Indoor public talks: before and after

On 22 August 2004, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, then barely 10 days in office, made his first National Day Rally speech. He made an unexpected gesture towards a more liberal society, though you have to understand that everything's relative. He announced that henceforth, indoor talks would generally be free from licensing.

In the last few days, myself and a few friends made a herculean effort to locate an official statement on the Police website reflecting the Prime Minister's words. Altogether, we must have spent 60 minutes surfing, poking into various nooks and crannies, and it was some 2 days later before Clarence Singham (and how long did he spend trawling the government websites?) located it in the Media Development Authority's (MDA) website. 

Subsequently, I found an old Press Release, dated 27 August 2004, issued by the Police stating that they have amended the rules to exempt indoor talks, but unless you were prepared to dig into the Press Release archives, there is nothing else on the current Police website informing the public that indoor talks are exempted from licensing.

Seeing how difficult it was, I shall put on record in the appendix to this article (Laws and regulations pertaining to public talks) the text of the Exemption Order that we found on MDA's site as well as the text of the 27 August 2004 Press Release, so that others can have an easier time referring to the exact words.

However, before discussing the Exemption Order, I shall give readers some background to the whole question of licensing of public talks, so that you may appreciate the significance of the Prime Minister's statement. Hopefully, one day we shall take such freedoms for granted, but that also means we may forget how difficult things once were.

* * * * *

Under our laws, any gathering of 5 persons in a "public place", even if just to talk among themselves on any issue could be considered by the authorities as an illegal assembly. This is so even if indoors.

The Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act says that:

5. (1) The Minister may make rules:

(a) regulating assemblies and processions in public roads, public places and places of public resort;

(b) providing for the grant of permits for holding assemblies and processions in public roads, public places and places of public resort, and the fees to be charged therefor;

(More complete text, including the penalties, can be found here)

What are the Rules that the minister has made, to give effect to this law? From the Police website, I found this tonight:

Police Permit 

1 Under the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) (Assemblies and Procession) Rules 1989, a permit is required for any assembly or procession of 5 or more persons in any public road, public place or place of public resort intended: 

(a) to demonstrate support for or opposition to the views or actions of any person; 
(b) to publicise a cause or campaign; or 
(c) to mark or commemorate any event.

(More complete text can be found here)

I highlighted the word "public place" in the above. What constitutes a public place? The Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act contains this interpretation:

Any place or premises to which at the material time the public or any section of the public has access, on payment or otherwise, as of right or by virtue of express or implied permission.

This is a very broad definition. It can even encompass your Christmas Day open house if you say you will welcome anyone to your home and garden as a gesture of goodwill. The public will have access by virtue of implied permission, at the material time.

* * * * *

Separately, there is another law, the Public Entertainments and Meetings Act, within which clause 3 says,

3. No public entertainment shall be provided except:

(a) in an approved place; and 
(b) in accordance with a licence issued by the Licensing Officer.

But surely, we're talking about entertainment, aren't we? Not so. In the Schedule appended to the Act, we find that,

2. “Public entertainment” includes:

(m) any lecture, talk, address, debate or discussion; 

(A bit more detail here.)

Thus, strictly speaking, two different laws box in a simple public forum. To speak you need a Public Entertainment Licence. To gather an audience of more than 3 persons, yourself being the 4th, you need a Police Permit, issued pursuant to the Miscellaneous Offences (Public Order and Nuisance) Act. In practice though, the issuance of a Public Entertainment Licence was and is enough to indicate that the gathering or audience will not be considered an illegal assembly.

But getting a Public Entertainment Licence was not likely if you planned to do or say anything contrary to the state doctrine, or were suspected to do so. In May 2000, I was refused such a licence to hold a forum. See My forum was banned. In March 2004, a theatre company was not allowed to hold a talk based on its upcoming play. See Another gay forum banned.

And as most regular readers of Yawning Bread will know, Fridae.com's Snowball party (Dec 2004) and subsequent parties have also been refused licences simply because they attracted a mainly gay and lesbian crowd. To quote the police's press release, "Police cannot approve any application for an event which goes against the moral values of a large majority of Singaporeans." See Snowball crushed. However the Snowball party was not an indoor talk; the change in the rules that we're discussing here does not apply to public parties.

* * * * *

As I mentioned at the start, the Prime Minister made an unexpected announcement in his National Day Rally Speech (22 Aug 2004). He said,

We also need as a government to encourage participation and debate.... for indoor talks, we are going to do away with licensing. Right now, if you are going outdoors or indoors, if you want to do a talk you need a public entertainment licence.

Usually it's approved. It's not a problem. But once in a while... you are slow or the police have reservations, they say 'no'. But it's very rare.

So now we've decided we are going to exempt indoor talks from licensing requirements unless they touch on sensitive issues like race and religion.

