'The ISD's role is not only to stop the communist threat but also to guard against racial and religious extremism. It also investigates foreign espionage and subversive activity here, and prevents foreign terrorists from entering Singapore.'
That was what Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said in an interview with Chinese language Daily Lianhe ZaoBao. The interview was again published in the 27 June's English Daily, The Straits Times. Fear is also due to the presence of the Internal Security Department (ISD) and its surveillance of political activities. The ISD makes its surveillance activities fairly visible, especially during opposition parties activities or when political figures meet members of foreign embassies, overseas opposition politicians and civil society actors. The surveillance also covers religious activities, intellectual, social and theatre gatherings and tertiary institutions, albeit conducted a little more subtly. This excerpt appears in James Gomez 'Self-Censorship Singapore's Shame'. While our minister's speech describes the actual work done by the ISD, ISA and how it protects our nation and interests, James' books offers another view of how it contributes to fear, not only to the individual intelligentsia but organized civil activities. If the nature of ISD is to protect our national welfare, then it has to be secretive on its prosecutions and persecutions towards hostile disrupters intent on wreaking havoc on our prosperous state. James however calmly retaliates that the culture of indifference and fear is more than just the overshadowing presence of ISD and ISA. The book's primary focus is undoubtedly on censorship but primarily questions why it is often inflicted by the citizens themselves. He explains how the history of such a self-regulatory and self-defeatist system was inbreed and maintained by mostly the middle management and middle class population. In between, he quotes examples of how the blurry out of- bound markers further instigated this phenomenon. 'Self-Censorship' is however more than a commentary. It is proactive in its second last chapter where he proposed an agenda on how we can initiate changes. One example is to set up local political institutions that help in the 'reform process'. Like 'State-Society Relations in Singapore', 'Self-Censorship' cautions us against being complacent but most importantly, against practising unnecessary limitations on our freedom and rights as a citizen. It is queer that the book was a victim of self-censorship when it was published. National University of Singapore Co-op bookshop refused to carry the title and students taking political science had to resort to the campus sundry shop instead. Singapore's outright, blatantly ironic and paranoid oddities.
