Singapore’s Human Rights Record

I decided to put this entry in to hopefully help some people see that Singapore is not as "bad" in the Human Rights sense as we are made out to be. I'm sure that will by no means end the debate, but I hope that these things would be borne in mind by those who seek to criticise the laws and policies have we have in place.

In a number of cross-country comparisons on human rights compliance and governance, Singapore’s human rights record, not surprisingly, is toward the middle of the spectrum among Asian countries[i]. Singapore has not seen mass killings or widespread disappearances. There has been no dictatorial regime involved in curtailing the right of its citizenry to vote. There is also no parallel in Singapore’s history, despite the racial problems during its early years, of genocidal incidents or ethnic cleansing in East Timor and Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. Singapore has also never experienced anything resembling the use of military force like the June 4 killings in Tiananmen Square and other parts of China or Bangkok in 1992. In fact, Singapore has not been among the marked and gross abusers of human rights, reviled at the United Nations.

With regards to the rule of law, Singapore's legal system is largely noted for its transparency and fairness, especially in matters of business and commerce. The concept of legality is well-entrenched. Order is imposed resulting in lower crime rates than are found in many of the Western democracies. Laws are been enforced even against those in positions of authority. As mentioned above, Singapore has been ranked the least corrupt country in Asia. Allied to this is Singapore's palpable progress in securing economic and social rights – education, housing, health care, incomes, and opportunity have all seen marked improvement since independence[ii].

The suggestion that Singapore’s approach involves a barter of rights for prosperity, the "trade-off" hypothesis, is an over-simplification. The evidence shows that no such trade-off exists, both social and economic rights and civil and political rights have grown over the last twenty years. The two sets of rights were used in conjunction to promote development. The PAP government has continually and effectively provided economic goods and social justice while consistently maintaining the popular vote. In the area of minority rights, because Malays were disproportionately represented among lower-income Singaporeans, the government recognised their special position in the Constitution, targeted their economic advancement, and entrenched their rights of political participation and representation by legislation.

All these factors suggests the following cycle: the PAP government worked to achieve prosperity and fulfill social and economic rights in order to gain political support; this increased political support and votes then returned them to office and strengthened their mandate and ability to make further reform and progress possible[iii]. The interplay between civil and political rights on one hand and social and economic rights on the other, was not a trade-off but rather a reinforcing cycle[iv]. A strong state emerged, able to implement many policies effectively and legitimately, without widespread use of force[v].

On these bases, the differences between Singapore – as an example of the Asian view (I shall leave this topic for another post because of the space and time constraints) – and Western democracies, who hold the dominant view, do not appear very great, despite the constant rhetoric of Singaporean spokesmen placing the nation alongside countries such as China in a stand-off against the Western dominant view. The reality of its record is, however, quite a different picture: Singapore stands very close to the midpoint.

Although there are still many areas where Singapore could improve on their human rights practices, one has to constantly bear in mind that the claims and aims of human rights and of democracy are high; higher than any nation has reached in reality. After all, the whole point of setting such goals is to encourage further ambition.

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[i] A number of cross-national comparisons support this contention. The 1992 annual Freedom House Survey on civil and political rights ranked Singapore as "partly free". On its scale of 1 to 7, Singapore scored 4. Among Asian countries, only Japan and South Korea were considered "free". The Philippines and India, although also "partly free", were rated above Singapore (reproduced in "Evolution and Implementation", supra note 8 at 3). Similar results are seen in D.K. Gupta, A.J. Jongman & A.P. Schmid, "Creating a Composite Index for Assessing Country Performance in the Field of Human Rights: Proposal for a New Methodology" (1994) 16 Hum.Rts.Q. 131. For the year 1991, the United States was rated at the top with 13.39, while Myanmar was last with 36.18. The mean score was 22.57, and Singapore was rated at 23.09, above other countries in Asia such as India, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, and China (see ibid. at Annex 1). Chan Hang Chee reports that Singapore is given a "medium freedom" ranking, where Sweden is scored highest and Iraq is at the bottom of the list. (all these examples are cited by Tay, S.C., 1996, Human Rights, Culture, and the Singapore Example, McGill Law Journal, obtained on Westlaw).
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid.
[v] Ibid.