- Straits Times, reported on 24 August 2004

 
(A larger excerpt from that speech can be found here)

The key sentence above has been made bold by me.

Four days after publishing the text of Lee's speech, the Straits Times did a follow-up article on Lee's announcement.  See box on the right.

As indicated in that article, the reporter, M. Nirmala's source was the Police. At first, I thought her story was based on an interview with a senior police officer, but having tonight found the Press Release dated 27 August 2004 from the archives of the Police website, it is evidently a story that followed that Press Release.

The Straits Times article described the regulatory amendments that would give effect to the Prime Minister's words. Notably, in order for a lecture, discussion or debate to qualify for exemption from licensing, 

• Only Singaporeans can speak, no foreigners;
• Must steer clear of issues related to race or religion;
• Must be in the four official languages or related dialects;
• Must be in an enclosed space "and which is not within the hearing or view of any person who is not attending or participating".

I will draw your attention to the second condition as described by the Straits Times. The newspaper said that the talk must steer clear of race.

We've now found that it was quite different from what was actually in the Exemption Order. If we had relied on the Straits Times report, our understanding of the rules would have been incomplete.

So what does the official text say?

* * * * *

The exact words, found on the 27 August 2004 Press Release, were:

b. The lecturers or speakers [must] not deal with any matter - 
     i. which relates, directly or indirectly, to
         any religious belief or to religion
         generally; or 
     ii. which may cause feelings of enmity,
         hatred, ill-will or hostility between
         different racial or religious groups in
         Singapore;  

So you can mention issues of race, but you must be careful to avoid arousing hostility.

* * * * *

The version on the MDA website says essentially the same thing. It usefully makes clear that the official title is Public Entertainments and Meetings (Exemptions) Order, dated 1 March 2001 [1], with further amendments within, dated 1 sep 2004 (ref S523/2004).

Among these 2004 amendments, is this:

Indoor public talk

(9A) Any indoor public talk held in any place to which the public or any class of public has access, whether gratuitously or otherwise, is exempted from the Act if the following conditions are complied with:

(a) the organiser of the indoor public talk is a citizen of Singapore; 

(b) only citizens of Singapore are invited to be lecturers or speakers at the talk;

(c) the lecturers or speakers do not deal with any matter 

(i) which relates, directly or indirectly, to any religious belief or to religion generally; or 

(ii) which may cause feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between different racial or religious groups in Singapore; and 

(d) the lecturers or speakers speak only in any of the 4 official languages in Singapore, or any related dialect. 

Again, the rule about discussing race is rather nuanced.

* * * * *

What should not escape our attention is that the change was executed at a rather low level, through amending a regulation issued by a Minister, pursuant to a law.

The law itself has not been amended. The Public Entertainments and Meetings Act still says that "no public entertainment shall be provided except ...in accordance with a licence issued by the Licensing Officer", and that "public entertainment" includes "any lecture, talk, address, debate or discussion."

The Minister's Order can be reversed at any time by the Minister.

This is the state of free speech in Singapore.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

1. The URL where this can be found is 
   http://www.mda.gov.sg/wms.www/devnpolicies.aspx?sid=90#Exempt 
   Return to where you left off  
   
2. To begin with, the Police website suffers from a common affliction with organisational behaviour, which is to group things from the perspective of the organisation rather than from the perspective of the user or customer. For example, icons and links on the site use meaningless internal-speak like "Defence and Security e-citizen" -- how many users will know what the hell that is? 
    
   Giving up with the icons, you go into "Site Map" and, fortunately, find a less pretentious header, "Application for licences and permits". Under this header is list of 13 possible licences and permits. Click the header and you are led into other pages which no longer observe the same 13 names or types of permits. New names are used which don't seem to correspond to any of the 13 in the Site Map. Some of the names in the Site Map never quite appear again in the deeper pages. 
    
   Finally, some pages or sections tell you what the permit is meant for (e.g. Police permit, for assemblies of more than 4 persons), but sometimes, they don't. 
    
   If it were up to me, how would I do it? I'd restructure the whole thing to reflect the user's point of view. It will start with a list of activities which will need a permit, rather than a list of permits. My list would say, "if you wish to engage in any of the undermentioned activities, you need a permit, the name of which is given alongside."
    
   Then it will indicate 
     
   

   Activity planned	Licence required
   Funeral along the streets	Funeral Licence
   Sell and serve liquor for consumption on premises	Retail Liquor Licence
   Sell liquor to be taken away	Wholesale liquor Licence
   Screen a film to members of the public	Film exhibition Licence
   Hold a performance involving animals and/or acrobatics	Circus licence

     
   (the above are just hypothetical examples, not the actual rules in operation)
   Return to where you left off

Addenda

None