Leaving Singapore: A look at Lee Hsien Yang and six others who chose asylum

SINGAPORE (SCMP): Granted asylum in the UK, Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest son of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, joins the ranks of other political dissidents from the city-state who have been granted such status abroad for fear of persecution.

Lee Hsien Yang, 67, is the half-brother of former Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, 72. Lee’s younger brother and his late sister Lee Wei Lin went public in 2017 over their feud with their elder brother over the fate of 38 Oxley Road, their family home. property.

The younger Lee alleged that then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong had abused his power to thwart their efforts to demolish the family home in accordance with their father’s wishes.

Lee Hsien Yang joined the opposition Progressive Party of Singapore in 2020 and has been a vocal critic of the government, taking it to court over lawsuits brought by cabinet ministers and violations of the country’s fake news law.

He and his wife, lawyer Lee Suet Fern, left Singapore in 2022 after choosing not to attend a scheduled police questioning over a possible perjury offense in the Lee Kuan Yew will trial.

Lee Hsien Yang, the brother of then-Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, seen wearing a t-shirt from the opposition Progressive Party of Singapore, attends an event at the market in 2020. – Photo: AFP

On Thursday, the Singapore Heritage Board said it would conduct a study on 38 Oxley Road to assess whether the site has “national historical, heritage and architectural significance to be worthy of preservation”.

In response, Lee Hsien Yang called on current Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to make a decision about the house and demolish it in accordance with his father’s wishes.

“Prime Minister Wong, you were also part of the ministerial committee that took up many hours of ministers’ time from 2016 to 2018 to consider options for Lee Kuan Yew’s house. That is your responsibility. You had nine years to think. Any further delay would violate the last wishes of Lee Kuan Yew, whom you claim to revere. Please lead,” he said in a Facebook post on Friday.

According to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the United Nations Refugee Agency, the number of asylum seekers from Singapore has increased in recent years. Between January and June this year, there were 322 asylum seekers, compared with 299 last year, 117 in 2022 and 100 in 2021.

Jah Yan Chong, an international relations specialist at the National University of Singapore, said: “Typically, people from Singapore who seek asylum do so on the basis of political persecution.”

Asylum-seekers’ perceptions of repression in Singapore – even if the authorities deny it – may be the reason for UNHCR’s higher numbers, he added.

However, Eugene Tan, a law professor at Singapore Management University, noted that harassment can also focus on race, religion, sex, gender identity or sexual orientation, or any other characteristic that the applicant says puts her at risk. because of which they could not get protection.

“My guess is that for most Singaporean asylum seekers, they believe that staying out of Singapore will help their case – whether it’s to escape persecution or to live the life they want but which they feel they can’t while in Singapore,” Tan said.

Here’s a look at some other current and former Singaporeans who have been granted asylum abroad:

Amos Yee stands outside the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office after his release from custody in Chicago in 2017. – Photo: Reuters

Blogger Amos Yee

In 2017, Yee, an 18-year-old teenage blogger who had been jailed twice in Singapore for offensive content he posted online, was granted asylum in the United States.

After Lee Kuan Yew’s death in 2015, Yee released a video criticizing Lee that authorities found had offended religious or racial sentiments, among other crimes. His second sentence came for anti-Islamic and anti-Christian remarks in various social media posts.

Yee fled to the U.S. in December 2016, a day before he was due to undergo a mandatory national service medical at age 18, and was detained at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport after telling immigration officials he was seeking asylum .

The US Department of Homeland Security opposed his asylum claim, but an immigration judge ruled in Yee’s favor.

Yee, now 25, later ran into trouble with the law again and was jailed in a Chicago court in 2021 after pleading guilty to two counts of child pornography and grooming a 14-year-old girl in 2019.

At his sentencing in December 2021, he was warned that he could be deported, denied entry to the US or granted US citizenship in the future.

Gopalan Nair, a former Singaporean lawyer who is now a US citizen, leaves the lower courts in Singapore in 2008. – Photo: AFP

Singapore Dissident blogger Gopalan Nair

A former lawyer and opposition candidate, Nair ran a blog called “Singapore Dissident” from 2006 to 2018, in which he was highly critical of the government and its policies.

