“The criticisms of Singapore in the Western press are often misplaced: they focus on the laws against jaywalking in the streets and urinating in the lifts and dropping chewing-gum wrappers on the pavements, and they only make me wish we had similar laws in Britain. However, the superficially clean image of the state serves to hide a more important truth: the suppression of well-intentioned dissent by a government bent on maintaining a monopoly of its political power may be achieved within a democractic framework, as well as under a dictatorship.”
– Geoffrey Robertson QC, foreword in ‘Lee Law’s: How Singapore crushes dissent’ by Chris Lydgate
Crushing dissent
