FOREIGN UNDESIRABLE PUBLICATIONS (Measures to stop circulation)

Mr Ang Nam Piau asked the Minister for Culture what measures have been taken against the circulation of foreign undesirable publications, which are poisoning the minds of our young children.

The Minister for Culture (Mr Jek Yeun Thong): Mr Speaker, Sir, by "foreign undesirable publications", I presume the Member for Thomson has in mind the Chinese chain comic books imported mainly from Hongkong. These books, as you can see from the samples here, are poor in quality, crude in production and seem to contain nothing except violence, bloodshed, ghosts and demons, and even sex. We consider them to be very harmful to the young children and have always been trying to slop them from being imported into Singapore. Our methods include Post Office and Customs interceptions and periodic surprise raids on bookshops known to be specialising in this kind of comic books. I myself have personally made appeals to the Singapore Chinese Booksellers' Association to restrain their members from importing such books. But there are always the black sheep in the flock. We have tried several ways to stop them, but they are always one up on us. I presume the profit that they derive from selling such books must be quite substantial.

Moreover, our criteria on these books are different from those in Malaysia. This difference has been exploited by the operators in recent months. They first import the books quite openly into Malaysia and then smuggle them into Singapore through our Woodlands check-point where we had no inspector to check on book parcels. However, since March this year, measures have been taken to remedy this. Since then, more than l9,000 copies of these books have been confiscated and destroyed.

We will continue to keep a close watch on these operators and, if necessary, very stern action will be taken against them. But this alone is not enough. We want the help of parents, teachers and the civic-minded public. They should report to us whenever they find these books being sold in the bookshops.