INTERVIEW: Singapore's Ex-Foreign Minister George Yeo on Section 377A, 4G leadership and China

hello there my name is nicholas young i'm a senior editor of yahoo news we are here today with the former foreign minister giorgio who's written a new book called musings it's the first of a three-part series and touches on a wide range of topics from china to india his personal life his political career and of course singapore itself good morning mr how are you good yeah okay so i want to start by asking why write the book in this particular fashion instead of a straightforward memoir because i was not intending to write a memoir and the idea for this book came from untai ho who asked me if i would agree to a series of 10 to 12 interviews on different subjects and then he'll compile it into a book i thought that sounded easy enough so in a moment of weakness i said yeah let's let's do it and after the first two interviews i decided that even though i had points jotted down the ideas were too scattered and i felt it was unsatisfactory so for subsequent sessions i actually spent 10-12 hours writing out what i wanted to say we met every week on the monday morning and this went on for six months it kind of grew and grew organically until we had 25 chapters in the end we decided it can be done in one volume so we said okay you'll be in three books but they're just a series of musings it gives me some latitude not to have to concentrate on one subject or to develop it as if i were submitting a thesis this this suggests ideas and expressed to you in a conversation and i think i thought i know had i known at the beginning what it would involve i would never have started so i think uh one of the most engaging parts of the book is when you open up about your personal life you talk in length about your wife and your son's illnesses uh you talk about your eldest brother who had schizophrenia so so did you hesitate at all about revealing such very intimate details about your life no i think partly because i reached a point in my life where you are you're more relaxed and i thought it may give comfort to readers that as they say in english into every home some rain must fall they were human beings life is rough there are ups and downs there are problems and issues some not resolvable so in a sense by being frank it allows others to be frank and it makes for more comfortable more honest communication and easier relationships when i was an mp and uh parents come to see me about schizophrenic children so i knew exactly what they faced right and i told them yeah my brother was schizophrenic too and it helped them to open up yes there's someone who understands what we had to go through when i thought back on my own parents it was very tough for them and people were not always sympathetic was there anything that you consciously decided to leave out of the book perhaps things that maybe were too controversial or too sensitive or maybe even like your family might have objected to it i think consult my family but i didn't consult my siblings or my relatives uh my wife and children knew that i was embarked on this and i showed them certain sections they had helped me before so i'm not sure they they they would have gone through what i wrote on their own if i didn't ask them i had certain principles which guided my expressions which was that i should not be negative i should be frank but i should be that should not be negative and where possible i should be hopeful and people who read the book should should be uplifted not depressed not feeling that oh it's also sad it's also painful so the book is written without ranker if they're negative emotions they are written in sorrow not in anger so these are little internal guidelines i have they like a compass to make sure that i write the book in a particular way but in the sense it also reflects who i am and where i communicate so the way i communicate in the book i think is a fair representation representation of the way i communicate to friends and to maybe to even to strangers i want to ask now about going about your political career yes so you were at uh mita the health ministry mti and of course you're a foreign minister for a long time which was your favorite ministry to serve where do you think you contributed the most so many people have asked me this question i always hesitate because i don't really have a favorite ministry they had different flavors and i was lucky that they were all interesting to me and i was able in each and every one of them to make certain contributions but i can tell you one thing though that my most stressful ministry was mita the ministry for information they asked yeah which i held for nine years longer than i did the foreign ministry and they had to deal with journalists like yourself i had to deal with film producers with artists with deal with religion heritage museums libraries and cultural issues are the most sensitive because we are about the ethnic multi-religious illegal society and people feel strongly about their identities and if they feel that you disdain them or shortchange them they get upset very quickly and they suddenly from little things draw huge conclusions and unless emotions are quickly still they become disproportionate but when i was a mita it's almost as if there could be explosions at any time you know so the day i left mita i said ah now i can enjoy television and i really newspapers without always being concerned that here there's an imbalance there there is something which should not have been put out that way and so on so it sounds like you have to be even more of a diplomat at meter than you were at mfa you're right it was good training for mfa i mean i'll give you an example which i wrote about in my third series we inherited from the british christian broadcast on sunday yeah and lee kuan yew had an agreement with the malay community that the call of the azan would be on radio [Music] so we had