Priest in Geylang: Story of Michael and Catherine

If you have not read Part I of the review of Priest in Geylang written by Father Guillaume Arotcarena, click here.

There is this interesting story in the book which kinda indicates the Marxist/historical materialism analysis approach taken by Father Arotcarena. Catherine, the wife of Michael, is of bourgeois background and so when her necklace was stolen by her domestic helper (proletariat), Catherine who was well-off, was quite capable of replacing it, and hence did not "arouse much compassion" from the priest. Although Father Guillaume Arotcarena was quite right to ask Catherine to make a room for her helper, I can't help but to see that the Father was unnecessary bias in his writings against Catherine, who happens to be well-off. This coming from a priest who quoted Antonio Gramsci at the end of his introductory chapter.

If you are wondering who is Michael, the high-ranking magistrate, it would not be hard to guess. He was among the first batch of lawyers to be appointed the rank of senior counsel in 1997 along with Davinder Singh and VK Rajah and his brother was once arrested by the ISD .

I will leave you with this short story of Catherine and Vilma from the book. 

 

EXCERPT OF PRIEST IN GEYLANG PG 85-87: -

Sometimes I had to get involved in things I would rather keep way from. One day I had a visit from Catherine. I knew her and her family. I knew her husband, Michael, very well, a high-ranking magistrate in the judiciary. They were devout Catholics, about 40 years of age.

Both of them came from a bourgeois background, and they employed a young Filipina even though they have no real need for her; they were childless, lived in a very nice flat downtown which was easy to upkeep. But because they were amahs (servants) in the house in their childhood, it seemed to them that they should similarly have one now to maintain their standing and also relieve Catherine from any domestic chores. Yet Catherine did not work and would have had plenty of time to do the housework.

Anyway, this is how Vilma arrived in their home. She was in her 20s, resourceful but a little scatterbrained. In brief, she was what could be expected of someone her age. I saw her fairly often at the Geylang Centre when she had her day of rest. She would come to chat with the other girls there.

Catherine told me that she lost a gold chain which she was particularly fond of. It was given to her by her husband. Until this point, her story did not arouse much compassion from me because she had the means to replace the necklace with another one which she would like just as much. But she suspected that Vilma had stolen it and I must admit on the face of it, it looked like she was probably right. She was ready to forgive Vilma if the chain was returned to her. Otherwise she would cancel her contract and send her back to the Philippines. What puzzled her was that she had gone through all of Vilma's belongings in her presence and searched the flat thoroughly as well but the gold chain was nowhere to be found. She asked me if I could help.

In the end, I offered to talk to Vilma the next day at her home on the condition that she would not be there herself. She accepted. I went at the arranged time. Vilma opened the door, a bit surprised to see me and told me her boss was not in. I told her it was just as well because I wanted to talk to her, Vilma. I told her without beating around the bush that she had better give me the chain she had taken so that I could return it to her boss or else her contract would be cancelled and she would have to go back to the Philippines. Her parents and her younger siblings relied on her salary for their living. I promised the matter would rest there and she would suffer no consequences if she returned the object.

It did not take her long to admit to the theft and she went to the window in the sitting-room where there was an evergreen potted plant. She dug into the pot, extracted the precious chain and gave it to me. In fact she did not know how to get out of the situation without losing face and regretted having given in to the impulse to hide the chain away. She had hoped her boss would quickly forget about the chain because she had so many other pieces of jewellery. I reiterated my promise and told her not to worry.

That night Catherine came to the Geylang Centre and I returned the gold chain to her. She wanted to know how I found it but I never told her. I brought to her attention that there were two bedrooms in her flat and that I did not understand why Vilma had to sleep in the kitchen. She could free the second bedroom so that Vilma would have a place for herself and enjoy some privacy. She told me that this was how amahs lived when she was a child! Which shows that silliness is equally distributed in all social classes. But she promised that she would follow my advice.

This is how I gained a largely overrated reputation as a Sherlock Holmes among her relatives to whom she was quick to recount the story with embellishments of her own. All in all, the episode ended quite well and the relationship between Vilma and Catherine improved markedly.

38 Years on: Goh Lay Kuan The Red Ballerina

Browsing the Straits Times forum section yesterday, I was surprised to see a letter talking about Goh Lay Kuan and her arrest under the ISA in 1976, written by Lionel De Souza. Mr De Souza, a former policeman, is apparently someone close to the establishment; and one does wonder why the sudden need to bring up the fact that Goh, who is also wife of Kuo Pao Kun, joined a splinter group of the CPM and visited a communist training camp in 1975. 

 

 

It was only with careful reading of the recent ST interview of Goh Lay Kuan that one can conjecture the deeper meaning behind the letter. In that interview with Goh dated 3 May 2014, she said ISD was looking to detain those who had received communist military training and she was lucky that she didn't know how to draw a gun.

 

 

 

 

This was despite the fact that she had met a high ranking communist cadre named Sister Fong and together they made a trip to a communist guerrilla military camp in the Malaysia-Thailand border where Goh received instructions from Fong to recruit more members and raise funds.

Goh made another interesting claim during the recent ST interview. She said she "overturned" tables when she was being interviewed by ISD officers. I am not sure whether Goh meant it in the literal sense of the word, or was it figurative?

Nevertheless, after this supposedly valiant act, she submissively went on national TV to "confess" her role in the communist plot and also pinpoint others who were involved. It must be day and night to go from overturning tables to appearing meekly on TV; but alas only those who were there would really know the truth.

