Confessions of a Cultural Relativist: ‘Asian Values’ and Activism in Singapore

Development is imperialistic. It is inseparable from the totalising capitalist project, locking poor peripheral nations into an exploitative relationship with the multinationals and rich governments that make up the core. The notion of a singular development trajectory in which the Rest lags behind the West still doggedly persists in many institutional contexts, often resulting in misguided policy recommendations from Western agencies with disastrous results for developing countries. Well-intentioned grassroots organisations are often just as guilty, imposing inescapably Western norms on recalcitrant or merely unsuspecting populations. All these things we want to export to the rest of the world – women’s rights, free speech, secular education – they so often fail to take cultural difference into account.

Which is why, on my study abroad programme at the National University of Singapore, I had absolutely no intention of getting involved in any sort of activism.

It’s just not the Singaporean way, as we were repeatedly informed. Since Singapore’s independence in 1965, the government of this small city-state has progressively dismantled all the main channels through which real political dissent could be expressed, while fostering a civic culture of conservative conformism. The ban on chewing gum is well known; less often mentioned are the effective ban on public protest, the state-controlled national media, and the decimation of meaningful political opposition. All of which is justified, we are told, by the notion of ‘Asian Values’.

Popularised by the Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who continues to exercise a dominating influence in the Singaporean government through his self-created position as ‘Minister Mentor’ and the fact that his son is current PM, ‘Asian Values’ are held in contrast to Western liberal individualism and the sorts of rights and freedoms they imply. Asians, it is argued, are culturally and historically predisposed to a greater emphasis on family, discipline, and social stability.

Thus Singapore’s highly authoritarian government justifies its policies by positing adherence to Asian Values as the key ingredient to its stable social order and, more importantly, to its successful economic development. Amongst the Singaporeans I met, in various capacities, there was a clear consensus between many that whilst an overbearing government might not be to everyone’s taste, there could be no denying the fantastic wealth Singaporeans enjoy in comparison to the countries that surround it. Also frequently noted was the absence of violent and destructive civil unrest, to which all neighbouring states have been subject in varying degrees at some point over the last 50 years. The older generation of Singaporeans did take to the streets and protest, but at the moment the country is a peaceful and prosperous place to live.

There were things about Singapore I gradually became aware of and didn’t particularly like – the servile national media, the ‘free’ but unfair elections, the treatment of immigrants and labourers, the nepotistic government, the warm friendship with the Burmese military regime – but who was I to try and challenge them? If two and a half years of Development Studies have taught me anything, it’s that my personal beliefs in relation to direct political participation are at best culturally specific, and at worst totally unwelcome. It’s sheer arrogance to assume that I have the right to try and spread these ideologies elsewhere.

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The problem, of course, is that Singapore can by no means be described in the simplistic terms outlined above. Economic growth, racial harmony and social stability constitute the idealised picture Singaporean elites are keen to project, and have certainly been internalised by the population to a significant degree. But the longer I stayed in Singapore, the more the cracks began to show.

Thanks to a chance encounter between a friend of mine and a Singaporean pro-democracy campaigner, I found myself in a planning meeting comprising a hotchpotch of different people: Singaporean human rights activists, Burmese residents in Singapore, a Swedish politician, an artist, other exchange students, and members of the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP), the politically marginalised opposition to the ruling People’s Action Party. There were two central points for discussion. The first point was how to respond to the forthcoming Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Singapore, given that the leaders of the Burmese military regime were to be in attendance and the news images of their bloody crackdown on monks and other protesters were still fresh in our minds. The second point was how to encourage and embolden ordinary Singaporeans to take an active interest in the political machinations of their government.

What became clear during this meeting is that ‘Western’ notions of liberal freedoms, democratic participation and human rights cannot, in fact, be easily dismissed on crude applications of cultural relativism. The ‘Asian Values’ espoused by certain elites are neither common to all of Asia, nor representative of a homogeneity of opinion in individual Asian countries. There are hundreds, even thousands of people in Singapore who desire a greater engagement with political processes, and a small number of those have sacrificed any semblance of a ‘normal’ life in order to pursue these rights for Singaporean civil society.

