EMERGENCY (PROCLAMATION)

The Chief Minister: Mr Speaker, Sir, it is now my duty to move,

That this Assembly, in accordance with subsection (3) of section 3 of the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, 1948 (No. 17 of 1948), as amended by the Emergency Regulations (Amendment) Ordinance, 1948 (No. 39 of 1948), and the Emergency Regulations (Amendment) Ordinance, 1951 (No. 9 of 1951), adopts the Proclamation made by the Governor in Council on the 21st day of April, 1955, and published as Notification No. S 113 in the Gazette Supplement No. 30 of 21st April, 1955, as contained in Sessional Paper No. S.L. 2 of 1955, prolonging for a further period of three months commencing the 22nd day of April, 1955, the period specified in the Proclamation of Emergency made on the 6th day of January, 1955, and published as Notification No. S 16 in the Gazette Supplement No. 3 of 14th January, 1955.

Sir, it all means this: it is my duty now to ask this House to confirm the Proclamation made by the Governor to extend the period of Emergency for another three months; and these words have a very bad taste in my mouth. Many years ago I used to act professionally in assisting persons caught in the wide net of these Regulations and I gained then, Sir, a strong distaste for arbitrary executive power and the abuse to which it was prone. It is not within my jurisdiction, as hon. Members know, in the normal course to move this motion. Internal security is in the portfolio of the Chief Secretary, but I felt, Sir, that to leave it to the Chief Secretary to move it this time may raise a misunderstanding as to the true position. He may well have hurled against him opprobrium for continuing these Regulations when the decision is not, in fact, his alone. It is because of the rule of collective Ministerial responsibility and because I want that to be clearly understood not only in this House but in the country, that I sought this duty of moving the adoption of the Proclamation and that I stand to face the opprobrium which such a move may bring. It would not be fair to the Chief Secretary, nor to the Officials, to look upon this move as being one made by the Chief Secretary or forced on Government by the Official Members of the Council of Ministers. The Council of Ministers, Sir, as you are aware, has a majority of six Members of this House as against three Official Ministers, and however strongly Official Ministers may put their views, and however strongly they may object to a line of policy which the other Ministers seek to enforce, it is now clear that once a decision is taken in the Council, the Officials will loyally abide by the policy and will carry it out; so that the fact that I stand here to move this motion means it has the approval of the Council of Ministers. If the Council of Ministers had decided otherwise, you would have had all the hon. Members on the Front Bench following a policy of repealing the Proclamation, whatever His Excellency may decide to do thereafter. I think that should be clearly understood. I have received to date loyal co-operation, which is a happy augury for the future and which is the basis, if I may say so, Sir, of my belief in the present workability of this constitution - a constitution which gives us an opportunity to seek self-government today. It may well be that in times to come, in matters such as perhaps this one where we cannot agree, we shall find friction, but I still believe we will get co-operation once a decision is taken.

Having said that, gentlemen, it is my duty to tell you why we of the Council of Ministers are supporting His Excellency in this act. For seven years a state of emergency has prevailed in this territory with its concomitant Emergency Regulations. During those seven years the Emergency Regulations have been an integral aspect of our fabric of security. We have been but a fortnight in office, Sir, working into a new shoe, finding our way about, with no traditions behind us. By the time we had hammered out the Address which you heard and had to take a decision on this very vital matter, we had an opportunity for but the most cursory investigation into the Emergency Regulations and into the state of emergency. Every government, Sir, has to depend on its permanent staff for assistance in understanding various aspects of official work. In this particular matter we are strongly advised by persons responsible for internal security that there is, in fact, a continuing danger, and that the continuance of the Emergency is essential for the security of the territory. We say frankly, Sir, that we have not had the time to investigate these matters ourselves. We have had but a little time for a cursory investigation of the workings of the Emergency Regulations, and as a result you have seen the repeal of some eight Regulations and some minor others. We take no particular pride in that repeal. Let that be clearly understood. I do not know if it was mentioned - I think one gentleman did mention it - that they are of no particular moment. We on the Government Bench are satisfied from the history of their utilisation that they are no longer necessary and, in fact, have not been necessary for some time, if ever they were. They have not been necessary for a long time, and so we can throw them out of hand without further investigation, and that is what has been done, but we do not take any particular pride in these minor, entirely minor, repeals.

