Singapore: Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has said that the 1963 crackdown on communists was to tackle the violent and illegal outfit as it infiltrated open, legal organisations like trade unions, student associations and political parties in the island state then.
Lee has spoken about the legitimacy of the 1963 ‘Operation Coldstore’ which was a crackdown on communists based on British documents and first-person accounts by former Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) leaders which confirmed the extent of the Communist United Front (CUF) in Singapore.
This evidence “leaves no doubt” that Barisan Sosialis (now defunct) was formed as a political party at CPM’s behest and the then detained Barisan leader Lim Chin Siong was a Communist cadre, said Lee in a Facebook post and in response to a recently raised question on Operation Coldstore.
The Singapore government has also given a detailed reply to the question raised in a commentary on Operation Coldstore by former Barisan assistant secretary-general Dr Poh Soo Kai. Both Dr Poh’s commentary and the Singapore government’s response were carried in the Australian National University’s New Mandala website. Lim and Poh were among 113 Communists and supporters arrested and detained without trial during Coldstore which was carried out by the government of then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew. Many old Communist and pro-Communist activists have since reconciled with their past and became good citizens, Lee said. However, Lee pointed out that CPM was a violent and illegal organisation. “So it operated secretly, underground.
But the Communists infiltrated open, legal organisations like trade unions, student associations and political parties. This supported the Communist cause, but denied that they themselves were Communist. (Then Prime Minister) Lee Kuan Yew exposed this Communist United Front tactic,” said Lee. He said that a few hardcore communists still deny these historical facts.
“They don’t want to admit that they had fought on the wrong side and that luckily for Singapore they lost. Some ‘revisionist’ historians make this argument too. One motivation cast doubt on the legitimacy of the PAP (the ruling People’s Action Party) government, not just in the 1960s, but today,” Lee said.
He said the British have been declassifying documents from their archives in London and making them available to the public. “We have put together an account using evidence from the British archives as well as CPM sources, which confirm that Mr Lee Kuan Yew told the truth,” the Prime Minister said. (PTI)
