Singapore and Burma: Such Good Friends

When protesters dared to show up in Singapore’s Istana Park earlier this week to protest Burma’s crackdown, authorities promptly arrested them, a reminder that Singapore isn’t just skilled at mandatory executions of drug traffickers, running an excellent airport and selling cameras to tourists. It also does a very useful trade keeping Burma’s military rulers and their cronies afloat. The five, members of the Singapore Democratic Party, were arrested, police said, for staging an unlawful demonstration. Singapore and Burmese nationals, the police said, have been allowed to protest “in a lawful manner,” along with some expatriate women wearing red.

For all the attention placed on China and its upcoming hosting of the Olympic Games as a diplomatic pressure point on the Burmese junta, which hove back into the world’s view by violently squashed non-violent demonstrators led by Buddhist monks all across Burma. Government business-technocrats in Singapore were also closely—and perhaps nervously—monitoring the brutality underway in Rangoon. And, were they so inclined, their influence could go a long way to limiting the misery being inflicted on Burma’s 54 million people.

Collectively known as “Singapore Inc,” they tend to gather around the $150 billion state-owned investment house Temasek Holdings, controlled by a member of Singapore’s long-ruling Lee family, Ho Ching, the wife of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong. Singapore companies have been some of the biggest investors in and supporters of Burma’s military junta, while its government, in the rare times it is asked, suggests a softly-softly diplomatic approach toward the junta. Tiny Singapore ranks alongside China and Thailand as Burma’s biggest trading partners.

When it comes to Burma, Singapore pockets the high morals it likes to wave at the West elsewhere. Singapore’s one-time head of foreign trade once said as his country was building links with Burma in the mid 1990’s; “while the other countries are ignoring it, it's a good time for us to go in….you get better deals, and you're more appreciated... Singapore's position is not to judge them and take a judgmental moral high ground.”

But by providing Burma’s pariah junta much of the crucial materiel and equipment denied by Western sanctions, Singapore has helped keep the junta and its cronies afloat for 20 years, indeed since the last time the generals opened fire on the citizens they are supposed to protect. Withdraw that financial support from Singapore and others and Burma’s junta would be substantially weakened, perhaps even fail. But after two decades of profitable business with the trigger-happy generals, that’s about the last thing Singapore is likely to do. There’s too much money to be made.

While the world’s attention—and outrage—was riveted on Rangoon in late September, Singapore was at pains to be seen as the region’s leading voice in condemning the junta. Chairing Asean, it articulated the grouping’s “revulsion” toward Burma at the United Nations. The quasi-official Straits Times loyally parroted the line while overlooking the intimate business links Singapore has cultivated there, the medical care and hyper-security junta leaders get from Singapore and the frequent state visits.

Singapore’s spin was no better articulated internationally than by Tom Plate of the UCLA’s Asia-Pacific Media Network, a man regarded in Singapore as a particular favorite. In a column for CNN, Plate opined that (Foreign Minister George) Yeo “has few equals on the world diplomatic stage in the department of clear, concise and unmistakable language. Words like ‘appalled’ and we ‘demand’ are rarities in Asean-speak. Yeo used them—and a few other choice ones as well … Also working behind the scenes was Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong. He was lobbying his often-timid counterparts among the Asean states not to wimp out at the very moment the eyes of the entire world were glued on messed-up Buddhist Burma in Southeast Asia. Nobody has ever said Singapore was dumb.”

Perhaps, but no one ever said Singapore wasn’t pragmatic either, and nowhere did Plate link Singapore’s corporate endeavors in Burma to the current appalling mess. No sooner had the junta’s guns prevailed and world attention diverted, Singapore retreated to its self-interested status quo of doing little beyond occasional diplomatic hand-wringing.

While Malaysia stated the obvious—that Asean’s policy toward Rangoon had failed and capitals across the region summoned envoys, kept up pressure and allowed spontaneous popular protests outside Burma’s Asean embassies, Singapore quietly balked.