muslim broadcast on the malay channel the buddhists were upset how come you have islam you have christianity you don't have buddhism so we say okay let's have buddhist broadcast on some days be stuck or whatever then one male intellectual said but why can't islam be on the english radio station because everybody accesses the english radio station you know you can never please everybody so in the end i said okay i'll just reduce christian broadcast on the english station i will increase other religious broadcasts including from the sikhs on certain days any any time i said look if you don't have a debate in parliament we have a debate in parliament then we do something drastic but everybody would be unhappy but i communicated with all groups throughout that period so in the end we were able to achieve a new equilibrium which everyone thought was okay you know fair enough because no one was perfectly happy and have some peace but it required a lot of dainty footwork walking on thai road yes and for quite a long period of time and that's just one subject one day uh a muslim sect considered heretical by mu is ahmadiyya there was a complaint against it but more is that we should bend the tracks what do i do i said we have no competence in this area to judge what is hierarchical why it's not yeah so we took a simple position when someone rush this book came out we banned it immediately because if you try to to argue the merits and the merits of sensing such a book you'll get nowhere you only get people angry so we decided unless it's some peace and quiet we just spend it not that you can't access access it you can always access it but banning it is like uh virtual signaling to the community you know that yeah this is troublesome let's not have this trouble yeah but earlier there was a book called the last temptations of christ but the book was initially banned it was in the pew i think by minister rajaratnam and we decided to unban it because christians feel certain issues differently from the way muslims feel certain issues and we can say look we we should treat everybody equally if we treat everybody equally we have a lot of trouble so you have to say look let's be practical let's be common sensical this is very important to you we'll be sensitive this is not so important to you so that's okay but the other issue is important to you which may not be important to him right so we'll customize it for you our society is variegated so it requires subtlety of management right you cannot say well i have the law i have regulations and we impose them equally across the board you'll be a very unhappy singapore if we do that okay so uh since we're touching on sensitive visual faith and culture and all so in in the book you talked about there was a moment when lee kuan yew called you up and he felt that your catholicism might affect your decisions as uh as a government official so were there any moments where you felt your faith conflicted with your public role as a minister in the secular government you have to be you have to rise above your religion and be fair to everybody and accept that others have different beliefs from you and you cannot be imposing your beliefs on them but at the same time there's a question of conscience there are things you can't do because your conscience said you should not do them so at that point you can either say i will not do it if if others do it and they can do it in good conscience let others do it but i can't do it but if that makes your position untenable then maybe we should resign so when i went to politics i told my family i said treat every term as the last term because i may have to resign because i lose an election i've got to take responsibility for something which has happened or have a fundamental disagreement with policies did it ever come to that point where you actually thought i don't think i can stay in this job because i don't agree with this policy there were moments when that thought was in my mind when we had the problem with the romanian charges who had run over some singaporeans i remember that yeah and ran away and i saw mfa leaving it mostly the mystery for law to handle so i told them no we are the foreign ministry we have to take responsibility and i told my staff twice that if he slips through our fingers i may have to resign because singaporeans are very upset and like we cannot blame the prime minister i said as a minister i have to take responsibility i told that twice to my staff offices yes you you have to be prepared to resign when you are in government for various reasons so he did get back to india he was jailed over there so what may you change your mind to stay on in the job no because we justice was done right and i mentioned this in the first chapter of the second book on the three popes how by complete chance there i was at st peters waiting for the papal mass to end so that i can greet pope benedict sitting behind me for the romanian foreign minister and my staff said you know he's there i said ask if we can have a bilateral meeting we had a bilateral meeting and you brought this on i brought this up and with his permission we took a photograph and issued a statement and he assured me that romania would act on this within romanian law there was no extradition treaty but luckily in romania if you commit a crime overseas which is a crime romania you can be prosecuted in albania and so justice was done right so continue in the same vein about uh sensitive social issues what do you make of the fact that conservative groups especially religious groups have become so vocal and assertive especially when it comes to uh controversial laws like section 3778 and the problem with 377 is it was an inherited law if he was not in the statutes i don't think we've been brought to the statues so 377 the same number in india and in other commonwealth jurisdictions because it all came from the mother legislation probably india i'm not sure so