http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2226&Itemid=181
Singaporeans Seek Asylum Elsewhere
Written by Ben Bland
Thursday, 07 January 2010
A handful of the Lion City's citizens want to abandon their homeland for
less strict digs
Given the Singapore government's oft-repeated mantra that it has taken
the city-state "from third world to first," you would not expect to find
refugees fleeing the island's shores and gleaming skyscrapers.
But despite the prosperity, the decent health and education systems and
the lack of crime, a steady trickle of Singaporeans have felt the urge to
abandon their homeland and seek asylum in nations such as Australia, New
Zealand, the United States and Canada over the last few years.
(That of course doesn't count the thousands of Singaporeans who leave
every year to settle elsewhere. By one estimate, the number who put the Lion
City behind them is as high as 15 percent of annual births. In 2006, the
Transport Minister, Raymond Lim, expressed concern that 53 percent of
Singaporean teens would consider emigration. One website survey put Singapore's
average outflow at 26.11 migrants per 1,000 citizens, the second highest in the
world - next only to East Timor (51.07). )
Canada, the refuge of choice for noteworthy politically fed up
Singaporeans such as pioneering writer Goh Poh Seng, who left the city-state in
1986, seems to have a more sympathetic ear for those fleeing the Lion City or,
at least, a more deserving slate of applicants. Twelve of the 29 who fled the
Island Republic for Canada between January 2005 and September 2009 were given
political refugee status, a success rate of 44 percent. Four applied in Canada
in the first nine months of 2009 and three of them accepted. It isn't known who
they were or why they were seeking asylum.
Another 26 have been granted asylum in the United States, according to
the US Department of Homeland Security. At least some are believed to have
sought asylum because they were being persecuted for being gay.
But these are the lucky ones. With genuine refugees from strife-ridden
nations such as Afghanistan, Burma and Sudan often denied asylum status by the
stringent immigration authorities in the Western world, most asylum seekers
from Singapore are turned back.
Of the 50 or so Singaporean refugee applications identified by Asia
Sentinel in Australia, New Zealand and Canada over the last decade, the vast
majority were rejected.
Ten have applied for refugee status in New Zealand since 1997, according
to spokesman for the country's Department of Labour, and all were rejected.
Another 15 applied for refugee status in Australia between 2004 and 2009. All
were denied.
The fact that there are so few successful asylum applicants from
Singaporeans is testament to how perceptions of Singapore's approach to human
rights have improved over the last 20 years. In that period, the government has
made some small but significant steps toward meeting globally-accepted
democratic norms, abandoning the detention without trial of political opponents
and trying to combat institutional and societal discrimination against women,
ethnic minorities and gays.
Singapore's 21st- Century refuges are driven by a variety of motives
including political oppression, racism, persecution and the desire to avoid
military service. Some, no doubt, are economic migrants who hope for a better
standard of living in New Zealand or Canada, far away from the rat race of the
Lion City. A few are clearly mentally unstable, with others fleeing debt or
using political repression as an excuse.
Looking into their cases provides a rare insight into the tiny minority
of Singaporeans who have rejected the ruling People's Action Party's de facto
social contract that promises economic development in exchange for the
surrender of political freedoms.
Take the Singaporean of Tamil heritage who fled to New Zealand in August
2008 because, even after selling his apartment and all his possessions, he was
unable to pay off debts to loan sharks and feared that the Singapore police
would not protect him from violent reprisals. His sorry tale of loan-shark debt
spiraling out of control is a common one in the humble public housing estates
of Singapore, where many people are unable to get access to mainstream bank
credit.
Not many in his position would resort to fleeing the country and with
good reason. To fall within the remit of the UN's Refugee Convention,
applicants must have a well-founded fear of persecution on grounds of "a
person's race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group,
or political opinion."
Fear of persecution from criminal gangs on the basis of your inability to
repay illicit loans is not a valid justification for asylum under international
law. Unsurprisingly, in August last year, New Zealand's Refugee Status Appeals
Authority rejected his final plea for asylum.
The New Zealand refugee appeals tribunal also rejected appeals from two
Singaporean men in 2003 and 2001 who claimed that they were discriminated
against during their military service.
One repeated the often-aired grievance that the Singapore army is biased
toward those of ethnic Chinese origin, insisting that he had been passed over
for promotions because he was of Indian extraction. He also claimed that there
was mounting discrimination against Indians in Singapore, which had led to the
suicide of his brother.
The other appellant said he was a conscientious objector and that he
feared being jailed if he refused to complete his obligatory military service.
Both appeals were rejected on the grounds that the unpleasant circumstances
faced by both men did not amount to persecution.
Meanwhile, the Singapore government continues to stick to its
long-standing policy of refusing to accept refugees. It is one of the few
countries that have chosen not to sign up to the UN Refugee Convention and has
a long history of turning away even those in desperate need, whether they be
Vietnamese boat people or stateless Rohingya fleeing Burma.
As Balaji Sadasivan, minister of state for foreign affairs, put it
earlier this year: "Given our limited land and natural resources, Singapore is
not in a position to accept persons seeking political asylum or refugee status."
Recently-declassified British government papers reveal that founding
Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew was so unforgiving that he vetoed a 1979 proposal
by Margaret Thatcher to buy a vacant Indonesian or Philippine island to house
Vietnamese boat people.
His concern was that this would create a "rival entrepreneurial city".
Fortunately for some Singaporeans in dire straits, other countries take a
more compassionate view. As recently as 1996, Australia, which is evidently no
soft touch on immigration, granted asylum to a Singaporean woman of Indian
background who married against her family's wishes and ended up getting
divorced.
The immigration tribunal upheld her claim that she faced possible sexual
harassment and physical abuse by men within her community and that the
Singaporean authorities "may be unwilling to offer her protection" because of
"the view that they take of her moral background".
Such dark days appear to be behind Singapore now. But the realities of
political repression and the climate of fear stoked up by the government
continue to drive some Singaporeans to flight.
Ben Bland is a freelance journalist in Jakarta. He was formerly based in
Singapore. He blogs at http://www.asiancorrespondent.com/the-asia-file.
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