Moving to the larger picture, Goh was one of the 50 people arrested in that operation. These 50 were charged with being affiliated to a group trying to rekindle the cause of communist subversion and terrorism. The group was the Malayan National Liberation Front (MNLF), a violent splinter group of the Communist Party of Malaya. Items seized from this group include, field directives, photographs of communist guerillas training in Malaysia-Thailand border, cash, booby-trap paraphernalia, including detonators and sketches of military installations.

Earlier in June 1974, another ISD operation nabbed 31 members of the same group, MNLF, and seized one pistol, 42 bullets, one hand grenade, 16 detonators, 3 homemade bombs and 5 improvised detonators.

Historically speaking, there was no definitive answer to say Goh was guilty or not, because the group was arrested before they could carry out any real attacks. But, it would be injustice to history if a reader reads the ST interview at face value, without understanding the facts behind the event.

Play Review: Square Moon - A Moon That Struggles to Illuminate

Square Moon is a play that narrates a series of cover-ups by the fictional Homeland Security Department after a terrorist, Golden Hartono, escapes, and Hartono's lawyer, Kristina Hu, is unlawfully detained without trial. Hu develops feelings for a fellow detainee, River Yang, who is an opposition politician that subsequently gains political office. When in office, the hopes of Hu being released are dashed as Yang did not abolish the Homeland Security Act.

If the audience were expecting a multi-dimensional, satirical, and intense reflection of the Internal Security Act and the issues surrounding detention without trial juxtaposed against how it infringes upon individual liberties, they would be disappointed as I was.

As it turned out, the play Square Moon does little to merit the 26 years that former Marxist detainee, Wong Souk Yee, has kept her silence on the theater stage. Fans would no doubt call it advocacy theater where Wong's political bias was laid bare throughout the play, from the power hungry and nefarious royal family (read Lee family) to the evil and dimwitted intelligence officers of the Homeland Security Department (read ISD).

Critics would, however, argue that the characters were under-developed, with the dichotomy between good and evil, weak and powerful, so clearly separated that there was almost no room for moral maneuvering and meaningful debate. The ending was as predictable as a Stallone action film and a far cry from The Live of the Others (a superb film about Stasi spying in defunct East Germany). Still, it should be applauded that former ISA detainees have found the courage and outlet again to participate in the arts and public life.

Part 1

The play opens by bringing the audience straight into the theme of torture with the prison guards and directors of the HSD dressed in BDSM-inspired leather bondage gear (but not to worry, there is no actual beating involved). Kristina Hu and River Yang, played by Zelda Tatiana Ng and Lim Kay Siu respectively, are seen cowering under the power that their captors have over them. The captors are kept in line by Neo Swee Lin, who acts as the evil but pious “Madame Minister”, daughter of the reigning political party, desperately hanging on to power.

The opening act is the weakest part of the play as Wong Souk Yee's script and Peter Sau's direction hardly gels together. The BDSM theme and Catholic imagery appears awkward and coerced, as torture of the inmates are portrayed blatantly (perhaps needlessly) when instead “torture” would be better understood as a more subtle form of psychological warfare; of threats, fears against one's principled beliefs in democracy and freedom. Here, the playwright could have added a layer of sophistication by delving further into the decision-making process of the Homeland Security Department officers and the minister, rather than the simplistic portrayal of them as unsophisticated evil-doers.

The highlight in this first part was played by Erwin Shah Ismail, who as a prison guard and political fence sitter, helped Hu and Yang to deliver their written notes and feelings. The point of casting Erwin Shah as a cross-dresser is lost on me, or perhaps that was just to show his identity crisis as a Liberal-Socialist sympathiser. It is also a pity that his role as a political fence-sitter was not further developed.

Part 2

The second part of the play is much better, but still doesn't escape the simplistic binary tale of good and evil, lacking humanisation and dilemmas. Surely, if the Homeland Security Department and Homeland Security Act were so cruel and evil as portrayed by Wong, they would have been removed by the general populace already? So, for the sake of analysis, if they have survived for such a long time, it is a pity that the writer did not grasp the opportunity to illuminate the tensions between the politics of majority against the rights of individual liberty. It was also a missed opportunity to contrast how the ISA was used somewhat unpopularly in the 70s and 80s, with its less controversial use in the recent decade against radical Islamic terrorists, who were accused of plotting to cause mass destruction.

The climax of the second part of the play is when Yang gains political power and it becomes apparent that, despite being imprisoned by the Homeland Security Act himself, the Liberal-Socialist sinks familiarly back into self-preservation as the Act is not repealed. The Director of Homeland Security Department, along with everyone else, ingratiates themselves to Yang and more prisons are built. Nothing seems to have changed, as those in power can only think of ways to stay in power, just as Yang urges Hu to compromise for a just and strong nation. Hu rebuffs Yang's attempts to make her sign a confession saying that she was a “terrorist” and remains as a detainee.

Ending

In all, the play spoke plainly from the voices of the former 1987 detainees, Wong Souk Yee and collaborator, Chng Suan Tze, who must have felt injustices after being detained without an open trial; hence the constant theme of evil and power vs good and weak in their play. We and many Singaporeans know of their hardship and it is only for the better that they put out their art for the public's benefit and debate.

What was missing was from this artistic display was an analysis of the issues surrounding detention without trial. Should individual liberties be at any time suspended because of security concerns? And to what extent? In what sort of situations? Who are these people who carry out these draconian laws? Are they humans or plain villains? Why hasn't the general Singapore populace called for a repeal of the ISA?

26 years later, it seems the same Square Moon is equally capable of illuminating as well as casting a shadow.