At the recent International Bar Association annual conference, a lawyer by the name of Robert Amsterdam visited Dr Chee Soon Juan outside the Istana where the SDP leader was staging a protest against the Burmese regime.
Mr Amsterdam commented about the similarity between Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Lee Kuan Yew’s Singapore where the rule of law exists only in name.
The lawyer, shaking his head, noted how the Istana police had set up a video camera to record everything that took place at Dr Chee’s one-man protest.
Mr Amsterdam runs an active campaign against autocratic rule in Russia through his widely read blog: www.robertamsterdam.com
As a result of his visit and seeing what he saw, he has taken an interest in Singapore as well.
He has invited Dr Chee to write a piece for his blog comparing Russia and Singapore. Entitled Dr Chee Soon Juan: A Comparative Perspective on Russia and Singapore, the piece is published in English and Russian. http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2007/11/dr_chee_soon_juan_a_comparativ.htm
Mr Amsterdam runs a successful law firm www.amsterdamandperoff.com
in which he straddles between international trade law, handling commercial litigation, and international human rights cases. Among some of his clients have been PricewaterhouseCooper and the Four Seasons Hotel Group.
Posted prominently on his firm’s website is a quote from law journal, The Canadian Lawyer, about Mr Amsterdam: “One of the few lawyers in the world [good at] taking on the State when the State starts acting like a criminal.”
He also advises parliamentarians and NGO leaders on “a variety of political, legal, and business issues.”
The lawyer says that he will follow the situation in Singapore closely and recommends his readers do the same.