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Second
complaint sent to the UN on CSJ case
10
Mar 06
Another complaint was sent to United Nations'
Special Rapporteur of the Commission of Human Rights regarding
the contempt of court charges brought against Dr Chee Soon Juan
by the Attorney-General.
Eleven law-makers
and activists from around the world, including Singapore's Mr
Francis Seow, sent the complaint to the UN calling on the body to
take action on the matter.
The first
complaint was lodged by Mr Yeshua
Moser-Puangsuwan of Nonviolence International to the Office of
the UN Commission for Human Rights which is based in Geneva,
Switzerland.
(The
hearing will take place on 10 March 06 at 10 am at the Supreme
Court. Dr Chee had applied for an adjournment so that he could
seek the services of a Queen's Counsel. The Attorney-General,
however, objected to the request.)
COMPLAINT
TO THE SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR OF THE
UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION OF
HUMAN RIGHTS
We, the undersigned,
wish to lodge an urgent complaint regarding Dr Chee Soon Juan who
is facing a court hearing on March 16, 2006 for speaking out
against defamation lawsuits and the judicial system in Singapore.
Subject of complaint
Dr Chee Soon Juan was
sued for defamation in 2001 by former prime ministers of
Singapore, Messrs Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong. Chee had raised
questions about a US$10 billion loan Singapore had pledged to the
Suharto regime in 1997. Chee raised the matter during an election
rally in November 2001.
When the case went to court in
2002, the judiciary refused to allow Chee to engage an overseas
lawyer to act for him. Singaporean lawyers are fearful of
representing opposition leaders. Chee thus went through the case
without legal representation.
The courts subsequently
awarded the plaintiffs summary judgment and ordered Chee to pay
the plaintiffs S$500,000 (approximately US$300,000) in damages.
When Chee failed to pay, Lee and Goh applied to the courts to
make him a bankrupt.
At the bankruptcy petition hearing on
10 February 2006, Chee said that the judiciary in Singapore was
not fair and independent especially when it came to defamation
cases involving opposition politicians. He cited previous cases
to support his statement (see
http://csj.http3.net/CSJ_Bankruptcy_Press_Statement_2.pdf).
On 15 February 2006, the Attorney-General (AG)
applied for a hearing to commit Chee to prison for contempt of
court. The trial will take place on March 16, 2006.
Background
of Chee Soon Juan
Chee Soon Juan is a Singapore
citizen. A neuro-psychologist by training, Chee was a lecturer at
the National University of Singapore (NUS) until he was sacked in
1993 for “misusing” his research funds. This happened
three months after he joined the opposition Singapore Democratic
Party (SDP) and stood in a by-election in December 1992.
When
he disputed the dismissal, he was sued by the head of the
department who was also a member of parliament of the ruling
Peoples’ Action Party (PAP), together with two other
members of the university staff. The plaintiffs were ultimately
awarded approximately US$300,000 in costs and damages. Chee and
his wife had to sell off their house and other possessions to pay
the debt. Otherwise he would be declared bankrupt and, as a
result, be disqualified from standing for elections.
In
November 1995, the Singapore parliament censured Chee for
allegedly endorsing attacks on the judiciary made by dissident
and former solicitor-general of Singapore, Francis Seow, and
academic Christopher Lingle, at a forum held in the United States
in September 1995. The government did not attribute any statement
attacking the judiciary or endorsing the views of Seow and Lingle
directly to Chee. Rather, government parliamentary leaders said
that his failure to contradict the attacks made by Seow and
Lingle constituted positive assent by “clever
omission.”
In 1996, Chee and three other party
colleagues were charged by the Parliamentary Committee of
Privileges with “deliberately falsifying data and
misleading the public” in a debate on health-care costs in
Singapore. They were fined a total of US$35,000.
In 1999,
Chee was imprisoned on two occasions for making public speeches
without a permit. He was also prosecuted for selling his book, To
Be Free: Stories of Asia’s Struggle Against Oppression,
in public without a permit.