this is a position we are in where if the law was not there it would not have been put into place and we say well we will not act on it there's not that's not satisfactory so at some point in time government have to rationalize it but the moment you rationalize it people will say look this is a brief slope then after that it will be gay marriage and adoption by gay parents so when they see a slippery slope they say no don't take the first step but if there's an assurance that it's not a slippery slope i think we would have defused the issue so to me the key is what assurance the government can give to these groups that you talk about that this is not a slippery slope that there will be red lines that will not be crossed which will not be crossed not just a red tape which can be easily removed but something firmer than that which comforts them then we would have defused this issue so there was a very interesting suggestion in the book that uh new singapore citizens should be approved by a jury of ordinary singaporeans and that citizenship should actually have provisional status for five years do you think that perhaps citizenship has been perhaps handed out too easily and for lack of a better word perhaps even devalue in some sense there'll always be cases where what you've just said apply mistakes are always made but unlike many countries i think we are quite brutal in the way we administer the system that if you're not a benefit to singapore don't come as an mp this was harsh policy because we could have many singaporeans who have liaisons who are married but we don't allow their spouses into singapore and we don't allow the truth of citizenship rights it's a very harsh policy perhaps it cannot be helped because we're a small country we have limited space lee kuan yew once said i propose vietnamese refugees coming to singapore on boats that we have to grow calluses in our hearts because otherwise we store for ourselves huge problems at the same time so so we are completely self-interested so we bring in clever people wealthy people connected people yeah but some of them when they come in they think that they are blessing the singaporeans and they act as if we should be very pleased that they are here i met some of them when i was a minister or a member of parliament they talk as if we owed them i said wait a minute wait a minute yes we welcome your contribution but we don't owe you so i had to gently put them in their places now this psychology is very important that singaporeans do not feel that the foreigners who we bring in are lording over them and looking down on them and misbehaving so some change in the balance must be achieved when i was in liechtenstein i asked them how do you bring your new citizens they say oh the kenton must agree so you must have lived there you must speak the language you must know your neighbours yeah okay be one of us now we can't do that in singapore because we are not such a settle population but at the same time inserting ordinary singaporeans into the decision making process will change the entire psychology right to begin with you're a foreigner and you want to be a citizen you know now those who live near very good schools so they volu they do lollipop volunteers right yeah they do all kinds of things yeah to get their children into those schools the school board will assess you and say no are you really sincere well we put we put a further test right right and in the end if you are just doing it to get your child in you'll be found out so you've got to really yeah you have to do certain things but you've got to invent certain attitudes and those attitudes have got to be internalized so we should work that into our citizenship process so let's say you tell this jury right who can include you and me and others okay ten candidates you interview all of them black ball two don't break one more than two because we did that you know that's black one two those two will leave the room with their tails between the hand legs and they'd be telling everyone else look oh this is a tough process people will learn from this people behave differently after that they were like those wanting to go into school they're trying to go to schools they'll begin to do certain things and and they'll be questioned oh you've done all this oh since when what else have you done what do you know about the indian community in singapore what are the dietary requirements of muslims for example you know subsequent applicants will be doing homework right right and i think that psychology is very useful and singaporeans will say ah good yes we want them okay so it sounds like you're suggesting a test of sincerity but also combined with looking at maybe how the new citizens can contribute in more intangible ways as opposed to bringing wealth for jobs and also giving singaporeans a sale in a sense letting the community see well do we want to accept these newcomers yes okay then we put singaporeans on a higher pedestal they are now judges and jurors you might get very uh harsh judges and jurors oh i don't think so you tell them look you you ranked them and we were blackboard at the bottom too happily okay so uh i wanna ask about uh the media scene given that you were once the meet minister yes so of course as you will know the sph media trust is getting up to 900 million dollars in taxpayers money over the next five years so i think the question on everyone's minds is is this investment justified given that i think uh it's no secret the straits times is pro-establishment and often it faces for lack of a better term a credibility issue so what do you make of this investment is it justified if we say let the market decide then invariably news will degenerate into entertainment and there'll be a race towards salicious entertainment with maybe news inserted here and there when it supports entertainment and we see that in many countries this would be very bad for singapore you remember in