I have known Tan Jing Quee since the 1970s. He was a successful, friendly and humble lawyer then. I didn’t know his past political history and imprisonment under the ISA. He and his friends used to meet up with my employer, G Raman and I was occasionally invited to have coffee with them. I enjoyed their company because their conversations were always interesting and stimulating. They never spoke of revolutions to overthrow the PAP government.
Singapore in the ‘70s was a very safe and peaceful country. There was no violence, mobs or demonstrations. As a young lawyer, I used to walk from North Canal Road to the Supreme Court and the Subordinate Courts by the Singapore River without encountering any incident along the way. Thus in 1977 when G Raman was arrested and after him, Jing Quee, R Joethy and Ong Bock Chuan (all lawyers) and several well known journalists and professionals were also arrested under the ISA, I was stunned. They were accused of being “Euro-Communists” and pages of The Straits Times were splashed with news of clandestine activities that they were alleged to be involved in. I didn’t believe the horrendous stories spun by the PAP government against them. But I could not disprove anything except that I could vouch that they were and are good people.
As a legal assistant to G Raman, I continued to attend matters in court. The entire legal profession was silent. No lawyer ever asked me about the arrests. Everyone went about their business as if nothing had happened. The Law Society did not issue any statement concerning the arrests, even though four of those imprisoned were lawyers. That was the climate then. Fear permeated the entire society. I think a certain section of the population also assumed that the government was right to carry out the arrests and it was best to leave national security to them.
Jing Quee was released several months after but not before he was severely tortured and humiliated. Thirty years later, he was able to put his painful experience in words. He wrote in his poem, ISA Detainee :
How could I ever forget those Neanderthals
Who roamed Whitley Holding Centre*,
Under cover of darkness,
Poured buckets of ice water
Over my stripped, shivering nakedness,
Slugged my struggling, painful agony
Circling , sneering, snarling
Over my freezing nudity,
More animals than men:
What induced this
Vengeful venom, violent score
To settle, not for a private grievance
But a public, democratic dissidence;
From whence sprang this barbarity?
What made men turn into beasts
In the dark, away from prying eyes,
Protected by a code of dishonour and lies
To ensure they survive and rise.
I think it was in 1986 (at a time when the Law Society had become more active in commenting on unjust legislation), that Jing Quee visited me in my office in Geylang. I remember him asking me why I had set up my law practice in Geylang instead of being in the city. He warned that I was attracting unnecessary attention and that I may get into trouble. I replied that everything that I did or had done was in the open and that my life was an open book. I brushed away his concern, telling him that since I was acting openly, no trouble would come to me. He retorted “We didn’t do anything wrong too but we were arrested”.
Jing Quee’s words puzzled me for a while. But I soon forgot about his warning. I was confident that I had done nothing wrong and that no trouble would ever come to me. I didn’t even put a thought to the ISA. I didn’t even bother to check out the Act. The Act was meant for terrorists and I was not one. So why should I bother about the ISA? Sadly, I had forgotten about the arrests of Jing Quee and his friends in 1977. The trauma suffered by them and their families had been forgotten. My memory of those harrowing days had been erased. And so it happened, the warning of Jing Quee became a reality a few months later. I was arrested under the ISA together with many of my innocent friends in May 1987.
Jing Quee has passed on to a better place. But he has recorded his sufferings in his poem. The ISD and government officers who were responsible for his sufferings have not come clean. They have not apologised to him before his passing. It is not too late that they do so now, to his widow, Rose, his children and his siblings.
*A relatively new detention center built in the 1970s located off Whitley Road, used to hold political prisoners for short and medium term, mainly for interrogation .
Also published in Temasek Review -
http://www.temasekreview.com/2011/06/18/it-is-not-too-late/
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