We agree completely with the observations of hon. Members opposite that we have not dealt with the basic aspect - arrest, detention without open trial. I would like to assure hon. Members that the Government will, within the next three months, keep the promise that you have heard in the Address of His Excellency, that we will exhaustively investigate not only whether there is any necessity for the continuation of the state of Emergency, but even if that is so, whether there is any necessity for a continuation of the Emergency Regulations as a whole. We shall naturally take into consideration the security needs of our neighbour, but our aim will be to see that not only justice is done - as some Members in the Government believe it is done - but that it is done publicly for all to see. That is our aim. It is our hope that we can achieve that aim. But I can assure hon. Members opposite that within this three-month period there will be a clear declaration of policy from the Government as to how much can be done to remove this blot from our system of justice.

Sir, I beg to move.

Mr Goode: Mr Speaker, Sir, I rise to second this motion, and I should, at the outset, like to confirm what my hon. and learned Friend the Chief Minister has just said, and make it quite clear, beyond any misunderstanding or any precipitated jubilation on the other side of the House, that I not only second the motion that my hon. Friend has moved, but I associate myself fully with the statement of Government policy which he has given. I should like at the same time to associate myself wholeheartedly with the remarks that my hon. Friend made on the working of our new system of government in this House.

Returning to the subject of this motion, Sir, there are some Emergency Regulations which are generally accepted by those who have thought about them as provoking no serious objection in principle - the Regulations governing national registration and the issue of identity cards, for instance; or those authorising the system of control over supplies which would otherwise cross the Straits of Johore and reach the Communist terrorists fighting in the jungle there. Such Regulations do not infringe the normal principles of law and legal procedure, and it may be that we can enact them in a normal way and so remove from them the prejudice which we all feel against Emergency Regulations and all that those two words have come to imply.

As my learned Friend has said, the heart of the problem lies in the special powers outside the ordinary framework of legal procedure which have been given to the Police and to the Government as being essential for the maintenance of security against those who seek to overthrow the properly constituted government of this territory by force, by secret conspiracy, and by murder and by arson; and in this problem we must, as my hon. Friend has said, have regard not only to our own security here in Singapore, but to the needs of our neighbours and friends in the Federation. We have heard some very welcome words in this House in the last two days on closer association with our neighbours in the Federation. In considering this problem of the Emergency Regulations, our ties of friendship may well be put to the test. The special powers which are most objected to are, of course, the powers of arrest and detention without trial in open court, and we shall, as the House has been told, during the next three months, closely examine these security provisions and the necessity for them. Meanwhile I should like, Sir, to give this House some appreciation of how those special powers have been used in recent months.

In the first place, they have been used only against Communists. They are not used against the ordinary criminal elements to be found in any country. It is only when the Police have strong reason to believe that a person is working for the Malayan Communist Party that they use these special powers of arrest and detention. It is quite true, of course, that it is the Police who would decide in the first place whether there is strong evidence of connection with the Malayan Communist Party. But there are checks on Police action. The Police can only keep a person under arrest for a few days. After that, they have to get what is known as a detention order from me, and before I grant that order they have to produce evidence to me to satisfy me that the person to be detained is connected with the Malayan Communist Party and that his continued detention is necessary for securing the public safety. Otherwise he must be released.

There is a further check. A person detained has a right to object to an advisory committee under the chairmanship of a Judge of the Supreme Court, and the Regulations lay a specific duty on the Judge, as chairman, to inform the objector of the grounds on which the order has been made against him, and to furnish him with such particulars as are in the opinion of the Judge sufficient to enable him to present his case. Of course, these checks are not the same as the right to a trial in open court. Nevertheless they are checks.

