Alex Au on Saint Lee

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An honorable member of the Coffee Shop Has Just Posted the Following:

They are wrong. The government is not considering a lèse majesté law. The Asian Correspondent used this term in its headline of 26 May 2015 for Carlton Tan’s opinion piece (A lèse majesté law for Singapore’s king, long live Lee Kuan Yew); The Online Citizen used it too in Howard Lee’s piece of 28 May 2015 (Lèse majesté Singapore-style – the ultimate betrayal of the Singapore constitution).

Lèse majesté laws criminalise insulting remarks about the king, generally the reigning king. Lee Kuan Yew is dead. The government knows he is dead. It accepts the fact that he is dead. It even organised a huge funeral though I don’t know whether it hired professional criers for the occasion. In any case, he was never king, though he might have behaved like one.

What the government is considering is blasphemy law. Blasphemy law is aimed at speech and expression that articulates or implies irreverence toward holy personages or religious beliefs. Of course, Lee Kuan Yew must first be made holy in order to shield him with blasphemy law, but I don’t think it is necessary to belabour the very obvious point that beatification is in full swing.

In a recent essay (Behind the brat looms an oppressor still), I pointed out the many ways in which Singapore is becoming a theocratic state. Adding a blasphemy law to the statute books would.....https://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2.../29/saint-lee/


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