SINGAPORE — For almost six hours, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam locked horns with a Singaporean historian on Thursday (March 29) — the last day of the public hearing on online falsehoods — over events that took place during the Communist era, with the Cabinet Minister criticising the Oxford research fellow for having “fallen completely” short of the standards of an objective historian.

The marathon exchange, which was the longest over eight days of public hearings, got testy at times and was momentarily disrupted by the antics of political activist Han Hui Hui.

It centred on Dr Thum Ping Tjin’s claims in his written representations to the Select Committee that historically, there has only been one body that has peddled falsehoods — the People’s Action Party (PAP) Government, which has been spreading “fake news” about Operation Coldstore, for example, “for narrow party-political gain”.

The operation was conducted in 1963, with more than 100 alleged leftist leaders and trade unionists arrested and detained. But Dr Thum asserts there is no evidence that the detainees were involved in any violent communist conspiracy to overthrow the Singapore government, and the operation was conducted for political purposes.

Wading through paragraphs of document after document, Mr Shanmugam and Dr Thum engaged in a back and forth on differing interpretations of historical events, with Mr Shanmugam pointing out that Dr Thum had disregarded evidence from key figures — namely Communist Party of Malaya (CPM) secretary-general Chin Peng, and communist leaders Fong Chong Pik and Eu Chooi Yip — because he considered them unreliable.

Pressed by Mr Shanmugam, Dr Thum also admitted that he had not read the writings of several ex-communists, and acknowledged that the Barisan Socialis was planning on overthrowing the Government with violence if necessary.

Nevertheless, Dr Thum pointed out that his work was published some years ago and subjected to peer review. "They have found my work to be solid and thus far no historian has come out and contradicted the central thrust of my work," he said. "Now, one would assume, if my work was inaccurate or if I neglected to include any sources, there would be some sort of bad peer review, there would be accusations... my professional standing would be affected."

At the start of the session, Mr Shanmugam made clear that the purpose of the Select Committee was not to examine the evidence for Operation Coldstore or the activities of the CPM. “But since you have put up a submission and made some recommendation based on these assertions, I think we will need to look at them,” he said to Dr Thum.

Mr Shanmugam also asked Dr Thum about his professional credentials. Dr Thum had stated in his written representations that he is a research fellow in history and coordinator of Project Southeast Asia at the University of Oxford.

He clarified that since last year, he is on a visiting professorship in anthropology but “still a historian”. He also does not hold any tenured academic position at the university, he said in response to Mr Shanmugam’s question.

In his written representations, Dr Thum contends that PAP leaders, including Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, had peddled falsehoods on Operation Coldstore. The PAP had told Singaporeans that the arrests and detentions without trial were necessary on the grounds of national security, as these individuals were “radical communist conspiracies to subvert the state”.

But declassified documents proved PAP’s reasoning to be a “lie”, and that it was done for “political gain”, said Dr Thum.

The historian also made similar points in a paper titled The Fundamental Issue is Anti-colonialism, Not Merger: Singapore’s “Progressive Left”, which was published in 2013 when he was a research fellow at the Asia Research Institute (ARI) at the National University of Singapore.

However, Mr Shanmugam sought to take apart Dr Thum’s arguments, by pointing out that statements provided by multiple members of the CPM had acknowledged that there was an underground communist network in Singapore, and they had feared possible crackdowns. For example, he cited statements by Chin Peng in his memoirs ‘Alias Chin Peng – My Side of History’, where the communist leader said he tried to get the underground communist movement to cause a split in the PAP.

Mr Shanmugam also pointed to a telegram which Lord Selkirk, the then-British High Commissioner to Singapore, had sent to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in December 1962.

It stated that while Lord Selkirk was initially unconvinced that a large number of arrests was necessary to counter the communist threat, fresh evidence suggested that the Barisan Sosialis — formed by the left-wing members of the PAP — was controlled by communists. Lord Selkirk noted that they might resort to violence to overthrow the PAP Government if the opportunity occurred, Mr Shanmugam said.

But Dr Thum countered that there was no “sustained communist underground conspiracy” after 1953 or 1954 because the party’s town committee had been “smashed” in the early 1950s.

Describing Chin Peng as an unreliable source, Dr Thum noted that he did not have major influence in Singapore since the CPM did not have a “significant enough presence in Singapore at that time”.

Dr Thum repeatedly said that the Barisan Sosialis, and its leader Lim Chin Siong, preferred the option of using peaceful constitutional processes to attain power. However, Mr Shanmugam said there was a threat of them resorting to violence.

Mr Shanmugam pointed out that in Dr Thum’s ARI paper, he had written that Barisan Sosialis members “had complained that the constitution was pointless if it was so easily manipulated, asking if there was another way forward”.

After a back and forth on what he was referring to by using the phrase “another way forward”, Dr Thum conceded that the Barisan Sosialis and Lim did not “explicitly rule out violent action”.

Dr Thum also accepted that he could have reworded the sentences in his paper better, when Mr Shanmugam noted that although Barisan Sosialis members unanimously agreed that they would stick to constitutional means for the time being, they kept the “armed option” open and “agreed that it was necessary to keep it side-by-side with the constitutional action”.

GRILLING WAS ‘SURPRISING’

Near the halfway mark of the session, Ms Han was forcibily removed from the room for causing disruption and refusing to leave despite being asked to do so. This prompted the committee to adjourn the hearing for a five-minute break.

After the session resumed, Mr Shanmugam’s questioning appeared to take a toll on Dr Thum. While initially combative, Dr Thum said several times that it had been a “long day” — when given a chance to respond to Mr Shanmugam’s assertions — and spent time looking through his laptop before accepting the minister’s offer to submit his arguments after the hearing. “Let’s just move on. We have been here a long time,” Dr Thum said at one point.

As the hearing drew to a close, Mr Shanmugam said Dr Thum had breached a “number of rules” set by esteemed academics.

“Your views on communism, Communist United Front in Singapore, Operation Coldstore, which you have been repeating at multiple fora are contradicted by the most reliable evidence,” Mr Shanmugam said. “You ignore evidence which you don’t like. You ignore and suppress what is inconvenient and in your writings you present quite an untrue picture. You can agree or disagree.”

In response, Dr Thum said, “Of course I disagree.”

Speaking to the media after the hearing, Dr Thum claimed that the concerns raised earlier about the impact of deliberate online falsehoods, including on national security, sounded similar to the kind of rhetoric the colonial government had put out to suppress anti-colonial and nationalist sentiments in Singapore. “This was one reason why I sent in my submissions,” he said.

He added that he did not expect his work to be dissected at the public hearing and was surprised that the minister had “grilled (him) so much”. “Ultimately, this is the committee on deliberate online falsehoods and I don’t think we discussed that at all,” he said.

He added: “In some ways, it is very flattering that the Minister of Law and Home Affairs took such a keen interest in my work.”

Maintaining that history is “not a narrative… (but) an argument”, he said: “You can’t go back in time and get every single perspective. You should argue for what you believe to be the right story and it is the strength of these arguments that makes for fascinating history.”