How far, hon. Members may wish to know, have these special powers been used recently? In 1954, 69 detention orders were issued. In at least 13 of these cases there was evidence to show that the persons detained were concerned in murder, arson, acid throwing, and other crimes of violence - the crimes by which the Malayan Communist Party maintains its reign of fear. It is because of that fear that witnesses will not give evidence in public court.

During the past three months, 17 persons have been detained; five of them were active agents of the Party and three were close sympathisers. Seven others were concerned in supplying a large quantity of hand-grenades to the Malayan Communist Party, but since there was insufficient evidence to show that those people were themselves knowingly working for the Malayan Communist Party, they have since been released. Wherever possible, those who are detained are prosecuted in open court, and during the last three months seven persons have been convicted in court, including one case of the attempted murder of a Chinese school-teacher. It is not always possible to prosecute in court because the witnesses are afraid to give evidence in public court. In these cases, the evidence cannot be sifted and tested in an open court of law. But it does not follow from that that the evidence is not true. In fact, for what it is worth to hon. Members of this House, I myself am in no doubt that most, if not all, of the evidence obtained by the Police through their special powers of arrest and detention is substantially true. So often it is dramatically confirmed after much patient work.

Let me give you an example. At the end of February, the Police recovered 147 hand-grenades which had been buried by the Malayan Communist Party. Now this was the direct result of the detention and interrogation of a chain of students who left Chinese middle schools in 1953 and 1954. The story started with the arrest in January last year of the then leader of the Malayan Communist Party in Singapore. From him and from others who were arrested under the Emergency Regulations, the organisation of the Party was slowly pieced together and learnt, and many of its members were identified until at last the trail led to this secret dump of weapons waiting for use. This was no false trail.

Let me give you another example. In August 1954, a Chinese high school student was detained and interrogated. Interrogation revealed that he was a member of the branch of the Party believed to be mainly concerned with the subversion of workers and peasants; and in this case the trail led to the recovery of two pistols and ammunition, and what was far, far more important, it led to the arrest of the three members of a three-man killer squad of the Malayan Communist Party. Those three men are under detention, and there is strong reason to believe that it was they who were responsible for the shootings which hon. Members will remember took place in the first half of last year, including the treacherous shooting down of two police constables in the Singapore Harbour Board.

Let me give you one more example. On 9th April this year, not so long ago, the Police recovered two automatics, a revolver, ammunition and a great quantity of Communist documents. The information leading to this was also obtained from persons detained under the Emergency Regulations; and I should like to just tell you something about those three weapons which were recovered on 9th April. Three weapons. One of them was a revolver which was taken from a detective who was shot and wounded in 1953. One was an automatic which had been stolen from a Police vehicle, and the third - the second automatic - had been snatched from the body of one of those two Harbour Board policemen shot in June last year.

Now it was suggested in an earlier debate in this House that action under the Emergency Regulations was against the interests of the people; that it repressed democracy. Does the House really think that recovering arms and ammunition from the hands of killers is a handicap to democracy in the sense of the word which I hope this House means? Surely the investigation of Communist underground ramifications, the seizure of their weapons and their ammunition, and the arrest of those that use those weapons in the killer squads, are a vital responsibility of the Police and of the Government? Let us not, in our concern to ensure that justice is seen to be done to a person detained, forget the importance of obtaining all possible information so that others will not be shot dead without cause and without warning, as that young Chinese lad was shot dead on Sunday, 17th April, called out from a club where, I am told, he was playing a harmonica, called out and butchered in a public street and in the drain. Unless the Police have some special powers, these killers are unlikely to be found and locked up, because no one dares to say what he knows until he is sure that he is safe from retaliation. Is it so wrong that those responsible for shooting down those two Harbour Board policemen should be detained? Of course, it would be far better if we could bring them to trial in open court in the normal way, but if those who could give the evidence against them are too terrified to do so, would it be right that we should let those men out tomorrow to shoot someone else down? And if, by using the special powers given to them under the Emergency Regulations, the Police can find and arrest the two men who killed that young man at Cairnhill ten days ago, should we take those powers away from the Police? Do not let us delude ourselves by thinking that that was any ordinary crime to be solved in the ordinary way. It was not. How can we expect those who have information which will be of assistance to the Police to come forward and give it when even the fellow students, the friends of that lad, were so terrified of this power of evil that hangs over this fair city that they did not dare to go to his funeral?

