A History of Human Rights Society in Singapore
1965-2015
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Book Description
To celebrate Singapore’s fiftieth anniversary for its independence from Malaysia in 2015, 35 students, academics and activists came together to discuss and write about pioneering Singaporean human rights activists and their under-reported stories in Singapore. The city-state is known for its remarkable economic success while having strict laws on individual freedom in the name of national security, public order and racial harmony. Singapore’s tough stance on human rights, however, does not negate the long and persistent existence of a human rights society that is little known to the world until today. This volume, composed of nine distinctive chapters, records a history of human rights activists, their campaigns, main contentions with the government, survival strategies and other untold stories in Singapore’s first 50 years of state-building.
Table of Contents
List of Figures
List of Tables
Acknowledgement
Foreword
Introduction (Jiyoung Song)
Chapter 1 Tracing the History of the Anti-Death Penalty Movements in Singapore (Rachel Zeng, Priscilla Chia, Audrey Tay and Koh Shi Min)
Chapter 2 Inhuman Punishment and Human Rights Activism in the Little Red Dot (Parveen Kaur and Yeo Si Yuan)
Chapter 3 Singapore’s Press for Freedom: Between Media Regulation and Activism (Howard Lee and Ana Ansari)
Chapter 4 Activism on Arbitrary Detention, the Suspension of Law (Lim Li Ann, Connie Ong, Mohd Salihin Subhan, Benjamin Choy and Tan Tee Seng)
Chapter 5 Socio-Economic Rights Activism in Singapore (Catharine Smith, Kimberley Angand Bryan Gan)
Chapter 6 Shifting boundaries: state-society relations and activism on migrant worker rights in Singapore (Evelyn Ang and Sheena Neo)
Chapter 7 Against a Teleological Reading of the Advancement of Women’s Rights in Singapore (Edwina Shaddick, Goh Li Sian and Isabella Oh)
Chapter 8 LGBTQ Activism in Singapore (Jean Chong)
Chapter 9 Navigating Through the ‘Rules’ of Civil Society: In search of disability rights in Singapore (Wong Meng Ee, Ian Ng, Jean Lor and Reuben Wong)
Index
Editor(s)
Biography
Jiyoung Song is Director of Migration and Border Protection at the Lowy Institute in Sydney and joins the Asia Institute of the University of Melbourne in July 2017.