In 2002, Chee was found guilty
of defaming Lee Kuan Yew and Goh Chok Tong, and Senior Minister,
Lee Kuan Yew, over questions he raised during the 2001 general
elections concerning the Singapore government's US$10-billion
loan to Indonesia in 1997.
In August 2002, he was fined
S$3,000 for speaking on a religious topic at Singapore’s
Speakers' Corner. He has also been charged for attempting to
stage a public rally on Labour Day. He was found guilty under
Singapore’s Public Entertainment Acts and fined S$4,500.
Chee chose to serve a 5-week jail term instead of paying his
fines.
Chee is presently under police investigation for
various matters including possessing a video CD (footage of his
arrest on May Day 2002) without a permit as well as speaking in
public without a permit while selling the SDP’s newspaper
The New Democrat.
Presently,
Chee is the secretary-general of the SDP. He is also the chairman
of the Alliance for Reform and Democracy for Asia (ARDA) a
regional NGO dedicated to the promotion of human rights and
democracy in Asia. In 2000, Chee co-founded the Open
Singapore Centre with J B Jeyaretnam to promote transparency and
democratic accountability in Singapore.
He was an Honorary
Research Associate at Monash Asia Institute, Melbourne, Australia
(1997), Human Rights Fellow at University of Chicago, US (2001),
and the Reagan-Fascell Human Rights Fellow at the National
Endowment for Democracy, Washington DC, US (2004). Chee was given
the Defender of Democracy Award in 2003 by Parliamentarians for
Global Action. In 2005 he was awarded the Hellman-Hammett grant
for persecuted writers by Human Rights Watch. Chee is also the
author of five books.
In all, since he became politically
active Chee has served three prison sentences for holding
unlicensed political meetings, is currently disbarred from
political office as a result of his conviction for violating
Speakers’ Corner rules, has been fined for speaking on
issues beyond the prescribed limits for Speakers’ Corner,
has been made a bankrupt as a result of repeated defamation suits
brought by ruling party officials, and has been both censured and
fined by the PAP-controlled parliament.
Details of the
complaint
At an election rally in November 2001, Chee
raised questions about Singapore’s secretive loan to the
Suharto regime in 1997 just before the Indonesian dictator was
toppled. Days later former prime ministers Lee Kuan Yew (now
Mentor Minister) and Goh Chok Tong (now Senior Minister) said
that by making the statements, Chee had defamed them.
When
the matter went before the courts, a high court judge refused to
allow Chee to engage the services of Stuart Littlemore, an
Australian Queen’s Counsel (QC) who specializes in
defamation law, even though Chee had indicated that he could not
find a local lawyer to represent him because they were afraid of
government reprisal. The judge ruled that Littlemore was “unfit”
to practice in Singapore because Littlemore had criticized
Singapore’s judiciary in an earlier case where he was an
observer for the International Commission of Jurists in a matter
involving Lee Kuan Yew’s lawsuit against another opposition
leader J. B. Jeyaretnam. In the meantime, Lee and Goh had engaged
a Senior Counsel (Singapore’s equivalent of the QC).
Unable to engage Littlemore, Chee then made a second
application to admit Hong Kong’s Martin Lee and another
Australian, William Nicholas, both of whom were QCs. This
time around, the courts said that the case “was not complex
enough” to warrant the admission of Lee and Nicholas
despite the fact that Chee had said that without the QCs, he
would not have legal representation because no Singaporean lawyer
would defend him.
In the meantime, the plaintiffs applied
for Order 14 or Summary Judgment whereby the matter would be
decided in chambers without it going to trial. The courts allowed
the plaintiffs’ application and subsequently awarded the
case to Lee and Goh. In other words, not only did Chee not have a
lawyer, he was also not given a trial.
The two former
prime ministers were subsequently awarded approximately
US$300,000 in damages.
On February 10, 2006, the hearing
for Chee’s bankruptcy petition took place during which Chee
read out his statement before the assistant registrar. She
declared Chee a bankrupt because he could not pay Lee and Goh the
S$500,000. As a result Chee is barred from standing for future
elections.