As my hon. Friend has said, the Government is deeply concerned that any special powers that have to be given to the Police shall be so framed that not only is justice done, but that it is seen to be done. But in striving for this, we have a responsibility to ensure that the rule of law does rule in Singapore, and that we are not put at the mercy - if they had any mercy - of those who have shown so clearly so often that anyone who dares to oppose them will be blotted out. Is not this a problem on the principles of which at least we can all agree on both sides of this House? We want to see that the law of the land is enforced through the law courts where every man is innocent until he is proved guilty after a fair trial. Yet at the same time we must somehow see that the Malayan Communist Party does not make a mockery of our way of life by its rule of murder and fear. How are we going to do both these things? That is the problem that the Government is going to try to solve during the next three months. Meanwhile we consider that it would be a betrayal of our responsibility to the people to vary the existing security provisions without careful scrutiny. So it is that we ask this House to approve this motion extending the Proclamation and the period of Emergency for a further three months.

Question proposed.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Mr Speaker, Sir, that was a thrilling account of what good police and detective work can unravel - plus fervent protestations of co-operation and collaboration between Ministers in the Council of Ministers. I have a sneaking feeling that if that same persuasiveness were applied long and urgently enough, a transformation might yet be wrought upon the Members on the other side of the House who were sent here by the people. But I have this one observation to make: that there is not one jot of evidence to say that this schoolboy who was shot under very mysterious circumstances was part of an enormous political feud of terror, other than the fact that he was shot, and that because he was shot, his fellow-students thought it wise to stay away from it. That is all, this little bit of evidence, a great deal of speculation, and we are asked to believe that the law is suspect, but is always administered with scrupulous fairness, impartiality; and absolute justice is done in the end even though we the people know nothing about it.

Sir, we could go on and then I would be accused at the end of it of having made another election speech. But let me tell the hon. Members on this side of the House that when we come here we make the same speeches, we say the same things that we have said outside. We have no two sets of speeches, no two sets of values. We do not go and tell the people outside something and come here and say, "Well, after all, that has diddled them. We will do something different now." We are honest politicians, and we say what we feel, honestly and fearlessly. I think myself that if the Chief Minister allows himself to be overwhelmed by the susceptibilities of the minorities whom he does not like to ride roughshod over because they have, after all, susceptibilities, and because they do not like public meetings after seven and are very unhappy about it, we have got to take note of the fact that they are very unhappy and submit to their susceptibilities for the time being. If that is the point of view of a very brave man, who came out and fought on a very brave platform, then if at the end of three months, again he takes note of the susceptibilities of this minority, we shall have to revise, and I think the public will also have to revise, very seriously the estimation of the worth of the people who made those promises.

The Hon. the Chief Secretary has given the statistics of all the people who have been arrested for all the evil things that they have done. If they have done these evil things, let them not just be detained - let them hang for it. That is the stand of the People's Action Party. We are asked to believe that there is no abuse whatsoever. Of course the Chief Secretary was careful. He confined himself to recent months, and no doubt their conduct in recent months must have been very much affected by the fact that there were these coming elections, and there would be such an occasion as this. But outside those recent months, I myself was engaged in one matter where several Malays were charged with murder because one December day the Malays decided to let themselves go and get their own back on society. The only way they knew how to get their own back on society was to get at every white man they could get their hands on and beat him up; and they killed one R.A.F. sergeant who never did anybody any wrong. But they never proved it. The jury said they never killed him, and the Judge acquitted them, and they were going to come out of the dock to express their relief when a police officer calmly took them by the arms and said, "Off you go!", and I was informed that they had been detained under the Emergency Regulations. Again, the Chief Secretary referred to the seven cases, where they were all proved in open court to have been guilty of crimes of violence or subversion. But there was one case, I remember, where the jury refused to convict and the man left the dock to go back to prison or a place of detention under the Emergency Regulations.

