Lee Hsien Yang, younger brother of then Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, leaving the supreme court in Singapore in 2017. - Photo: AFP
SINGAPORE (SCMP): In being granted asylum in the UK, Lee Hsien Yang, the younger son of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, joins the ranks of other political dissidents from the city state who took up such a status abroad out of fear of persecution.
Lee Hsien Yang, 67, is the estranged brother of former Singapore prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, 72. The younger Lee brother and his late sister Lee Wei Ling in 2017 made public their feud with their oldest sibling over the fate of 38 Oxley Road, their family property.
The younger Lee alleged that then prime minister Lee Hsien Loong was misusing his power to scuttle their efforts to demolish the family home, in line with their father’s wishes.
Lee Hsien Yang joined the opposition Progress Singapore Party in 2020 and has been vocal in his criticism of the government, landing him in court over suits filed by cabinet ministers and falling foul of the country’s fake news law.
He and his wife lawyer Lee Suet Fern left Singapore in 2022 after deciding not to attend a scheduled police interview over potential offences of giving false evidence in judicial proceedings regarding Lee Kuan Yew’s will.
Lee Hsien Yang, the brother of then Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, seen wearing a shirt of the opposition Progress Singapore Party, attends an event at a market in 2020. - Photo: AFP
On Thursday, Singapore’s heritage board said it would conduct a study on 38 Oxley Road to assess if the site has “national historical, heritage, and architectural significance as to be worthy of preservation”.
In response, Lee Hsien Yang urged current Prime Minister Lawrence Wong to make a decision on the house and demolish it according to his father’s wishes.
“PM Wong, you were also on the Ministerial Committee which from 2016 to 2018 took many hours of ministers’ time to consider options for Lee Kuan Yew’s home. This is your responsibility. You have had nine years to consider. Further delay would trample on the last wishes of Lee Kuan Yew, whom you claim to honour. Please lead,” he said in a Facebook post on Friday.
According to data from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s Refugee Agency, the number of asylum seekers from Singapore has grown in recent years. Between January and June this year, there were 322 asylum seekers, up from 299 last year, 117 in 2022 and 100 in 2021.
Ja Ian Chong, an international relations specialist from the National University Singapore, said: “Typically, people from Singapore who seek asylum do so on the basis of political persecution.”
The asylum seekers’ perceptions of being repressed in Singapore – even as authorities have denied this – could be behind the higher UNHCR numbers, he added.
However, Eugene Tan, a law professor from Singapore Management University, pointed out that persecution could also centre on a person’s race, religion, gender, gender identity or sexual orientation, or any other attribute that a claimant said put them at risk for which they were not able to get protection.
“I suppose for most asylum seekers from Singapore, they believe that staying out of Singapore would help their cause – whether it is to escape persecution or to lead the lives they want to but which they believe they are unable to while in Singapore,” said Tan.
Here’s a look at some other current and former Singaporeans who had obtained asylum abroad:
Amos Yee stands outside the United Sates Citizenship and Immigration Services office after his release from detention in Chicago in 2017. - Photo: Reuters
Blogger Amos Yee
In 2017, Yee, a teenage blogger aged 18 who had been jailed twice in Singapore for offensive content he posted online, was granted asylum in the United States.
Following the death of Lee Kuan Yew in 2015, Yee posted a video criticising Lee which was found by authorities to have wounded religious or racial feelings, among other offences. His second conviction was over anti-Islamic and Christian remarks made in various social media posts.
Yee fled to the US in December 2016, a day before his medical examination ahead of his enlistment for compulsory national service at age 18, and was detained at Chicago’s O’Hare airport after he told immigration officials he was seeking refuge.
The US Department of Homeland Security opposed his asylum application, but an immigration judge ruled in Yee’s favour.
Yee, now 25, later found himself in trouble with the law again and was jailed six years by a Chicago court in 2021, after he pleaded guilty to two charges of child pornography and grooming a 14-year-old girl in 2019.
During his sentencing in December 2021, he was warned that he could be deported, denied admission to the US or denied naturalisation as a US citizen in the future.
Gopalan Nair, a former Singapore lawyer who is now a US citizen, leaves the Subordinate Courts in Singapore in 2008. -Photo: AFP
‘Singapore dissident’ blogger Gopalan Nair
A former lawyer and opposition candidate, Nair had a blog called “Singapore Dissident” between 2006 and 2018 on which he strongly criticised the government and its policies.
He ran for the Workers’ Party during the 1988 and 1991 general elections.
