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RIGHTS: S’pore – Venue for Int’l Bar Association Meet?

Marwaan Macan-Markar

BANGKOK, Feb 24 2007 (IPS) - Few Singaporeans are better qualified than 37-year-old lawyer M. Ravi to expose the dark side of the affluent city-state’s legal system. In October 2006 he was suspended from his practice for a year because he was ‘rude’ to a judge.

Consequently, few of that South-east Asian nation’s brave voices who dare to challenge the government, known for its oppressive measures, lost the support of a lawyer specialising in human rights cases. ‘’Those who needed a defence counsel in court could not find anyone to represent them,’’ he told IPS over phone from Singapore.

His eviction from the courts was hardly a surprise given the way dissidents and opposition figures are treated in a country that has many features resembling a police state. ”The rule of law has been decimated in Singapore. The bar is not independent,’’ he asserts. ‘’The Singapore law society has lost its strength to uphold the rule of law.’’

But the plight of lawyers like Ravi appears to have been overlooked by the International Bar Association (IBA), one of the world’s leading legal fraternities which plans to hold its ‘Annual Conference-2007’ in the city-state mid-October. Singapore ‘’offers the perfect opportunity for both business and pleasure,’’ states a blurb on the website of the London-based IBA.

That Ravi is upset by the turn of events was apparent on Friday, shortly after a trip to Europe. ‘’I have complained to the European parliament and (New York-based) Human Rights Watch to ask the IBA why they are holding this event in Singapore,’’ he said. ‘’The IBA should not hold its meeting here.’’

His attempt to have the annual meeting of an organisation, claiming to ‘’promote, protect and enforce human rights under a just rule of law’’ as the IBA states on its website, cancelled is receiving support from other quarters, too. Prominent among them is Chee Soon Juan, an opposition figure who has been a regular victim of the Singapore government’s oppressive measures.

‘’While I would very much like to welcome you to my country, I have to highlight to you some very disturbing developments that I believe would concern the IBA,’’ Chee wrote a week ago to the head of the legal body. ‘’The ruling Peoples’ Action Party (PAP) has resorted to using defamation lawsuits to silence its critics. Opposition leaders have been repeatedly sued and huge sums of money have been awarded in damage.’’

‘’(The) president of the Association of Criminal Lawyers of Singapore, Subhas Anandan, (has) indicated that he would represent murderers, thieves, and even terror suspects, but would avoid acting for dissidents in Singapore,’’ added the secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) in the three-page letter that catalogued many abuses opposition figures have faced. ‘’Because of such defamation cases Singapore’s legal system has been repeatedly and strongly condemned by organisations such as the New York City Bar Association, Amnesty International (and the) International Commission of Jurists.’’

‘’I thought a body like the IBA would be very concerned about the clamp down on political and democratic freedom,’’ Chee said in an IPS interview over telephone. ‘’It is tremendously difficult for us to find lawyers. They are scared of representing us because they have to get their license to practice renewed.’’

Chee’s legal battles with the ruling PAP have become legendary like those faced by trade unionists, academics, journalists and an opposition parliamentarian in previous years. He was served with seven charges in the run-up to last year’s general election for ‘’crimes’’ such as airing his political views in public. That muzzling of Chee was among the many measures pursued by the PAP to silence the SDP; the others being a crackdown on bloggers and critics of the government in cyberspace.

That the IBA may have more criticism levelled at it ahead of the October meeting has been confirmed by a terse statement released this week by the Asian Human Rights Commission. The Hong Kong-based regional human rights body questions the merits of holding such an event in a country ‘’whose courts are regarded as among the least independent in the world’’ and which is ‘’under the control of a one-party political system (where) the separation of powers exists only in name.’’

However, critics like Chee have been assured a response by the IBA. ‘’The organisation will respond to his letter in due course,’’ Romana St. Matthew-Daniel, a spokeswoman for the IBA, told IPS from London.

This international legal body, which was created in 1947, has a membership of nearly 30,000 lawyers and over 190 Bar Associations across the world. The 14-19 October conference is expected to attract some 3,000 lawyers and have as many as 150 working sessions that aim to cover ‘’all areas relevant to international legal practitioners,’’ according to the IBA website.

These early salvos fired at an international meeting resemble criticisms directed by non-governmental organisations (NGOs) at the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for holdings their annual meeting last September in Singapore.

The Bank’s attempt to get the Singaporean government to lift its harsh restrictions on traditional NGO activities at the annual meeting never succeeded. In the lead-up to the event, Singapore’s interior minister Wong Kang Seng threatened activists with ‘’severe punishment, including caning and imprisonment’’ if they conducted public demonstrations.

During the meeting, the government of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong saw fit to silence NGO activists through other means, too. Close to 30 activists from countries such as Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Italy, Belgium, Britain and India were blacklisted and denied entry. Some were held in custody at the airport for nearly 15 hours, grilled by officials and forced to fly back.