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Singapore slipped into the second-worst category any country could ever be in with regards to civil liberties, an annual report by Civicus Monitor researchers showed.
The city-state has been downgraded from “obstructed” to being a “repressed” state in the People Power Under Attack 2021 report of (...)
New data on household budgets in Singapore shows that in order for hawker food culture to thrive, and for stall owners to earn more than a subsistence income, they must be paid about S$1 more per plate.
There is a general understanding in Singapore that food hawker incomes are too low. Hawkers (...)
Bangladeshi migrant worker MD Sharif Uddin used to spend his days off with friends outside his cramped Singapore dormitory, but coronavirus curbs have for 18 months left him stuck inside during his spare time.
More than 300,000 migrant workers, many of them from South Asia, live in dorms in (...)
A Singapore rapper who got into trouble for a controversial rap video will be charged Monday with promoting racial discord.
The police said last night that Subhas Nair, 29, will be charged with four counts of attempting to sow discord between different religious and ethnic groups after (...)
There are already signs the law will be used to divide civil society and cast a dark shadow over internationalism.
When the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill, or Fica, was tabled in Singapore’s Parliament on September 13, local activists were watching closely. We were anxious that it (...)
Singapore’s PAP government has long meddled in the domestic affairs of its neighbours. If the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Act (FICA) applied to PAP activities abroad, most of its efforts would be illegal. This is hypocrisy of the highest order.
During the second reading of the (...)
In the first substantive chapter of Raffles Renounced, co-editor Alfian Sa’at asks his interlocutor and fellow theatre-maker Neo Hai Bin whether Singapore’s Bicentennial in 2019—the 200th anniversary of Singapore’s colonisation initiated by the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles—would be remembered (...)
The fingers began pointing rather quickly, as one can expect in Singapore, when domestic and international media began publishing the figures and graphs that indicated that COVID-19 was tearing through the migrant worker dormitories. What happened next was a foregone conclusion: citizens (...)
Jolovan Wham faces large fines over incident in which he briefly held a smiley face sign outside a police station
An activist who held a sign bearing a smiley face as part of a one-man protest in Singapore has been charged with unlawful assembly.
Jolovan Wham said he held the cardboard sign (...)
An interview with Jolovan Wham on Singaporeans’ latest push back against state retaliation.
With the country’s elections slated to take place next month, Singapore is technically a democracy. Yet for decades, the country has been ruled by the conversative party, the People’s Action Party, who not (...)
The High Court’s decision (on 30 March) to dismiss legal challenges mounted by three men against Section 377A of the Penal Code is “yet another start” to a “long fight” for LGBTIQ rights, says Singaporean filmmaker Boo Junfeng.
Narrating his experience of receiving a “text from the lawyers” notifying him that he had lost the constitutional challenge in the High Court “at the end of an exhausting day”, Mr Boo revealed how he “broke down a little” when he had to break the news to his crew of volunteers who were (...)
The crowd was already pumped when Pink Dot’s spokesperson, Paerin Choa, took over the microphone. The sun had set over an afternoon of enthusiastic pink-clad picnicking. Performers—from popular local rappers and indie bands to glamorous drag queens—had built the atmosphere up to one of euphoria (...)
When Monica Baey took to Instagram to express dissatisfaction over the National University of Singapore’s handling of sexual harassment, a network of students mobilised to demand reform. Two students actively involved in the movement reflect on this episode of student activism.
“Change has (...)
Human rights groups denounce two-week sentence as an affront to free speech and call for Seelan Palay’s release.
Singapore - A 34-year-old performance artist is serving a two-week jail sentence for what he and his supporters consider a peaceful one-man protest.
Human rights groups and arts (...)
Singapore’s annual LGBTQ pride rally, Pink Dot, celebrated its 10th year on 21 July. New Naratif plunged into the sea of pink to capture the sights and sounds.
10 years ago, about 2,000 people gathered in Hong Lim Park near Singapore’s Central Business District. Dressed in pink, they stood in (...)
10 years after an attempt to repeal an anti-gay law, Singapore’s LGBTQ activists are still seeking equality.
It’s been 10 years and Siew Kum Hong still remembers the walk from his seat to the Clerk of Parliament: “I was so worried I’d stumble and fall! I was relieved to get it done without messing (...)
Lee Kuan Yew will zing The Far Eastern Economic Review one last time before it goes out of business
Dow Jones Corporation, the owner of the soon-to- be-defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, will pay US$175,000 in damages and costs rather than wait for a hearing over damages* on a ruling (...)
The island republic sends forth yet another electoral Trojan horse
Given the Singapore government’s oft-repeated mantra that multi-party politics is not appropriate for a small city-state, it might have surprised outside observers when Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently unveiled plan to (...)
Singapore again ousts the editor of the Asia Sentinel. You can say one thing for Singaporeans. They have long memories. And if you think the place is loosening up, think again.
In 1988 — 21 years ago — my projected three-year stint as the Asian Wall Street Journal’s correspondent in Singapore (...)
Will the fiction of holding democracy hostage for “national security” fall with the information age?
Last September, an old man died of heart failure in a Singapore local hospital, aged 82.
While not many Thai people know him, he was Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, known universally as JBJ. He was (...)
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