Such individuals do not have it easy. I met Chee Soon Juan, now the charismatic icon of the SDP. Once a lecturer at the same National University where I was undertaking my exchange programme, he was promptly fired on spurious grounds as soon as he became involved in opposition politics – a dismissal that other academics there still defend, even if privately acknowledging that there was no legitimate reason for it. Refusing to be deterred, Dr Chee has since become infamous for continuing to assert and act out the right to engage in non-violent protest against the government. As a result, he has been sued and bankrupted by PAP leaders, arrested and imprisoned numerous times, prevented from leaving the country, and consistently ridiculed in national media. The message is clear: Singaporeans attempting to make a stand face severe consequences. The result is a pervasive culture of fear throughout Singaporean society.

Like Dr Chee, I believe firmly in the right to protest and in the usefulness of direct action as a means to social change. Which is why, a few weeks later, I ended up walking with two other exchange students down Singapore’s premier shopping street holding candles and wearing red t-shirts saying, “We pursue peace, justice and democracy for Burma”, surrounded by over twenty international and local journalists and cameramen, and filmed by plainclothes police.

It was the day that the ASEAN Summit began in the exclusive Shangri-La Hotel, and we marched towards the venue to stage our protest against the actions of the Burmese junta and its friendly relationship with Singaporean leaders. In any other country, no one would have batted an eyelid. We had no placards (these being illegal without a permit), we shouted no slogans (to avoid anything giving the vaguest impression of that oft-repeated fear of civil action degenerating into chaos), and we were split up into groups of three (since a public assembly of more than four people is also illegal). When we finally were approached by three of the 2,500 armed police safeguarding the area, we peacefully dispersed. It was the most innocuous protest imaginable. And yet one student journalist later reported that we “did the unthinkable”. This is the extent of the depoliticisation of Singaporean society.

Admittedly, it had not been an easy decision to protest that day. We had been summoned and ‘advised against’ it by the university administration, warned against it by police knocking on our bedroom doors, sent mysterious emails and text messages warning of severe repercussions, and threatened with the possibility of expulsion from some of our home universities. The few Singaporean students who had wanted to participate were totally daunted, and with good reason. The Burmese students, faced with the possibility of deportation, were not about to take the risk either. In the end only nine of us, all foreign students, were able to conduct our vigil.

And, as we had hoped, it turned out pretty well. No arrests, no violence. The somewhat disproportionate media presence meant that our message achieved a degree of exposure quite unimaginable in other contexts, being reported on the front page of Singapore’s national paper and making the evening television news, as well as numerous other media channels throughout Asia. Most importantly of all, the fact that no harm befell us encouraged more people to attend a public rally organised the very next day by members of the Burmese expatriate community in Singapore. Forty to fifty Burmese residents stood close to the ASEAN Summit venue holding placards and posters that read: “ASEAN Act With Honour! Action on Burma Now!” and “Listen To Burma’s Desires. Don’t Follow Junta’s Order.” A protest of this size was unprecedented, and yet police simply stood back for fifteen minutes, after which they called on the protesters to peacefully disperse.

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Academic discussions questioning the universality of human rights and democracy are crucial, but how can we do anything but vigorously assert them when members of other societies are risking their lives and livelihoods in campaigning for their realisation? Amartya Sen, author of Development As Freedom, has argued:

“The people whose political and other rights are involved in this debate are not citizens of the West, but of Asian countries. The fact that individual liberty may have been championed in Western writings, and even by some Western political leaders, can scarcely compromise the claim to liberty that people in Asia may otherwise possess.”

Whilst interrogating Western universalism, we can’t assume that a monolithic, homogenous alternative – ‘Asian Values’ – exists; nor should we imagine that various Asian leaders speak for their diverse populations. As recently as forty years ago, Singapore had a vibrant activist and trade unionist culture where rallies could number in the thousands. Right now, a small but growing group of Singaporeans are working on ways to revive something of that spirit. There’s nothing inherently un-Asian about expressing dissent.

And what’s more, we have to admit that those characteristically ‘Western’ liberal freedoms aren’t exclusively Western. A polarising discourse, which justifies oppression by pitting a falsely homogenous set of ‘Asian’ values against its Western antithesis, is just as dangerous as imposing one set of cultural norms onto the rest of the world.

I certainly don’t want to force my culturally contingent belief in things like free speech and civil disobedience onto a recalcitrant recipient. Yet equally, I have been forced to challenge vacuous and ahistorical formulations of cultural relativism, and ask what purpose they may be serving. Singapore has made me a reluctant sort of universalist.


written for U8 Magazine (forthcoming)
see http://www.u8development.com/default/index.php