the old days we had radio tv licensing fee and that ensured that broadcasts were balanced were wholesome for newspapers we have classifieds and that helped finance them government notices were put in newspapers so there's always been an element of state intervention and state subsidies in the way the media was managed in singapore i think we removed radio and tv license fees and with the social media classified ads have been hollowed up from the print media so they all face great difficulties yet we all know that the way we talk to ourselves and the way we communicate with government the way government communicates to us is very important for the cohesion of a society so i do not know whether 900 billion dollars is too much or too little but you you do need state subvention because it is for the common good but then the thing is for for the average reader so the paper is still it still costs money to buy the paper and often there's a perception that well the reporting is skewed it's not uh giving a full picture of things it may not be completely objective so i think for the average reader like you would say well my takes money is going through subsidizing the paper and the product isn't quite up to the mark then you i think you can see like what it might be a bit of discontent in any society it's important that governments are able to communicate directly and accurately to the people the problem in many societies is what government says is intermediated through the media which is constantly looking for angles oh the speech is so boring and you've said that before so so this is where the sentence has a different adjective so suddenly you zoom in on an adjective and that becomes a headline the reader might not have the same historical record you know so he just said oh that's what i mean this talked about but it was not what he talked about but he was conv he did convey unknowns i grappled with this issue when i was vita minister and i use this metaphor often it's like the vatican when the pope speaks he must be able to communicate directly to the last catholic in the world and there over a billion of them he does this through the official media radio vaticana uh vatican television uh lots of attore romania i was in the vatican for many years so i'm somewhat familiar with the vatican media so they put out complete statements encyclicals raw footages then dioceses all over the world germany in america and singapore they'll take these sources and then they package stories around it then there are others like yahoo news and cnn they say well no we zoom in on this part now it's okay you're a catholic you read what the vatican puts out you read what cnn has put out if you are straight and put out you get diversity abuse but you know what the pope has said it's very important in singapore that we know what the government has communicated and this the mainstream media must do yahoo news is not mainstream media so it can we have more room to look for angles and to say other things and in a sense he has responsibility to put out the whole picture which the mainstream media has to put out which you and others may find boring but which is still important i understand what you're saying that people must know what exactly it is that the government has said but then if looking to the reader and if they feel that you know i have to go to yahoo to find maybe a more nuanced picture a more objective picture then isn't the mainstream media slowly just losing its audience and therefore it's effectiveness well i won't say more objective yahoo news or news agencies like yourself may find interesting angles may bring in collateral material and enrich your story i think that's good for the reader to to access or the listener to hear but you cannot put all this into the mainstream media because it confuses the main message so depending on your market position as it were there are certain disciplines that you have to work under if you want to do what the mainstream media does no one will access you so but if you look at it in totality we need everyone in the ecosystem but in the ecosystem there must be the mainstream media because if we don't we're in trouble like many countries are in trouble uh i thought you raised an interesting point about the pope uh and how there are these various media outlets to broadcast his message so it got me thinking about um the 4g leadership because in a sense it's almost like the new prime minister was chosen like so-called by a college of cardinals it feels to me that the selection process is still very opaque very short on details the mainstream media puts out the official narrative and very uncritically so we are told that 15 or 19 people voted for lawrence wong but we are not told for example how many rounds of elections were there or other rounds of voting there were why was it necessary to bring back corbin one to do the process so to me it still feels something like something very mysterious very akin to the college of cardinals so my question is what do you make of this selection process and should it be more transparent should more details have been given the pap developed a color system and uh almost a leninist structure because it had to combat the communists and mao zedong and ho chi minh they learned from the bolshevik experience so lenin was a master of organization he had a concept called democratic centralism where democracy but certain decisions are made secretively there is inheritance of the pap i don't think it's simply a matter of choice i think it it arises out of the culture of a people so if you look at the opposition parties in singapore they're all similarly organized why maybe it's in the nature of a society that they don't want people to lose face you don't want to uh as it were air dirty linen in public and you only present outcomes you assure people that there was an internal process and these are the outcomes i think a lot of it originates from our