Ladies and Gentlemen, Said Zahari was a Singapore opposition politician, jailed 17 years without trial by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore s strongman. On Feb 2, 1963,

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, Apr 5, 2009

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Ladies and Gentlemen,

Said Zahari was a Singapore opposition politician, jailed 17 years without trial by Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's strongman. On Feb 2, 1963, in what was called Operation Coldstore, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew arrested 107 people, arbitrarily jailing them for allegedly being communists. Although none of them were in fact Communists and there was nothing illegal in it, Lee Kuan Yew used the Internal Security Act, a law put in place by the British, to put away his political opponents through the expedient that they were Communists and therefore a threat to Singapore's security.

In thevideo "Zahari's 17 years" by Singapore filmmaker Martyn See, Zahari publicly called Lee Kuan Yew "a political coward". He said only a coward would resort to jailing his opponents instead of taking them in a political discourse and letting the best man win. According to Zahari, Lee Kuan Yew knows that he cannot win in a contest of ideas with his critics. Fearing he would lose, he eliminates his opponents by abusing the law, using his police force and compliant judges to put away those who disagree with him. According to Zahari, these are the acts of “a political coward”.

You can watch Martyn See's film, "Zahari's 17 years" on his blog "the Singapore Rebel" www.singaporerebel.blogspot.com. The film was shot in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia where Zahari lives as a