He stood as a candidate for the Workers’ Party in the 1988 and 1991 general elections.

Nair’s posts have landed him in trouble with the law, among other things, when he used inflammatory language in a 2008 post to accuse a judge of working for Lee Kuan Yew and his son, then-premier Lee Hsien Loong.

Nair was delisted in Singapore in 2011 when a judge noted that Nair was a US citizen. In his blog, he stated that he received asylum there in 1995.

Francis Sue, late Singaporean barrister, formerly Solicitor-General of Singapore. – Photo: handout

Former Solicitor General Francis Sue

Seau rose through the ranks in the attorney general’s office, representing the state in high-profile cases, including that of two Indonesians who blew up McDonald’s House in 1965, killing three people and injuring 33.

He served as solicitor general, the second highest rank in the attorney general’s office, from 1969 until he went into private practice in 1972. In the same year, Seu was awarded the Public Administration Medal (Gold) for his contributions to the public sector.

In 1986, he was elected president of the Law Society, where he criticized changes to newspaper laws that would have allowed the government to restrict the circulation of foreign publications deemed to be interfering in Singapore’s domestic politics.

In May 1988, Sue was detained without trial under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) after he was accused of instigating US diplomat Hank Hendrickson to form a more effective opposition by leading a group of lawyers to contest the general election.

After his release from custody in September of the same year, he ran in the general election as a candidate from the Workers’ Party, narrowly losing to the incumbent People’s Action Party. Despite his defeat, he won a non-constituency parliamentary seat, which is usually awarded to the “biggest loser” in an election.

However, soon after he was accused of tax evasion and fled Singapore. He became a visiting scholar at Yale University and then at Harvard, where he wrote books, including one about being a dissident in Singapore.

After his death in 2016, his nephew said in a LinkedIn post that he had been granted political asylum in the United States. Sue died at the age of 88 in Boston.

Eng Swee Chai, co-founder of Palestinian Medical Aid, speaks at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London last December. – Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images

Human rights lawyer Francis Hu and orthopedic surgeon Eng Swee Chai

In 1974, Khoo represented a student leader and an American seaman accused of rioting at a union meeting in Singapore.

Two weeks after Hu and Eng were married, Eng was detained without trial under the ISA in 1977. Authorities were also looking for Hu, who had previously fled Singapore to London.

After her release, Ang went to join Khoo and the couple were later granted asylum in the UK.

In 1984, the couple founded the British charity Medical Aid to the Palestinians, which worked in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories to ensure Palestinians had access to basic health services.

Hu died in 2011 at the age of 64.

Eng, 76, was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame in 2016 but was unable to return to receive the award in person as she still held Singaporean and British passports and the city-state does not allow dual citizenship. In 2020, she was stripped of her Singaporean citizenship and retained her British one.

In April, Eng returned to Singapore to receive the 2024 Harvard Club Singapore Fellow Award. While in the city-state, she spoke to local media, advocating for human rights for Palestinians amid the ongoing war between Israel and Gaza.

Eng was reportedly in Beirut in September, where he treated patients affected by a pager blast that same month. Her visit comes 42 years after she volunteered to help in a Palestinian refugee camp following the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

According to media reports, while in Beirut, she spoke at an event marking the 42nd anniversary of the massacre, advocating for a free Palestine.

Tan Wa Piow, a former student activist, is now a lawyer. Photo: Tan Wah Piow

Student activist Tan Wa Piou

Tan, now 73, was president of the Singapore University Students’ Union when he was sentenced to a year in jail after being convicted of unlawful assembly and rioting after inciting workers at the American Marine plant in November 1974 to protest against their employers.

After his release in 1976, he fled to Great Britain on a forged passport, where he received political asylum.

In 1987, while in the UK, he was named as the “mastermind” of the Marxist plot, also known as Operation Spectre, in Singapore. A total of 22 people were arrested and imprisoned without trial under the ISA for their alleged involvement in a plot involving plans to overthrow the government to establish a Marxist state.

His citizenship was revoked after a Marxist conspiracy. Tan, a lawyer, is currently a British citizen.

After Lee Kuan Yew’s death in 2015, Tan told Reuters that despite his run-ins with the authorities, he would like to return to Singapore. – The Straits Times/ANN