culture as asians so what about say an open uh leadership election like what you see of the tories or the labor in the uk would that work for us would that be better i don't think so yeah i don't think so i think it will lead to a lot of politicking and we may lose the effectiveness of leadership i mean look at what's happening the west in england and america do they drop the best leaders i'm not so sure so yes lawrence wong is of course the the heir parent yes well what is your take on him do you know him well i don't know him well right i know he comes well because he can vote for me i've interacted with chan chun singh a number of times lawrence won much less so i i don't really have personal knowledge of him so what i depend on is yahoo news and the mainstream media other media including the mainstream media yeah but what is your impression of him for his he's eloquent he handle kovite well i think he comes across friendly but we have to wait for crisis to see whether behind the exterior there is a call going back to the book there was a point where you said crucial is trust that the government is not partial and tries to be fair even if the decisions taken are not all to our liking how do you think the level of trust by singaporeans in their government is today compared to in your time i would say it's pretty high if you look at kovit generally speaking people accept that the government tries to take the best decisions it's not always right because was never complete information and sometimes the wrong judgement course might have been made but people accept that they tried their best that it was not because somebody was protecting his shares or had vested interest in this drug company or in such a restriction being imposed so this trust in government is very important how would you compare to previous times well society was simpler then the needs were more basic education housing healthcare because of the progress we have made there's a greater diversity of use in singapore greater demands there are greater demands which are fine but in the end do they trust government do their faith in the system i say yes and that's very important to the good functioning of singapore yeah so conversely right i want to ask about critics of the government so uh back in 1994 i think i'm sure you recall the catherine lim affair where she wrote that article and there was a very strong response from the government and if if i remember clearly you said that she was respecting her place in a hierarchy do you still feel that way and what do you make of modern day critics like cherry and george or donalo no in any society there has to be lee there's a way by which we interact one another we're talking to one another you respect me as the viewer i respect you as an interviewer we don't cut into each other's sentences a certain dignity and mutual respect so it is with the cameraman so it is with your viewers civilization is not possible if human relationships are not regulated by form by precedent by dignity if you have a situation where of the blue in the classroom students shout at the teachers education breaks down if at home children decide to call parents by their first names or you may do so in the caucasian family something happens so in any society there has to be decorum there has to be a way back which we interact with one another i don't think i was i made those remarks they were not actually accurately reported by the way right with respect to catherine lim i think it was with respect to the way journalists were criticizing the speaker of parliament right okay now you can see the speaker parliament was unfair that he was rude but you should not talk about him as if you were talking about your friend or subordinate and diminishing his status as a speaker remember there are certain things which enjoy parliamentary privilege because parliaments make laws and you cannot allow the executives to lightly intrude into the parliamentary sphere who maintains order in parliament is a speaker so in form all mps including the prime minister have to bow before the speaker and he walks in with certain arms carrying a maze originally to clobber those who are misbehaving but these are important rituals now if you're up in the gallery and you say i'm not bound by this i'll just throw verbal stones singaporeans reading it will say well you know the speaker is like one of us so the chinese government empire on the basis of lee their ministry folly that's why we have titles we have uniforms we take our places there's fun in chinese new year we give unpause carefully adjusted to the degree of relationship it's important for us to know what our children receive so that we know what the signal is being sent so from lee we have lima you see this was the point i was making we cannot have a free-for-all and it is dependent on the society you're in when i was in cambridge last day of class in engineering school students through paper does at their professors he looks around say i can't do that the professors just laugh if you do that in singapore something breaks down it's not good for us it's okay when we visit other countries and we are foreign students we may even join them but you don't do it here we may do other things here which they don't do elsewhere when my son graduated from picking university i saw many people carrying bouquets of flowers so my wife said oh she bought one for her son i found out later that it was not for the graduates even for the graduates to give to their parents oh okay i said that's interesting and there's merit in it and when they played their videos it was not about the accomplishments of the students and how great they were and how brilliant and so on it was to thank janitors the people certainly in the canteens the people who cleaned their classrooms the college staff i thought yeah it reminds me that we are chinese and not westerners i understand your point about conforming to certain