Editorial

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This issue is about the detention forum of February 2006 and its aftermath. Two former political detainees Michael Fernandez and Tan Jing Quee and a poet/playwright Robert Yeo gathered on stage to talk about art and healing

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A Public Oral History of the Singapore Left in 2006

Michael Fernandez and Tan Jing Quee at the ‘Detention-Writing-Healing’ Forum

Transcribed by Seet Wen Hao and Ong Pei Chey, edited by Loh Kah Seng

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On 26 February 2006, an idea mooted by history teacher Lim Cheng Tju to his friends in the arts scene came to fruition: to have former political detainees break the silence and speak of their experiences at a public forum.

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Hide-and-Seek History

Teng Qian Xi

An edited version of this article first appeared in Today, 9 March 2006.

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What picture does the phrase “political detainee” conjure up for you? What picture does the phrase “political detainee” conjure up for you?

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Ex-Political Detainee Forum at Singapore in 2006

Kevin Blackburn

This article was originally published in the Oral History Association of Australia Journal, no. 29, 2007.

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On a Saturday afternoon, 26 February 2006, over 200, mostly young people, crowded into the Recital Studio of Singapore’s Esplanade Arts Centre to listen to ex-political detainees from the 1960s and 1970s give their side of Singapore’s history.

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Forgetting Detention

Sai Siew Min

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Sometime in June this year, a friend alerted me to Alex Au’s commentary on a book launch he had attended in Malaysia. The book in question was a poetry collection, Our Thoughts Are Free

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Review: Dark Folke

Ang Song Ming

The Observatory. Dark Folke. Singapore, 2009.

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On their fourth album Dark Folke, The Observatory continue charting a path that, quite frankly, no other Singaporean band has managed to do over the span of five years.

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