In “Singapore Fines Defendants Over Paper’s Opinion Piece” (Jan. 18), your statement that “the government had revoked his (Ian Stewart’s) work permit to represent the paper (South China Morning Post) and that he was forced to leave the country” is factually wrong. The truth is that the South China Morning Post has appointed another correspondent to be its full-time correspondent in Singapore. In no way has Stewart been compelled to leave the country. He is free to stay and work in Singapore as a correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. Stewart’s employment problems and whether he wishes to live in Singapore are totally unrelated to the court hearings or the issue of the freedom of the press.

S. R. NATHAN

Ambassador of Singapore

Washington