norms and respecting the hierarchy but going back to the catherine didn't matter i think i believe there was a certain chilling effect i mean in the way that for other people in the way that the government responded so my question is uh for all that there is a need to respect authority or to conform to certain norms surely there has to be room for robust criticism of the government without fear of reprisal was any reprisal against catherine lim i don't remember well i mean maybe not in very substantive terms but uh it's i mean surely it's not a pleasant thing to have i believe the pr i believe uh pm gold responded as well uh it's really it's not a pleasant thing to be told off in public by the pm well i'm not so sure if she felt qualified to criticize say pm go in a certain way and pm go replies critically to her i think she should accept it you can't say pm goal should just accept it without response i think it's a robust exchange but that's not the point i'm making the point i'm making is we can be critical of each other we could convey the same points but in a way which respects one another a sense of proprietary isn't a propriety a sense of respect for the other you see i treat you as fellow human being also with feelings so i have feelings and i reserve when others ignore my feelings but you have feelings too yeah you're politician so you should be more take skin fat fair point politicians should be mortally skinned and those are criticizing them because they're in public office but they also have feelings so i think if we remain true to our culture i'm not saying that culture is immutable but if you remain true to our cultural norms and not just say look this is what they do in taipei this is what they do in the u.s congress in in in in the house of parliament in london we should do it here i don't think so i think here we do it within all set within our own history and transition and cultural norms then we can have very good debate very good exchanges without being personal without being at home in our attacks of course early you mentioned minister ong so i can see from your facebook page that you still do meet the former or junaid team quite regularly right so my i wanted to ask so eleven years on from the defeat of junior what are your thoughts about it now what kind of feelings does it bring up and do you think we've done anything differently hindsight well at that time there was a tight flowing which was very strong i was right in front of it so we were washed away um that type reverse when ligonier passed away but i think he returned in the last general election i'm a taoist i look at these things the detached way and sooner or later a certain rebalancing in singapore's politics would have happened could i have prevented it myself and i'll join it i think it would have been very difficult yeah and i did not send any personal animosity towards me even though i lost in fact quite the contrary i sensed people feeling awkward almost feeling uncomfortable i was talking to some aggressive leaders they said the following morning in the list people look at each other and they all kept quiet and my old friend uh habib hassan from the rv mosque you see well maybe he was trying to please me but i said no your popularity rating went up three times after you lost yeah but but politics is like this you have to accept it for what it is i served 23 years in government those were very good years i hope i made some contributions here and there uh it made me a better person and when i look back yeah those were years which enriched my life so no regrets oh no okay so of course you you left politics not too long after that and i think that was quite surprising to to many people and i know the other day you said in the interview that you don't intend to run for president but is there anything that might change your mind will we ever see you in politics again i've retired from the scf so many other vga and until reached age of 55 or something then they change what was within the parenthesis to retire yeah but if in a whole time situation they say no no no you we we need you to come back to do certain things of course i have to say yes so equally politics is part of life so if i can help i will of course help in an appropriate way i cannot say look i've retired i will not look back at singapore i mean this book is written for singaporeans by singapore so would would you ever change your mind about running for president no if i can see it okay okay so i want to move on to china yes so i think uh in the book you write very eloquently with a lot of nuance and insight into china i think obviously because you have family ties and many many years of of uh dealing with and observing them so i want to ask where do you see singapore's uh ties with china going do we still come under pressure to take sides with them because just because we're a chinese majority nation taiwan hong kong macau mainland they're part one family we are relatives so we share certain emotions we are more interested in what goes on than strangers it also leads to complexities in i mean if a foreigner dealing with the family that's okay but by relatively dealing with family then you get entangled and you can say well that's no good i'd rather be friends not relatives but sometimes relatives need each other's help and we've been three quarters chinese in singapore this is the reality this is who we are yeah so we have feelings and these feelings complicate policies but they're also a benefit to us so when the two sides had the first meeting the wanku talks it was in singapore when xi jinping made mine it was in singapore they couldn't meet on one side or the other but they chose singapore why because they know we are well-meaning relative so this makes our life more complicated but it's also a huge advantage and don't forget china will be a huge reality for us asan is already the biggest trading partner of china overtaking europe