HOW SINGAPURA MIGHT HAVE FAILED THEIR ‘EFFICIENCY’ TEST.
…DOES DENYING ENTRY INTO SINGAPURA, OF A CULTUIRAL ACTIVIST AND DOCUMENTARIST FROM BANDA ACEH TO ATTEND THE SINGAPURA FILM FESTIVAL IN APRIL, 2008 MEAN THAT IT IS NOT SUPER EFFICIENT AFTER ALL?
By Mansor Puteh
(THE SINGAPURA GOVERNMENT SHOULD THANK ME FOR SUPPLYING THEM WITH THE INFORMATION BELOW. IT CAN MAKE THEM MORE COMPETITIVE AND EFFICIENT.)
THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I AM DEALING WITH A SMALL ISSUE CONCERNING A COUNTRY SO SMALL, SINCE I HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH THOSE SUPERPOWERS AND SUPER-FOOL COUNTRIES AND THEIR SUPER-IDIOT LEADERS IN MY BLOG EARLIER.
IT IS DEFINITELY TRULY A ‘UNIQUELY SINGAPURA’ EXPERIENCE.
AND ALSO HOW A MULTIMILLION SING-DOLLAR ADVERTISING AND PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN FAIL THE FOZAN SANTA TEST THAT SINGAPURA MAY NOT BE A FRIENDLY COUNTRY AFTER ALL.
IT’S NOTHING FOR THEM TO SING ABOUT, REALLY.
You don’t get invited to participate in an important and major and only film event in the Republic of Singapura, the former Kingdom of Temasik without any good or valid reason.
It is a country which came about by the British cheating the Melayu.
When I was invited to attend the same festival in April, 1991 when my first feature film, 'Seman’ (A Lost Hero) was shown in it, I was welcome by representatives of the festival who garlanded me with orchids around my neck and took me in a gleaming white Mercedes-Benz to the Hotel Phoenix, making me feel like a major film director.
(And this same film has again been invited to two screenings on 4 and 29 January, 2010 at the Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris. Many other films and videos from Malaysia and Singapura will also be shown over a period of four months starting from 16 December, 2009.)
I don’t think the organizers of this film will not dare invite someone whom they had not known before; or if he would enter the country and use the invitation to work illegally or conduct terrorist activities.
How could the person who has been invited enter Singapura then since his identity has already been established and his intention to come to the country known?
Those who wish to enter Singapura to work illegally or conduct terrorist activities would do it secretly, and enter the country by other means and not by flying into Changi Airport or fly to Kuala Lumpur and take a connecting bus or train to Johor Baru and then another bus from the Larkin bus station to go to Singapura.
Normally, entry into the country should be a mere formality; you land at their airport in Changi or go to their immigration checkpoint in Woodlands after flying into Malaysia and taking the bus or train to go to Singapura, because you think you can visit Malaysia and then Singapura later.
Because in Malaysia, you have many friends in the arts and culture to deal with, so it’s good to be able to connect them by producing yourself physically while partaking in what the City of Kuala Lumpur and the country may have that you had not managed to see on your earlier trip.
A friend of mine called by his pseudonym of Fozan Santa who is a director of a major non-profit cultural organization in Banda Aceh calling itself Episentrum (http://www.tikarpandan.org/) and also a documentarist, tried to do the ordinary; he got an invitation from the director of the Singapura international film festival, Philip Cheah, to attend their festival in April of 2008.
Not many Indonesian filmmakers have been invited to show their works at this festival, so Fozan thought his presence as a mere participant and also to discuss the possibility of getting his new documentary on the orphans of the Tsunami of 2004 could be shown in the same festival later.
That was his original aim, and which is also to share his personal experience as an Acheh man whose mother and other relatives and close friends who had died by producing a documentary from inside of Aceh and sharing it with everybody.
Fozan’s real name is Fauzan. And the reason why he had to get a pseudonym was during the military rule in Aceh, many people of some profile were doing that. I was surprised when he said then when I raised the matter concerning his pseudonym, when I asked why should he hide behind it. Now I understand. Aceh then was not like Aceh today.