We are all concerned that there should be this state of terror and fear. We are keenly interested, more interested than those who do not have their homes here, and have somewhere else a comfortable home to retire to, that this problem must be solved. But we do not believe that it can be solved as a military operation. Give the Police the powers, give them the guns, and starve them out. That will solve it! It is not a military problem and cannot be solved in that way. It is part of a political discontent, which has its basis on social and economic conditions - (as the Chief Minister would have said) - bitterness which finds one manifestation in this particular form of revolt against the system. Repealing the Emergency Regulations would not solve this problem, and not repealing the Emergency Regulations would also not solve this problem. If we are ever to solve it, let us have the courage to say, "We believe in democracy and we are going to fight for it. We give you this democracy to fight for." If we then fail, then we would have to admit, as the French admitted in Indo-China, that nothing can succeed. It is very difficult to talk in terms of unemotive language of what this revolt really signifies. It is part of an international revolution; it is part of an international conspiracy. It is a campaign of terror. But there are also other facets to this problem, and a big facet is the fact that there are people who are finally forced to resort to such a technique of revolt. They are the people who have no place under the sun in this society. It is curious that there are very few who come from the relatively comfortable English-speaking classes, but there are relatively many who come from the less fortunate elements and classes of society that the Chief Minister so vividly described yesterday.

I would say that if we ever hope to build an independent democratic Malaya, we must put our faith in that independence and that democracy and fight for it. You cannot fight it just as a military operation. You cannot squash this thing as you would squash a squib or cracker, or a cannon, or an atom bomb by deadening the fuse. We are, Mr Speaker, Sir, dealing with a human problem, a problem with which all areas in this world, where there are acute economic and social conditions, have somehow or the other got themselves entangled. In my submission we should take one step forward in this attempt to let democracy work, believe in it and fight for it.

The Chief Minister has said that he wanted stones to be thrown at him and he would build houses with them. We hope his Minister for Housing would not have to depend on such resources. But he somehow took offence at what he thought were mud-pies. It is so very difficult when you have not got a jury, and the persons who say they are mud-pies are the persons at whom the stones are thrown. Whether the criticisms are constructive or not quite so constructive is, I think, a matter most delicate for the person criticized to balance. But the People's Action Party, and I think he will agree, could throw him a nice big, hefty stone. But we will give him these three months. We hope and pray that he will have the courage, not just to speak democracy, but to live democracy and give it to the people. If at the end of the three months the Chief Secretary's persuasive powers have been more powerful than our very tenuous moral influence on his mode of conduct in public office, then I would very much hate to see the Labour Front go the way the Progressives have gone.

The people are not destructive. They do not want ruination. It is they who sent back the Parties on their pledge to repeal, or to revoke, or to amend the Emergency Regulations. There must be a basic discontent with the way in which their lives have been affected by these Regulations. It is useless to come to this Chamber and tell a very interesting story, unravelling excellent police investigations, and to hope thereby that all the opposition that has been brewing over seven years can be quelled. It is the duty of the Chief Minister to be responsible in Parliament. I hope he will not forget that he is responsible to the people who put him there to do certain things they wanted him to do. The way in which withdrawals are made is a matter of grave concern. For instance, when he opened this motion, if one could close one's eyes and forget the skilful delivery and just take the substance, it might have been his defeated opponent in Cairnhill who talked so eloquently about the virtues of this constitution. Here we were all together, five elected men, one nominated, and three Government men. "We were all a team, we worked together for freedom. In fact, we worked so magnificently that we might not even need a change for quite some time." But let me remind the Chief Minister that that was not-.