The New York City-based Lawyers Committee for
Human Rights (renamed Human Rights First) sent two observers to
attend Chee’s appeal and reported: “Neither at the
hearing, on February 7 [2003], nor in the course of his judgment,
did Justice Rubin display the least concern that Dr. Chee was
unrepresented. The Lawyers Committee considers that this apparent
lack of concern, coupled with the considerable latitude extended
to Mr. Singh in his submissions to the Court, resulted in
manifest unfairness in the course of the hearing and,
specifically, the denial to Dr. Chee of a fair hearing that met
the international norms to which we have referred.”
On
15 February 2006, the AG applied for an Originating Summons to
commit Chee to prison for “scandalizing” the
Singapore courts (see http://csj.http3.net/summon.pdf).
The
hearing is set for March 16, 2006.
Background of
judicial independence in Singapore
The
following is a brief description of two prominent defamation
cases that occurred in the recent past that demonstrate the lack
of independence of the judiciary in Singapore.
The
case of Tang Liang Hong
Tang Liang Hong, a Singaporean
lawyer with an established legal practice, had contested in the
1997 general elections. During the elections 11 PAP leaders,
including Lee Kuan Yew, issued a writ for defamation against
Tang. They accused Tang of being a Chinese chauvinist who was
anti-Christianity and anti-Islam. This accusation resulted in
Tang receiving many threats and abuse from the public which
prompted him to lodge a complaint with the police. A PAP minister
then obtained a copy Tang’s report, gave it to Lee Kuan Yew
who then called for a press conference to release the contents of
Tang’s report. When Tang’s words were subsequently
published, they became the basis for the PAP’s lawsuit.
Following the conclusion of the elections Tang left
Singapore, fearing for his safety. The plaintiffs then quickly
named Tang’s wife as the co-defendant even though she had
nothing to do with the matter at hand. One evening when she and
their daughter wanted to visit Malaysia, the Singapore
immigration authorities stopped the two women, searched Mrs
Tang’s handbag and impounded their passports. The PAP
plaintiffs asked the courts to issue a host of Mareva Injunctions
against Tang and his wife. The Mareva Injunction is a legal
procedure where the courts order all of the subject’s bank
accounts frozen. The judge agreed. It must be pointed out that
this freezing of the Tangs’ assets were made even before
Tang was found guilty of defamation. Tang countered that the move
“was nothing more than just…to freeze all our
financial source to paralyse our financial strength to resist
their attacks by way of legal actions.”
Not only was
Tang denied access to his own finances to pay for the mounting
legal costs, he was also not given the time necessary to prepare
for such a massive case. Shortly thereafter, the courts awarded
the case to the 11 plaintiffs and ordered Tang to pay them a
total of $3.63 million in damages. Unable to make good the
payment, Tang was subsequently declared bankrupt by the
courts.
The case of Joshua
Benjamin Jeyaretnam
Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam
was repeatedly sued and prosecuted by PAP officials. Jeyaretnam
had served as a district court judge prior to his entry into
politics in 1971. In 1981 he entered Parliament when he won a
by-election, the only opposition member after more than ten
opposition-free years in the House.
Three years later,
Jeyaretnam and a party colleague were charged with four counts of
making false statements and fraud. The trial judge, Michael Khoo,
acquitted the accused on three of the charges and convicted them
of one. A year later, the Chief Justice reversed the acquittals
and ordered a retrial for one of the charges, and transferred
Judge Khoo from the bench to the Attorney General’s
Chambers. Lee Kuan Yew justified the transfer by pointing out
that Khoo had made “a series of misfindings of fact and two
misfindings of law in one simple case.” Jeyaretnam was
fined and jailed. Following more fines imposed on him, Jeyaretnam
lost his seat in Parliament.
Jeyaretnam then appealed to
the Privy Council in London in 1988. The Council was then
Singapore’s highest court of appeal. The Council opined
that the Singapore’s Chief Justice had
patently
exceeded the proper function of an appellate court and wholly
ignored the advantage enjoyed by the trial judge [Khoo] who had
heard and seen the witnesses. This amount to a serious error of
law which vitiated the Chief Justice’s decision.