And Fozan came to Kuala Lumpur by flight and took the bus to go to Johor Baru where he took another bus to go to Singapura.
But he was denied entry into the country.
There were two immigration personnel at the Singapura immigration checkpoint in Woodland; one a Melayu and the other, a Chinese. He is not Chinese but Singapuran Tiongkok since a Chinese is a nationality of the Communist Republic of China.
But because the Chinese in Singapura now had an identity crisis as much as the Chinese elsewhere outside of China, we have no choice but to describe him as one, a Chinese, to propagate the confusion of the identity of the descendants of former Chinese who had come to Southeast Asia or ‘Nanyang’ in droves.
The Melayu officer seemed cordial while the Singapuran was not. He asked many questions which were ordinary ones which anyone who has the desire to enter Singapura or any country would be asked, and they would be given the same answers.
So these are trite questions. But Fozan still gave them the same trite answers that were demanded of him.
And the Singapuran then went to his superior and when he came out of the room, the Melayu officer led Fozan to a bus. Fozan was relieved because he thought he had been allowed entry into Singapura.
But when he realized the bus heading in the other direction where he had come from he became anxious. He started to notice the sight of Johor Baru ahead of him. He then knew he had been denied entry into Singapura.
And he had been at the receiving end of the highly and super efficient Singapura immigration staff at Woodlands.
What did he do to deserve this, thought Fozan? Why was he denied entry into Singapura?
Did the Singapuran Chinese consider him a threat so he denied him entry into his country?Didn’t they know the early history of Singapura, especially when they were known as Temasik?
And didn’t they realize or know fully that without the Indonesians from Riau and Lingga, Singapura would not have become a tiny republic?
Wasn’t it not for Raja Hussain Shah or Tengku Long of Riau, Stamford Raffles would not have got anyone to cheat to claim Singapura from Johor?
(Keep a lookout for the novel, ‘Hussain and the story of an island’ I have written in English, as well as the play which I have written based on it.)
So the two Singapura immigration officers and their senior officer who was not seen, didn’t seem to realize how super efficient they have been.
No, they are not.
If they were super efficient, they would have allowed Fozan entry into Singapura, even and especially if they suspected him of being a potential terrorist who was embarking on his new terror campaign in the country.
They should have done that and allowed him entry into Singapura where they can immediately arrest him under the International Security Act (ISA) and be incarcerated for a long period of time, and then file charges against him for which he could not defend himself.
But unfortunately, the immigration officers did not do this, so they allowed Fozan to return to Johor.
But they defaced his international passport by stamping a W2 mark on it. He was worried if this stamp would also bar him from entering into another country. So he immediately took a bus to cross into the Siamese border to go to Pattani.
The immigration officers of Malaysia and Siam did not create any fuss and allowed him entry into Southern Siam.
But Fozan was still reeling at the denial of entry into Singapura, for the purpose of attending the Singapura international film festival. What possible crime could he have committed to deserve the cold treatment from the Singapura immigration officers?
Was it wrong for him not to fly direct into Changi Airport to prove that he is a bona fide traveler to Singapura?
Why can’t an Indonesian from Banda Aceh fly into KLIA and then take the bus or train to go to Singapura?
Did the Singapura immigration officers fear that he might want to do something nasty in Singapura in his short stay there?
Why couldn’t they just call Philip Cheah to confirm that he had been invited to participate in his film festival? Is this difficult for the Singapura immigration staff to do?
I was stopped by some police officers on my last trip to England last July, and they called the few persons whom I was in contact with when I was there, and they then allowed me to go on my trip around London, without creating any fuss.
Maybe I can teach the Singapura authorities some interesting education here. They pride themselves for being a super efficient country with its staff properly and well trained.
But this one incident proves to me that this is not so. So this means that they could do with some education, and I am going to give it to them for free. It will make Singapura look a lot better in the eyes of the world.
They always say they want to strive to achieve perfection. But this is not easy if some of their staff do not toe the line and do what they please.
And when Fozan was in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation by Pena, the national literary association of Malaysia two weeks ago, we went to the Singagapura high commission which is just a stone’s throw from the old Rumah Pena building and met some staff of the high commission.
