Yahoo Sg caught plagiarism. Result of our world class uni graduate?

scroobal said:

At least 2 forummers from this forum have had to do something with this case. So here goes.

It was just 6 am on Friday, 20 st December 1974, when residents of Katong woke up to a mighty explosion. A bomb carried by the front seat passenger on his lap prematurely exploded as the car travelling down Still Road was just about to reach the junction with East Coast Road. It instantly killed the passenger, a Malaysian and ripped him open. The blast threw out the driver, a driver on to the road and he was eventually to die in hospital despite surgery. The driver an old boy of Chung Cheng High School was then an active member of Barisan Socialis. A third man seat in the back seat limped away and escaped. 3 other bombs were also discovered amidst the wreckage. Also found were flyers of Communist Party of Malaysia satellite organisations Malaysian National Liberation Front and the Malaysan Communist Youth League.

The trio were on their way not to light up the Christmas Tree at Katong Holy Church but to bomb the owner of Nanyang Shoe Factory located in JB at his residence in East Coast. The owner and his workers were in the midst of an industrial strife.

On Sunday, 22nd December at the stroke of midnight, Dr Poh Soo Kai and his wife Grace left their home in their Toyota Corolla and headed North. A friend called G Raman, a lawyer in private practice and fellow traveler followed them in his car, a Volvo. They crossed the Causeway and headed for a Jetty in Masai near Pasir Gudang. The waited a while in the dead of the night, a boat with 2 males crossed over from Singapore. One of them was 3rd man from the car and he was injured. They were driven quite a distance to an isolated wooden house where the injured man was treated.

The lawyer took leave as he was due in Court in a few hours time to defend one client who was being tried in court for rioting with two other defendants. He was originally asked to defend two of them but the main defendant by the name of Tan Wah Piow chose to conduct his defence.

Within a year, the lawyer went on to hire a young female lawyer called Teo Soh Lung for his practice.

Since Singapore's history began, there were 3 main incidents involving detention without trail. First was Operation Coldstore in 1963, the Euro Communists arrests in 1977 and Operations Spectrum - the Marxist Conspiracy in 1987. Dr Poh was one of the stars of the first incident in 63, G Raman was main protagonist in the second in 77 and Teo Soh Lung in the third in 87. Note the link involving 3 individuals over a span of 25 years.

Click to expand...

October 20, 2011 - 12:38am
By:Zul Othman

Remains of the car bomb at Still Road in December 20, 1974. PHOTO: New Nation

WHEN we say bomb blast, the first thing that springs to mind is "terrorist".

Well, not too long ago, that word would have been "communists".

Bomb blasts were a reality in Singapore then.

Deputy Prime Minister and Home Affairs Minister Teo Chee Hean spoke about a huge blast in Katong in 1974 to illustrate the need for a tough tool like the Internal Security Act (ISA).

Retired police officer Lionel de Souza clearly remembers that incident.

It was about 6am in the morning of Dec 20, 1974, when he got the call about a car bomb at the junction of East Coast Road and Still Road.

Mr de Souza, then an acting detective sergeant with the Criminal Investigation Department's Special Investigation Section, rushed to the scene with seven of his fellow officers.

When he got there, what he found was a "tangled mess" that was once a blue Austin car.

The blast was so strong that it ripped off the car's roof, he added.

In the front passenger seat, the officers also found a man lying motionless, his hands severed. "The episode is still very clear in my mind," the 68-year-old, who is now a private investigator, told The New Paper.

"What we learnt later was that the men in the car turned out to be Malayan Communist Youth League members, and they had been carrying four homemade bombs, one of which accidentally detonated," he said.

Encased in milk tins

The men had intended to plant the bombs - encased in milk tins - at the home of a factory managing director's house in Telok Kurau for supposedly persecuting his workers at his company's Johor Baru plant.

"When we arrived, I was told that the area was clear of explosives, but I froze when we found another milk tin filled with explosives inside the car," said Mr de Souza.

That discovery turned out to be "one of the most frightening episodes in my life".

He added: "I jumped out of the car immediately after we saw the tin and took shelter".

That bomb was later safely defused by the Singapore Armed Forces' Bomb Disposal Unit. A third bomber survived and fled to Johor.

Mr Sulong Jamil, a former gardener who witnessed the aftermath of the Katong explosion, remembers being shocked by the incident.

Now in his 70s, the retiree lived through the violence in the 1960s, a period marked by communal and industrial strife.

He told TNP in Malay: "I was cycling to work that morning from my house in Kaki Bukit when I came across the car.

"The sight of the wreck did frighten me. I remember telling my family not to go out, just to be on the safe side."

In the 1970s, intense security operations were continually undertaken to preserve that peace, said DPM Teo.

"More than 800 people were arrested under the ISA (Internal Security Act) in the 1970s, of whom 235 were issued with Orders of Detention," he said.

On Tuesday, People's Action Party Member of Parliament, Dr Janil Puthucheary, called for the process of safeguards for the ISA to be "discussed in a more transparent manner".

In his speech, DPM Teo said the ISA is a powerful law with safeguards built in and enhanced when needed. (See reports below.)

The ISA, he said, empowers the Government to address threats to national security not just through preventive detention, but also other measures like the imposition of curfews to deal with civil disorder.

The Government needed to use the ISA from the 1960s till the late 1980s to counter the Communist Party of Malaya (CPM).

Of the people arrested in the 1970s, DPM Teo said most were detained because they were more than just sympathisers and had provided financial, logistics and manpower support to the CPM insurgents.

He said the Internal Security Department (ISD) learnt that in 1968, the CPM had also issued a policy to return to armed struggle.

Numerous new CPM satellite organisations were formed, and between 1970 and 1974, they were behind at least 35 arson and bomb incidents in Singapore.

Said DPM Teo: "In April 1970, a young girl was killed by a CPM booby-trapped bomb in Changi." Even the police weren't spared from attacks, he said.

"Another CPM organisation assassinated the Malaysian Inspector-General of Police and the Chief Police Officer of Perak.

"In Singapore, the plot against the then Commissioner of Police narrowly failed."

The Singapore ISA proved especially critical after Sept 11, 2001.

DPM Teo said most people now accept that the use of the ISA against the Jemaah Islamiah (JI) group was warranted.

And the arrests of members of the cell under the ISA actually prevented more deaths.

DPM Teo added that the JI's master bomb-maker, Dr Azahari Husin, had planned to stage an attack in Singapore, but he gave up after failing to connect with the local JI network, which had been disrupted by ISD.

This article was first published in The New Paper.