http://yoursdp.org/index.php/your-letters/4904-growing-up-a-criminal-
Growing up a criminal
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Singapore Democrats
Read: SDP's National Service alternative policy.
Growing up a criminal
Wednesday, 20 July 2011
Singapore Democrats
Dear SDP,
My name is Stanley Tow. I live in Toronto, Canada. I was born in Singapore in 1966, and I still hold my Singapore NRIC.
Your party makes no platform towards overseas Singaporeans who left as children and are now barred from their nation of birth simply because they were born as males and have chosen to live abroad.
I left the country when I was 15 to study in Canada. Along the way, I decided to make Canada home. Unfortunately, my family found out the hard way that being born a male in Singapore dooms his chances of returning home. It was impossible to relinquish my Singaporean citizenship because the nation felt I had owed it national service simply because I was born there and had a duty to serve in its defense.
Our laws implied that to have turned 16 while in another country and making the adult decision to remain in another country was tantamount to committing a crime against Singapore. So sometime between leaving Singapore at 15 and obtaining my citizenship in Canada at 16, in Singapore, I had committed a crime.
My efforts to relinquish my Singaporean citizenship was denied because I had to face my punishment for committing a crime against Singapore, and until I resolve the fines and penalties and duties being born a male child in Singapore, I could not relinquish my citizenship unless I turn up for National Service (NS).
Let me repeat that, but put simpler. According to Singapore, a child of 16 had committed a crime against the state. Not only that, there was no way I could relinquish my citizenship. It is like entering a restaurant and not being allowed to leave until you have been forced to eat its food and pay for it.
It cannot be that a nation binds native born persons this way and render them with less rights than foreign workers who can buy homes and raise children here while holding a foreign passport. There is a population of males who left the country and who are now barred simply because of NS. I am one of them.
I can only appeal to your reasonableness. There is no way a child of 15 can choose to leave his place of birth. My parents sent me here for an opportunity to study abroad. There should be no crime in that. Along the way, the child grows into an adult and life creates its own inertia in the new country.
I don't believe that when I was sent here to study in high school, I had intended a future where I would be barred from seeing my aunts and uncles ever again. I miss them dearly, and they miss their nephews too. My parents have never voted for the PAP since. By giving their children an opportunity for education, they had inadvertently condemned them from loved ones.
I have British and Canadian friends who can visit Singapore with more impunity than I can. They've even married Singaporean women but have the added benefit of being exempt from National Service because they will simply leave if ever forced to do so.
In effect, the Singaporean government has given more rights to foreign workers than to those born in the country. It is so fantastically unfair that we are deprived of our rights as minors and that a government can use NS to impose citizenship rights to its own citizens by birth which they do not do with foreigners. I find it ironic that I have less rights having been born there than a foreigner.
My English friends hold a foreign passport ready to leave the nation any time he should be asked to "volunteer" for NS. He is happily living and working in Singapore, has bought property, and raising his family there while I can't even visit any of my relatives, and I left as a child! I am now considered a fugitive.
I have asked what the fines or penalties will be without getting a straight answer. I still don't know what the penalties will be if I do visit. Most Commonwealth countries that respect the law will state the maximum fine or imprisonment you can get for particular crimes. Not so for children who have left Singapore and never returned. We can't, even if we are willing to pay the price to see loved ones.
This nation does not belong to the PAP to decide who gets to stay and who gets to stay out permanently. It is not for the PAP to decide who they can invite to work and stay in Singapore indefinitely. If I cannot be allowed to relinquish my citizenship, I must be allowed to vote. Unless you declare that the crime I have committed is so grave and that criminals of our nature are denied our votes.
My relatives are all getting old. They would like to see their nephews one more time. For all the Singaporeans who have left Singapore and are unable to return, I want to reach out to my family and relatives still in Singapore, and everyone else in a similar situation who has relatives and loved ones who miss them to give us a right to visit.
No child should have to grow up in another country to be barred from their families back home. We have not committed any heinous crime. We need to be absolved as having committed a crime against a nation we bore no ill will towards.
We need an opposition party who will take a stand on this issue.
STANLEY TOW
Read: SDP's National Service alternative policy.
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