It was Lee Kuan Yew himself, 19 years ago, while in opposition to the colonial Singapore legislature, who lamented, "Repression is like making love--it's always easier the second time. The first time there may be pangs of conscience, a sense of guilt. But once embarked on this course, with constant repetition, you get more and more brazen in the attack and in the scope of the attack." The year before, in 1955, Lee had asked, "If it is not totalitarian to arrest a man and detain him when you cannot charge him with any offense against any written law--if that is not what we have always cried out against in Fascist states--then what is it?"

On September 30th, 1974, in an after dinner speech to the delegates of the Commonwealth Press Union in Canberra, Australia, Lee unabashedly boasted, according to the Far Eastern Economic Review, "Well, in addition to all the conventional pressures we learned from the West, we also have special inquisitional instruments, ancient modes of torture, specially graduated to inflict pain more excruciatingly than that the journalists inflict on the politicians, plus, of course, interest added for grave injury done to the public good. We have also modernized these ancient forms with the addition of electrical and electronic gadgetry, stereophonic sounds to amplify the terror, and low sound waves to give sensations of an earthquake... In this way we can transform a bold and fearless critic into a willing and compliant sycophant."

Increasingly, more people in the West are beginning to critically reassess Lee. In November 1971, when he was to receive an honorary doctorate from an English university, the London Sunday Times published an editorial under the telling title "Doctor of Law and Master of Injustice," it said.

"Mr. Lee...may call himself a democratic socialist, but his interest in reasoned argument is a narrow one--confined, in fact, to argument which he agrees with. Singapore has a one-party parliament, which should enable a Prime Minister to liberate responsible dissent outside. Not at all. Free speech has been virtually extinguished by the well-known social democratic device of imprisonment without trial. The Singapore press is in chains...

...He (Lee) abolished the jury system...When the law was changed, he silenced the attempt to debate it in Singapore. On his instructions the newspapers were forbidden to publish, when it mattered, the critical resolution of the special meeting of the Bar, and its memorandum.

A good many English liberals, somehow overlooking this appalling record, have been captivated by Mr. Lee's fluency, his intelligence, his manifest stature as an international statesman."

Chou See Ahlek is a pseudonym for a Harvard student from Singapore who asked that his name not be used for fear of political repercussions.