The Chief Minister: I am tired of your reminder.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: I will go on reminding him ad nauseam, until he does what he has promised them. It is the duty of those who have been returned to fulfil what they promised they would do.

The Chief Minister: We do not need your reminders.

Mr Speaker: Order, please.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Mr Speaker, Sir, I am glad that the Chief Minister is a sensitive man and not one who takes criticism lightly. We hope that he will not lose his sensitivity in the many months to come, for there will be, sometimes, harder things to be said, sometimes more friendly things to be said, but always we say these things because we want the right thing done. It is because we want the right thing done that the People's Action Party accepts the explanation of the Chief Minister that he is unable to come to a definite conclusion about how he is to set about repealing these Regulations, but we would add this exhortation that the investigation should be made without bias, to give the people democracy.

Mr R. C. H. Lim: Mr Speaker, Sir, may I remind the Member for Tanjong Pagar (Mr Lee Kuan Yew) that yesterday he said the P.A.P.'s platform was to amend, and not to repeal or to remove, the Emergency Regulations?

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: I still say that.

Mr R. C. H. Lim: Why is he now criticizing this motion, which is not to repeal but to allow its extension for a term of three months to give the Government time for consideration? What is stated in the Governor's speech was the programme for the first year. There are still three more years to go, three more years in which we are confident we could cover all our programme. By way of repetition, I would like to ask why, if the P.A.P.'s own platform is not to repeal but to amend, he is so critical of the Government's policy?

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: On a point of clarification, Sir. I took the occasion yesterday afternoon to read the People's Action Party's election platform on the Emergency Regulations, and I then said and I say now that if the Labour Front would go as far as the People's Action Party and remove the Emergency Regulations in so far as they affect arrest and detention without trial in open court, restrictions on freedoms of speech, assembly and publication, we would rest content. We are criticizing this motion in a friendly spirit.

The Chief Minister: On a point of order, Sir. Is the hon. Member permitted to make a second speech on a point of explanation?

Mr Speaker: I think he has explained as much as he can explain.

The Chief Minister: I am glad to note the silence from all sides of the House which appreciates the position. Of course, the P.A.P. would have to seek to make capital of the occasion and keep reminding me that I have to button up my bush jacket when I come into the Chamber. I find that a little insolent. We know what we are doing, Sir, and I find it a little tiring - nauseating is the term I think that the Member for Tanjong Pagar used - because he keeps on reminding me that I should do what I have promised to do. I have never failed in my promises yet, and I will not, and I would be glad to learn that the Member for Tanjong Pagar would do the same. I not only speak democracy. No part of my action so far has denied what I have spoken. And, Sir, if a promise has to be broken for the welfare of this country, I will not be afraid to break it, because the welfare of this country is greater than any promise. That is the greatest promise of all of us who try to serve this country. I will not lose, Sir, my sensitivity. I hope the Member for Tanjong Pagar will gain in sensibility.

Question put, and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this Assembly, in accordance with subsection (3) of section 3 of the Emergency Regulations Ordinance, 1948 (No. 17 of 1948), as amended by the Emergency Regulations (Amendment) Ordinance, 1948 (No. 39 of 1948), and the Emergency Regulations (Amendment) Ordinance, 1951 (No. 9 of 1951), adopts the Proclamation made by the Governor in Council on the 21st day of April, 1955, and published as Notification No. S 113 in the Gazette Supplement No. 30 of 21st April, 1955, as contained in Sessional Paper No. S.L. 2 of 1955, prolonging for a further period of three months commencing the 22nd day of April, 1955, the period specified in the Proclamation of Emergency made on the 6th day of January, 1955, and published as Notification No. S 16 in the Gazette Supplement No. 3 of 14th January, 1955.