by a margin that will continue to widen and when the heart of asean there's much going for us if we understand the relationship and be disciplined in what we do so my question is what about the next generation of singapore leaders who are now leading that relationship with china of course specifically the 4g leaders do you think they will be able to maintain that very complex balance walking that tightrope well younger generations have taken over so we have to adjust i mean the relationship between lee kuan yew and thanks helping and other chinese leaders in that era i mean that's past so every new generation must strike his own relationships and strike its own appropriate balance the work is never done it's constantly any relationship to be refreshed renewed adjusted and you cannot say well this these are the things my parents have done they're good enough no they're not good at now the young must also meet they must also know each other i must learn to cry and laugh with one another so it is it is uh it is an intertwined death is these are intertwined destinies and in some sense in the sense there's a re-entry of of china in singapore with the recent movement of people so you find much greater diversity of chinese foods now you get a lot of mala food shangtong food the cuisine in singapore has been enriched in singapore in a little much smaller way has also influence china here and there you know no city in china is unaware of the singapore model they all study not necessarily for positive lessons something also a negative lesson yeah that's fine that's not true yeah but it means that when we tell someone we are singaporean in china the viewers with a certain regard that's something we've inherited it's precious it doesn't last it has to be renewed renewed and constantly built up okay yeah so conversely i'm sure you'll be aware there's been a lot of talk about chinese influence operations in singapore especially with about with regard to elites being cultivated by the chinese how vulnerable do you think we are on this front uh people are aware of it singapore is vulnerable from all friends it's not just the chinese and singapore and the muslims the indians everybody is being influenced and all those who think is important will always try to influence internally so we have to be watchful yeah our guts might never be done because the the attempt to influence us surreptitiously will always be there singaporeans must have a certain common sense that yeah we are friends but when someone asks you oh by the way can you tell us what was discussed within the ministry oh you can't do that no shame on you i mean without quite saying so you know you should not talk to us like that yeah so a certain dignity a certain sense of self we must never forget the project but do you think that awareness is there of course well if the awareness is there it doesn't mean that some singaporeans will not succumb to temptations because if they were to receive benefits they may then do things which they may not otherwise do so these five security agencies will have to make sure that the overall situation is maintained so in a sense it's a ever-present danger oh of course uh back in march i think uh i'm sure you recall there was a fair bit of controversy over your your facebook post that shared the tucker carlson story about alleged bio labs in ukraine yes there was even accusations that from certain france that maybe even you yourself have been compromised by the chinese so what did you make of the controversy and criticism curiously the criticism came from different directions some thought i was carrying water for the chinese others i was carrying water for trump because of like a carson and [Music] if it weren't american senior american told me it says it's not good for you to quote tucker carlson because american society is very divided what did i do i was very intrigued that tackled calcium on this particular issue said it with the chinese so i said from my unexpected quarter i was deliberately detached and ambiguous but because the issue is so fraught many people jump onto it from different directions but do you see why the people might feel that way given that your status as a former cabinet minister and tucker carlson who is often seen as a less than reliable source who has reported on conspiracy theories and be there as he made that your caption was detached but even placing their posts there might be seen as a form of endorsement not that issue of biolabs in ukraine that issue of the origin of covalent these are not settled issues i mean jeffrey sachs takes a very strong position uh on the origin of of of covet 19 and in the internet you see all kinds of perspectives all kinds of scientists and doctors giving their views we should not lightly say well is this and not that i think we should continue listening and making our own judgments but do you think that perhaps if i think people's issues with the source of the story tucker carlson right so if the source had been for example uh the new york times perhaps or just any any credible media outlet then perhaps uh there wouldn't have been as much no no i want to think that what tucker tucker carson said had particular veracity what i'm saying is i was surprised that he openly cited the chinese right in this program that to me was interesting [Music] okay so going back to the book uh you talk about the re-education camps in xinjiang and how chinese policies there have led to peace in the region uh please please hurry if i'm wrong but my sense is that you broadly support these policies or at least feel that they are necessary the chat the policies on islamic extremism in xinjiang instituted by the chinese have been very tough they have neglected this issue for too long and they had a speed of violence which was spreading so they decided they had to act decisively is it for us to tell the chinese we should do this and not do that you know islamic extremism