We were told that the immigration officers at the immigration check-points in Woodlands, as in this case, had the arbitrary control to make any decision which they deem fit, on whether to allow anyone into the republic or not. Fine.
This gives the officers a lot of responsibilities, too. And to give such persons immense authority of this nature, he should first be trusted to enforce immigration laws as well as to be able to detect who can be allowed to enter the country or is denied.
In Fozan’s case he was denied. So the said officers must be thinking he had done Singapura a great big favor by denying Fozan entry into their country. Thus, Singapura was saved from having to deal with a potential illegal worker from Indonesia, or worse, a potential terrorist.
So, since nothing had happened since Fozan was denied entry into Singapura, the officers must surely be commended for having denied him entry.
But at the same time, it was only a matter of time for the decision to deny Fozan entry into Singapura to show its true colors. That Fozan had been able to travel freely to Siam and return to Malaysia, to attend yet another literary event in the city, shows that the decision made by the immigration officers in Woodlands was also wrong and bad.
One of the officers was Chinese, and he seemed to be insistent in denying Fozan entry into his country.
However, even after he was later told about Fozan’s reason for wanting to come to Singapura which was to participate in the Singapura film festival, he became anxious and agitated. But he did not relent, for fear of ‘losing his face’, so Fozan was denied entry into Singapura.
This brings the question of whether this Chinese immigration officer was well-trained to deal with such matters, especially those concerning the entry of non-Chinese into Singapura?
Maybe he is not so well-trained after all.
And I find it strange how the Singapura authorities could entrust such a person such a heavy task of ensuring only bona fide travelers and visitors to Singapura to enter the country, who wanted to sample the ‘Uniquely Singapura’ experience.
In a way, it is a ‘Truly Uniquely Singapura’ experience for Fozan and maybe many others who were also denied entry into the country.
I thought a Singapura Melayu immigration officer can better tell if his fellow Melayu from Malaysia, Indonesia or any other country in the Nusantara Melayu of Southeast Asia is coming into the country to do the indescribable to the tiny republic, because he can see it written all over his face, with no, or not many non-Melayu immigration officers of Singapura can.
This is not a racist statement, but a statement of fact which the Singapura immigration authorities ought to take into account, if they truly want to make sure their officers perform to the T, especially when they are confronted with similar cases as Fozan’s who is still eager to visit Singapura in the near future.
By Mansor Puteh
(THE SINGAPURA GOVERNMENT SHOULD THANK ME FOR SUPPLYING THEM WITH THE INFORMATION BELOW. IT CAN MAKE THEM MORE COMPETITIVE AND EFFICIENT.)
THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I AM DEALING WITH A SMALL ISSUE CONCERNING A COUNTRY SO SMALL, SINCE I HAVE BEEN DEALING WITH THOSE SUPERPOWERS AND SUPER-FOOL COUNTRIES AND THEIR SUPER-IDIOT LEADERS IN MY BLOG EARLIER.
IT IS DEFINITELY TRULY A ‘UNIQUELY SINGAPURA’ EXPERIENCE.
AND ALSO HOW A MULTIMILLION SING-DOLLAR ADVERTISING AND PUBLICITY CAMPAIGN FAIL THE FOZAN SANTA TEST THAT SINGAPURA MAY NOT BE A FRIENDLY COUNTRY AFTER ALL.
IT’S NOTHING FOR THEM TO SING ABOUT, REALLY.
You don’t get invited to participate in an important and major and only film event in the Republic of Singapura, the former Kingdom of Temasik without any good or valid reason.
It is a country which came about by the British cheating the Melayu.
When I was invited to attend the same festival in April, 1991 when my first feature film, 'Seman’ (A Lost Hero) was shown in it, I was welcome by representatives of the festival who garlanded me with orchids around my neck and took me in a gleaming white Mercedes-Benz to the Hotel Phoenix, making me feel like a major film director.
(And this same film has again been invited to two screenings on 4 and 29 January, 2010 at the Pompidou Cultural Center in Paris. Many other films and videos from Malaysia and Singapura will also be shown over a period of four months starting from 16 December, 2009.)