Nair’s posts, among other things, got him in trouble with the law, including when he used provocative terms in a 2008 post to accuse a judge of working for Lee Kuan Yew and his son, then prime minister Lee Hsien Loong.
Nair was struck off the rolls in Singapore in 2011 during which the judge noted that Nair was a US citizen. He claimed on his blog that he was granted asylum there in 1995.
Francis Seow, the late Singaporean lawyer who was previously a solicitor-general of Singapore. - Photo: Handout
Former solicitor-general Francis Seow
Seow climbed the ranks at the Attorney-General’s Chambers, representing the state in high-profile cases, including against two Indonesian perpetrators who bombed MacDonald House in 1965, which killed three people and injured 33.
He held the position of solicitor-general, the second-highest rank at the Attorney-General’s Chambers then, from 1969 till he left for private practice in 1972. In the same year, Seow was awarded the Public Administration (Gold) Medal for his contributions to the public sector.
He was elected president of the Law Society in 1986 where he criticised changes to newspaper laws that would allow the government to curb the circulation of foreign publications deemed to be interfering in Singapore’s domestic politics.
In May 1988, Seow was detained without trial under Singapore’s Internal Security Act (ISA) after he was accused of being cultivated by American diplomat Hank Hendrickson to establish a more effective opposition by leading a team of lawyers to contest in the general election.
After being released from detention in September that year, he ran in the general election as a Workers’ Party candidate, losing narrowly to the incumbent People’s Action Party. Despite the loss, he earned a seat as a non-constituency member of parliament, typically awarded to the “best loser” in an election.
However, soon after, he was charged with tax evasion and fled Singapore. He became a visiting fellow at Yale and then at Harvard where he wrote books including about being a dissident in Singapore.
A nephew of his said in a LinkedIn post upon his death in 2016 that he had been granted political asylum in the US. Seow died aged 88 in Boston.
Ang Swee Chai, co-founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians, speaks at a pro-Palestinian demonstration in London last December. - Photo: Anadolu via Getty Images
Human rights lawyer Francis Khoo and orthopaedic surgeon Ang Swee Chai
In 1974, Khoo represented a student leader and an American Marine worker accused of rioting at a union meeting in Singapore.
Two weeks after Khoo and Ang were married, Ang was detained without trial under the ISA in 1977. The authorities were also looking for Khoo who had earlier fled Singapore to London.
After Ang was released, she left to join Khoo and the couple were later granted asylum in the UK.
In 1984, the couple started Medical Aid for Palestinians, a British charity that worked in Lebanon and Palestinian territories to provide access to essential health services for Palestinians.
Khoo died in 2011 at the age of 64.
Ang, 76, was inducted into the Singapore Women’s Hall of Fame in 2016, but could not return to receive the award in person as she still held both Singapore and British passports, and the city state does not permit dual citizenship. She was stripped of her Singapore citizenship in 2020 and retained her British citizenship.
Ang returned to Singapore in April to receive the 2024 Harvard Club of Singapore Fellow Award. While in the city state she spoke to media outlets here, advocating for human rights for Palestinians amid the ongoing Israel-Gaza war.
In September, Ang was reportedly in Beirut, treating patients who were injured by the pager blasts in the same month. Her visit came 42 years after she volunteered to help in a Palestinian refugee camp following the Sabra and Shatila massacre.
While in Beirut, she spoke at an event commemorating the 42nd anniversary of the massacre advocating for a free Palestine, according to media reports.
Tan Wah Piow, a former student activist now lawyer. Photo: Tan Wah Piow
Student activist Tan Wah Piow
Tan, now 73, was the president of the University of Singapore Students’ Union when he was sentenced to jail for a year after he was convicted of unlawful assembly and rioting after instigating American Marine factory workers in November 1974 to go against their employers.
After his release, he fled to the UK in 1976 on a forged passport where he was granted political asylum.
In 1987, while he was in the UK, he was pinned as the “mastermind” behind the Marxist Conspiracy, also known as Operation Spectrum in Singapore. A total of 22 people were arrested and detained without trial under the ISA for their alleged involvement in the conspiracy, which involved plans to overthrow the government to form a Marxist state.
His citizenship was revoked following the Marxist Conspiracy. Tan, a lawyer, is currently a British citizen.
Following the death of Lee Kuan Yew in 2015, Tan told Reuters that despite his run-ins with the authorities he would like to return to Singapore. - The Straits Times/ANN
