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Singapore Subversive Political Groups, 1965 to the Present
From 1965 to 1989, the government occasionally reported
police
actions targeting small subversive organizations. However,
at no
time were any of these groups considered a significant
threat to
the Lee government. From 1968 to 1974, a group known as
the Malayan
National Liberation Front carried out occasional acts of
terrorism
in Singapore. In 1974 the Singapore Police Force's
Internal
Security Department arrested fifty persons thought to be
the
leading members of the organization. After police
interrogation,
twenty-three of the fifty persons arrested were released,
ten were
turned over to Malaysia's police for suspected involvement
in
terrorist activities there, and seventeen were detained
without
trial under the Internal Security Act. One leader
subsequently was
executed in 1983 for soliciting a foreign government for
weapons
and financial support. The government alleged the Malayan
National
Liberation Front had been a front organization of the CPM,
which in
the late 1980s was still operating in the border area of
northern
Malaysia and southern Thailand.
In 1982 a former Worker' Party candidate for Parliament
and
fourteen of his associates were arrested for forming the
Singapore
People's Liberation Organization. Zinul Abiddin Mohammed
Shah, who
had run unsuccessfully for Parliament in the 1972, 1976,
and 1980
elections, was accused of distributing subversive
literature
calling for the overthrow of the government. Shah was
tried and
convicted on this charge in 1983 and was sentenced to two
years in
jail. His associates were not prosecuted.
In 1987 twenty-two English-educated professionals were
arrested
under the Internal Security Act for their alleged
involvement in a
Marxist group organized to subvert the government from
within and
promote the establishment of a communist government. For
reasons
unknown, the Marxist group had no name or organizational
structure.
The government accused those arrested of joining student,
religious, and political organizations in order to
disseminate
Marxist literature and promote antigovernment activities.
Although
twenty-one of the twenty-two persons arrested were
released later
that year after agreeing to refrain from political
activities,
eight were rearrested in 1988 for failing to keep this
pledge.
According to a 1989 Amnesty International report, two
persons were
being detained in prison without trial under Section 8 of
the 1960
Internal Security Act. This number represented a
significant
reduction from the estimated fifty political prisoners
held in 1980
(see
Political Opposition, ch. 4).
In January 1974, four terrorists belonging to the
Japanese Red
Army detonated a bomb at a Shell Oil Refinery on
Singapore's Pulau
Bukum and held the five-man crew of one of the company's
ferry
boats hostage for one week. The incident tested
Singapore's
capability to react to a terrorist attack by a group based
outside
the country and one having no direct connection with
antigovernment
activities. The counterterrorist force mobilized by the
government
after the bombing and hijacking comprised army commando
and bomb
disposal units and selected air force, navy, and marine
police
units. Negotiations with the terrorists focused on the
release of
the hostages in return for safe passage out of the
country.
Apparently the government's primary consideration was to
end the
incident without bloodshed if at all possible. The
Japanese
government became involved when five other members of the
Japanese
Red Army attacked the Japanese embassy in Kuwait and
threatened to
murder the embassy's staff unless they and the four
terrorists in
Singapore were allowed to travel to Aden in the People's
Democratic
Republic of Yemen (South Yemen). Singapore refused to
provide
transportation for the terrorists but allowed a Japanese
commercial
airliner to land in Singapore, pick them up, and fly from
Singapore
to Kuwait. The hostages were released unharmed, and no
deaths or
serious injuries resulted from the incident.
Data as of December 1989
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