Serious The Curious Cases of Lucy Davis, Thum Ping-Tjin, Ben Bland

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

Embedded within this reflective piece (by another Singaporean born academic) on the Kusama exhibition and civic engagement by academics is a discussion on the fate of Lucy Davis who had her PR cancelled after living here for 14 years seemingly following her death penalty activism and the apparent blacklisting of Thum Ping-Tjin - it also touches on the space for civic engagement but such outlier thinkers in 2017 Singapore:

"Lucy Davis, an artist and writer. Lucy moved from the UK to Singapore with her parents in 1980, aged ten. She attended CHIJ and then UWC before leaving Singapore, from 1989-97, for university in the UK and Denmark.

In 2002 Lucy was appointed assistant professor at NTU, and became a Singapore PR under the NAC’s Arts Talent scheme. She grew to become a fixture in our local arts scene.

I first became acquainted with Lucy’s work when I saw Ten Storey Jungle Fowl, a 3-D mixed media piece that is a commentary on modernity, development and ecology in Singapore (see bottom of this post). It is set along the green corridor at Tanglin Halt, next to a lovely old town and food centre in the process of being redeveloped.

Better known is her Migrant Ecologies Project. “One investigation involved tracing the historic, genetic, material and poetic biographies of a 1930’s teak bed found in a Singapore karang guni store, back to a location in Southeast Asia [Sulawesi] where the original teak tree may have grown using DNA tracking technology.”

All very interesting stuff.

In 2006, upon Lucy’s return to Singapore from an arts conference in Cairo, she was told that her PR re-entry permit had expired and she would henceforth be given only a probationary one-year re-entry pass.

Over the next few years, she remained in residency purgatory. In 2013, she lost her PR; and in 2016, after 11 years as assistant professor at NTU, even her employment pass renewal was rejected.

Lucy had first fallen for Singapore as a ten-year-old and had lived here for more than twenty years. Yet, over the course of fourteen years, Singapore downgraded her from PR to foreigner who cannot work here.

Why? It could be because of her death penalty activism—she co-organised and participated in arts activities on the subject. It could be because in 2003 she was one of several artists and animal-lovers, including current MP Louis Ng, who attempted to rescue street cats during a SARS-related cull.


"Nobody knows for sure. And so Lucy joined the long line of artists, writers, academics and social activists, local and foreign, forced to leave Singapore. They are many. But we rarely hear about them because they have actually done nothing wrong; their only crime, often, is having unacceptable political views.

So foreigners like Lucy are booted out; locals like Thum Ping-Tjin, a Singaporean academic, are effectively barred from employment here. Singapore is left only with those people the PAP finds agreeable.

Yes, of course national security threats, like (we are told) professor Huang Jing, should be dealt with appropriately. But kicking out people simply because one political party doesn’t like them? That cripples us artistically and intellectually.

For all our recent championing of the arts, one must wonder: is this really a global city in which tomorrow’s Yayoi can thrive?"

"On banned artists, academics, writers. Thum Ping-Tjin is a fairly famous historian in Singapore. Donald Low and I were delighted that “PJ” could contribute a chapter to a book we co-authored, Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus. His chapter, “The old normal is the new normal”, which illustrates the startling similarities between 1950s Singapore and today’s Singapore, is one of our favourites.

PJ has told me that he has been blacklisted by universities in Singapore, most probably for his revisionist historical views. As we know, it is folly to challenge the official PAP narrative (unless you bag a few Eisners along the way…).

OxleyGate exposed the stupidity of keeping somebody like PJ out of the country. During the entire saga, Singapore’s much vaunted policy and journalistic cabal failed to produce much intelligent, deep analysis. Instead it was left to PJ, based thousands of miles away in the UK where he can work, to give the most articulate and candid breakdown, on camera to Reuters.

There are too many others to mention all. You probably know about Cherian George. You probably don’t know about Ben Bland. Ben was a freelancer in Singapore in 2008-09. He wrote for, among other publications, The Economist and The Straits Times. I had just started freelancing for the former at the time, and so found out that Ben’s visa renewal had, after a year, been rejected. No reason given.

Most people suspect it is because Ben wrote for the Asia Sentinel, a supposedly taboo publication. And so, just like that, Singapore lost a very good journalist who has, for the past few years, been writing beautifully for the Financial Times.

Just not in Singapore. Shame."













https://sudhirtv.com/2017/08/10/yayo...-in-singapore/


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