The
Council also registered its “deep disquiet that by a series
of misjudgments, [Jeyaretnam] and [Wong] suffered grievous
offences of which they were not guilty.” Within months the
Singapore Government abolished the right of appeal to the Privy
Council.
As a result of the convictions, Jeyaretnam was
disqualified from elections. It wasn’t until 1997 that the
oppositionist could stand for elections again. During the 1997
elections Jeyaretnam was sued again together with Tang.
Jeyaretnam had held up a sheath of paper at an election rally and
told the crowd that Tang had just handed him a copy of the police
report that Tang had made. The PAP leaders said that this act was
defamatory of them and sued Jeyaretnam, who was, of course, found
guilty. The question of damages became academic because by that
time Jeyaretnam had already been declared a bankrupt from another
lawsuit brought against him by another group of PAP leaders and
other grassroots officials.
Below is a list of the
defamation cases that have involved Lee Kuan Yew and other PAP
leaders against opposition politicians:
1979
Lee Kwan Yew v J. B. Jeyaretnam S$130,000 awarded
1988
Lee Kwan Yew v Seow Khee Leng S$250,000 awarded
1989
Lee Kwan Yew v J. B. Jeyaretnam S$230,000 awarded
1990
Lee Kwan Yew, Lee Hsien Loong, & Goh Chok Tong v
International Herald Tribune S$650,000 awarded
1994
Lee Kwan Yew v International Herald Tribune S$400,000 awarded
1996
Lee Kwan Yew & Lee Hsien Loong v Tang Liang Hong S$1,050,000
awarded
1997
Lee Kuan Yew et al v Tang Liang Hong S$3,630,000 awarded
1997
Goh Chok Tong v J. B. Jeyaretnam S$100,000 awarded
2005
Lee Kuan Yew & Goh Chok Tong v Chee Soon Juan S$500,000
awarded
The
above cases are those that went to trial where the damages were
awarded by judges. There were several other cases that were
settled out of court where opposition defendants agreed to pay
PAP plaintiffs hundreds of thousands of dollars in damages
because they felt that going to trial was a futile exercise and
served only to increase damages and costs that would be
ultimately awarded. News organizations such as the Bloomberg and
the Asian Weekly Magazine (Yazhou Zhoukan), a
Chinese-language news weekly, have also chosen to pay PAP
litigants damages instead of going to trial.
In view of the
above, we would like to lodge a complaint against Singapore’s
AG for violating Chee’s right to defend himself against the
political and judicial system in Singapore.
Yours
sincerely,
Mr.
Francis T. Seow
Former Solicitor General,
Singapore
Former Judge Advocate General, Singapore Armed
Forces
Former District Judge and Magistrate
Former
President, Law Society of Singapore
Now in exile in the
U.S.
Ms. Hsiao Bi-khim
Member of the Legislative
Yuan, Taiwan
Treasurer, Liberal International
Ms.
Emily Lau
Member of the Legislative Council, Hong
Kong
Member, Steering Committee, Alliance for Reform and
Democracy in Asia
Mr. Lars Leijonborg
Member of
Parliament, Sweden
Leader, Liberal Party of Sweden
Ms.
Birgitta Ohlsson
Member of Parliament, Sweden
Mr.
Axel Darvik
Member of Parliament, Sweden
Ms.
Cecilia Malmstrom
Member of Parliament, Sweden
Mr.
Yeshua Moser-Puangsuwan
Member, International Council.
Nonviolence International
Dr. Paul Scott
Professor, Kansai Gaidai University, Japan
Member,
Steering Committee, Alliance for Reform and Democracy in
Asia
Mr. Bo Tedards
Co-ordinator, World Forum
for Democratisation in Asia
Mr. Wang Dan
Student
leader in Tiananmen Square in 1989
Member, Steering Committee,
Alliance for Reform and Democracy in Asia
Now in exile in the
U.S.
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