is not a problem in china only it's a problem in singapore it's a problem in the west uh we've just seen the way samantha would brutally attack in new york so we have a problem and different countries sovereign different ways so at one end the uss guantanamo the cia has renditioned programs and they used drones to go after al-qaeda and islamic state leaders in china they decided to better re-educate the muslim minorities in singtion so you have camps with high walls and barbed wire and people say well that's genocide no that's to use the word genocide too loosely is that genocide the population has increased so there's no biological genocide is that cultural genocide well all those who have been to sing them will know that there's no cultural genocide is there strong action taken against muslims no doubt are they excessive i cannot be a judge of that because every country faces this problem no one will complete success i mean in singapore for instance moist vets every sermon given on fridays in mosques [Music] is that censorship well not for me to say but it's kept the peace in singapore we had a fright where we suddenly found a gi network operating here and it's not gone but i mean in perhaps you might dispute this but i think human rights abuses heavy surveillance in cincinnati i believe it's not the most soviet uh area on earth it's all been extensively documented uh i'm going to talk about i mean in singapore yes um vets every sermon but i don't think they've shut down moss they've not detained anyone i i don't think our policies will ever become so harsh and i understand what you're saying about we are not in a position to judge but given these all the reports that are coming out it suggests something that is very not just harsh but this suffering predominantly uh western reports that you're referring to i don't just read wrestling reports i read other reports and to me it's interesting that no muslim country has condemned china for its policies on xinjiang who condemned china there are western countries and when i was on my croatian cruise recently someone told this story about what an italian professor in china said it was quite cute so take it in that spirit you see that americans are not known for loving chinese they're not known for loving muslims either but strangely they love chinese muslims a lot okay so going back to the book again so you've talked about your christian values your uh your confusion values and how there is a need to respect people's identity rather than forcibly changing it because it will only break them do you not find your uh your views on since young and your personal values to be in conflict now i've been to sing chiang twice i have cousins who go to sing them there's a period when they won't go to sing them because they're unsafe and in fact just just a few weeks ago i was in touch with one of my cousins because a relative had died there he said oh he was in singapore it was very safe even there's a tourist urumchi i think it was more than tea okay spent quite a few days there but i mean talking about your personal values and the very tough policies in sentient as you've acknowledged do you not find this to be in conflict no no i mean or if they torture people if they treat them badly that i i do not know i'm not convinced countenancing that but if you tell me is it immoral for the chinese government to act decisively against extremism in xinjiang i said yes i mean it it is justified because you let it get worse the result will be violence and many people will die okay i'm not approving the matters you know because i said i cannot judge them on the matters yeah right okay so i think i want to end off by asking this so i was talking to different people who have worked closely with you in the past uh one of them suggested tell me only the nice bits yes uh i think uh uh most people enjoyed working with you and they found you very cerebral a deep thinker but one of them suggested that uh that well you may give the impression of being very cerebral and very liberal in your thinking your instincts are actually conservative and illiberal would you agree with that assessment after the 91 elections i was criticized as being a liberal because we had relaxed censorship and they had become an issue during the election somewhere in one of my three volumes i said i didn't know how to wear that label because i didn't think it fit very well on me so some people say i'm liberal some people say i'm very conservative very traditional i'd rather not be reduced to such simplifications and take me for one hand and i think all human beings are complicated with many facets so you should take me for what i am how would you describe yourself at least in on the political spectrum there's a set of me from my young days which is taoist which is always detaching i'm always looking at myself from a distance i say well okay it's a strange thing to describe but but somehow this has been a part of me since i was a teenager i'm always looking at myself and seeing myself in a in the flow and i'm never too happy i'm never too sad because of that constantly evolving constantly trying to get the flow in the flow in the flow yeah accepting the things you cannot control your forces that work you move with them you try and move against them you just bloody yourself but you can always over time position yourself to be in the better part of the flow and not get caught in whirlpools or cross currents right yeah i don't know why but it's i'm constantly zooming in and zooming out yeah zooming in me being subject and zooming out me being an object yeah i think that's being told right okay i think that's all we have to ask thank you very much for being with us here today steve thank you

Channel: Yahoo Southeast Asia

Views: 52,000

Keywords: george yeo 2022, george yeo, singapore, 377a singapore

Id: DzwF1FjvOxk

Length: 64min 36sec (3876 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022