On the Banning of a Film: Tan Pin Pin’s To Singapore, with Love2 min read
Reading Time: 2 minutesTan Pin Pin’s latest documentary, To Singapore, with Love (2013), opens with a shot outside a London home. Inside, Ho Juan Thai, a former student leader now in his 60s, is cooking char kway teow with prawns, “quite different from the Singapore way of doing it,” he laughs. Ho left Singapore in 1977, accused of inciting violence, and has lived in the United Kingdom for over 35 years, unable to return to Singapore unless he answers for his past actions. The film offers an intimate portrait of the lives of nine Singaporeans exiled from their home country during the 1960s and 70s for their alleged involvement in Communist struggles during those decades. Some have not returned to Singapore for over 50 years. Like other documentaries by Tan, the subject of this most recent film is Singapore: its people, their memories, and their unquestionable devotion to their country despite its conflicts and contradictions. Shot in Thailand, Malaysia and the United Kingdom, the film takes an external perspective as evidenced in the opening shot. In a statement released on To Singapore, with Love‘s Facebook page, Tan says, “Like my other films “¦ this film is a portrait of Singapore; unlike the others, it is shot entirely outside the country, in the belief that we can learn something about ourselves by adopting, both literally and figuratively, an external view.”
Tan was moved to tell the stories of Singapore’s political exiles after reading Escape from the Lion’s Paw, a book of essays containing first person accounts by student activists, trade unionists, members of the Christian Left, and Communists, who fled Singapore in order to avoid detention under Singapore’s Internal Security Act. (2) The use of this legislation was central to what became known as Operation Coldstore, a crackdown in 1963 on alleged Communists carried out by Singapore’s first Prime Minister, Lee Kwan Yew, with the aid of British and Malaysian authorities. (3) Through arrests made under Operation Coldstore, Lee Kwan Yew was able to consolidate political power for the People’s Action Party (PAP) against left-wing movements, and at the elections held in 1963 the PAP won 37 seats, with the opposition Barisan Sosialis (Socialist Front) winning only 13. The PAP has retained political power in Singapore since its independence in 1965.
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