UNDESIRABLE PUBLICATIONS (AMENDMENT) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

3.29 p.m.

The Chief Secretary (Mr E. B. David): Sir, I beg to move, "That the Bill be now read a Second time."

Sir, under the law as it stands, the powers vested in the Government to ban the importation of subversive or other undesirable publications, including gramophone records, are limited to the specific issue to which exception is taken. Only in the case of periodical publications does the order have the effect of banning past and future issues of the same publication. This limitation and the time and labour involved in examining imported literature has to be considered against the statistics of imports. In the first nine months of this year, 14 million copies of no less than 36,291 publications printed in the Chinese language sought importation into Singapore. Of these 36,000 publications, 748 were found to be objectionable and were refused importation. These 748 undesirable publications were the product of 101 Chinese publishing houses, some situate in the mainland of China and some in Hongkong. An analysis of these publications shows that the great majority emanate from a small number of publishing houses. Between them, 21 such publishing houses were responsible for a total of no less than 502 undesirable publications out of a total of 748. During the same period 40 gramophone records in the Chinese language were refused admittance. All but four of these emanated from one source.

Sir, it is in these circumstances that the Government is seeking to amend the existing provision in the law to permit the banning of all publications which emanate from particular sources or particular publishing houses. As hon. Members will be aware, this power already exists in the Federation of Malaya and has been exercised.

The opportunity has also been taken to provide that the ban imposed on publications or types of publications under this section shall also apply to all translations of such publications. It is, of course, possible that there will emanate from publishing houses against which such a blanket ban has been imposed the occasional innocuous publication for which import is sought. This contingency is provided for in sub-clause (4) of clause 3 which enables specific publications to be exempted from any such blanket ban.

I should like to add, Sir, that in this matter the Government has a duty towards the public to prevent the publication and circulation not only of subversive literature but also of pornographic and obscene literature. This duty is all the more important when it is remembered that a high proportion of the population of Singapore today is of an age at which they are still young and impressionable and cannot be expected to form a mature literary judgment. I should like, therefore, to add in conclusion that the Government has under consideration at the present time whether any further measures are necessary to control the output and circulation of harmful literature, particularly the type of publications deliberately and mainly designed to promote sales through their pornographic content.

Sir, I beg to move.

Question proposed.

3.34 p.m.

Mr Lim Cher Kheng: Mr Speaker, it does look very surprising to see an Opposition Member rise and second this motion. We are very delighted to hear the speech just delivered by the Hon, the Chief Secretary, especially when he touched on the point that undesirable publications should include obscene literature. That, I think, is one step more towards realisation of the controversial problem that faces us - why, on the one hand in the eyes of the Government, the so-called "progressive" literature is termed subversive, but, on the other hand, the Government have allowed obscene and harmful literature to pour in as well as allow it to be published in this country. So, while extending my warm congratulations to the Chief Secretary on his speech, I would ask him to take note of the need to ban as much obscene and harmful literature as he can in this country.

3.35 p.m.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew: Mr Speaker, Sir, in so far as the Chief Secretary said that this Bill was intended to shut out, shall we say, non-political undesirable publications, I think nobody will quarrel with him. But I would like to make this observation as regards political tracts. I believe we can broadly classify these political tracts into two categories: one, those which are obviously designed for propaganda and do not contain anything other than a recital of facts to glorify the Communist bloc; two, those tracts which are the theoretical and ideological dissertations of the Communist bloc.

The curious position which we have today in Singapore - and to a certain extent also in the Federation - is that whilst we can purchase all these books and tracts in the English language, the same books and tracts in the Chinese language are banned. Sir, you can go to any reputable bookshop in town and buy Mao Tse-tung's books in English in four volumes. I have often wondered, Sir, what would be the effect if one were to translate them and print them in the Chinese language. I am quite sure it would not be within the Undesirable Publications Ordinance because they are published locally. I do not know if steps would be taken to outlaw such books.

It seems to me, however, that unless we are prepared to open up the minds of our people to free discussion and ventilation of ideas, unless we try to, so to speak, inoculate the intellectual sector of the population from succumbing to these ideas - if we try to insulate it - I do not think, first, that we can succeed completely, and secondly, that it is in any case desirable, because it means that we are admitting that the ideas which are being propagated are beyond refute. and therefore we do not want the minds of the people to be turned to these matters.

I seriously ask the Government to consider this point, because as time goes on and a rising generation of Chinese-educated intellectuals comes into being, we have to cease pretending that China does not exist. In fact, nobody pretends it any more, not even Mr Dulles. We have to explain to our people why it is - as indeed if we hope to sustain the democratic system in Malaya, we must explain - that despite all the material advances, all the longest rivers and bridges in the world, the biggest output of textiles in the world, our system in so far as we are concerned in Malaya is worth while continuing and sustaining; that despite all these "great and glorious achievements", there are hundreds of people who still want to come from China to Malaya for the simple reason that life is not quite so bad in Malaya. If you isolate your intellectuals from a free and open discussion of political ideas as such, as distinct from the technique of the revolution, the organisational side of it, then not only will you fail but you will also create a dangerous situation.

Therefore, although we would not seriously quarrel with the intentions of the Government of trying to prevent immature minds from being overwhelmed by facile and cleverly thought-out propaganda, we should at the same time accept the challenge which is all the time there of the ideological battle - that the history of the world is not preordained; that in fact it is not true that history has already been written up a long time ago; that the world is going to be what Marx said it was going to be; and that if the Americans had let go one big bomb in 1947, something else might have happened to the world - and create in our generation in Malaya, men of sufficient intellectual fibre to withstand the stresses and strains of the ideological battle between the two power blocs which, far from becoming less acute as time goes on, appears to be getting more and more acute as the cold war intensifies.

Mr Speaker: Mr Chief Secretary, in reply?

3.42 p.m.

Mr David: Sir, I am very glad that for once I am in tune with the opinions of the hon. Member for Changi. I would not in any way quarrel with the general proposition which was put forward by the hon. Member for Tanjong Pagar, Sir, but I would only ask him to bear in mind, in saying that in the long run people in Singapore no less than people in any other part of the world must make up their own minds, two things: one is the context in Singapore at the present time, the context particularly of the matters that were discussed in the debate this morning; and the second point is that the literature coming from China - I do not think he could claim a considerable quantity of it anyway - would come within the definition of free thought. I would remind him of the speech made by Mao Tse-tung in May 1942 at a literary meeting in Yenan in which he finished up by saying, "From now on literary works under the control of the Communist Party will no longer be pure literary works; they will all be transformed into political weapons."

Question put, and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read a Second time and committed to a Committee of the whole Assembly.

Assembly immediately resolved itself into a Committee on the Bill. [Mr David].

Bill considered in Committee; reported without amendment; read the Third time and passed.