I don’t think the organizers of this film will not dare invite someone whom they had not known before; or if he would enter the country and use the invitation to work illegally or conduct terrorist activities.
How could the person who has been invited enter Singapura then since his identity has already been established and his intention to come to the country known?
Those who wish to enter Singapura to work illegally or conduct terrorist activities would do it secretly, and enter the country by other means and not by flying into Changi Airport or fly to Kuala Lumpur and take a connecting bus or train to Johor Baru and then another bus from the Larkin bus station to go to Singapura.
Normally, entry into the country should be a mere formality; you land at their airport in Changi or go to their immigration checkpoint in Woodlands after flying into Malaysia and taking the bus or train to go to Singapura, because you think you can visit Malaysia and then Singapura later.
Because in Malaysia, you have many friends in the arts and culture to deal with, so it’s good to be able to connect them by producing yourself physically while partaking in what the City of Kuala Lumpur and the country may have that you had not managed to see on your earlier trip.
A friend of mine called by his pseudonym of Fozan Santa who is a director of a major non-profit cultural organization in Banda Aceh calling itself Episentrum (http://www.tikarpandan.org/) and also a documentarist, tried to do the ordinary; he got an invitation from the director of the Singapura international film festival, Philip Cheah, to attend their festival in April of 2008.
Not many Indonesian filmmakers have been invited to show their works at this festival, so Fozan thought his presence as a mere participant and also to discuss the possibility of getting his new documentary on the orphans of the Tsunami of 2004 could be shown in the same festival later.
That was his original aim, and which is also to share his personal experience as an Acheh man whose mother and other relatives and close friends who had died by producing a documentary from inside of Aceh and sharing it with everybody.
Fozan’s real name is Fauzan. And the reason why he had to get a pseudonym was during the military rule in Aceh, many people of some profile were doing that. I was surprised when he said then when I raised the matter concerning his pseudonym, when I asked why should he hide behind it. Now I understand. Aceh then was not like Aceh today.
And Fozan came to Kuala Lumpur by flight and took the bus to go to Johor Baru where he took another bus to go to Singapura.
But he was denied entry into the country.
There were two immigration personnel at the Singapura immigration checkpoint in Woodland; one a Melayu and the other, a Chinese. He is not Chinese but Singapuran Tiongkok since a Chinese is a nationality of the Communist Republic of China.
But because the Chinese in Singapura now had an identity crisis as much as the Chinese elsewhere outside of China, we have no choice but to describe him as one, a Chinese, to propagate the confusion of the identity of the descendants of former Chinese who had come to Southeast Asia or ‘Nanyang’ in droves.
The Melayu officer seemed cordial while the Singapuran was not. He asked many questions which were ordinary ones which anyone who has the desire to enter Singapura or any country would be asked, and they would be given the same answers.
So these are trite questions. But Fozan still gave them the same trite answers that were demanded of him.
And the Singapuran then went to his superior and when he came out of the room, the Melayu officer led Fozan to a bus. Fozan was relieved because he thought he had been allowed entry into Singapura.
But when he realized the bus heading in the other direction where he had come from he became anxious. He started to notice the sight of Johor Baru ahead of him. He then knew he had been denied entry into Singapura.
And he had been at the receiving end of the highly and super efficient Singapura immigration staff at Woodlands.
What did he do to deserve this, thought Fozan? Why was he denied entry into Singapura?
Did the Singapuran Chinese consider him a threat so he denied him entry into his country?Didn’t they know the early history of Singapura, especially when they were known as Temasik?
And didn’t they realize or know fully that without the Indonesians from Riau and Lingga, Singapura would not have become a tiny republic?
Wasn’t it not for Raja Hussain Shah or Tengku Long of Riau, Stamford Raffles would not have got anyone to cheat to claim Singapura from Johor?
(Keep a lookout for the novel, ‘Hussain and the story of an island’ I have written in English, as well as the play which I have written based on it.)
So the two Singapura immigration officers and their senior officer who was not seen, didn’t seem to realize how super efficient they have been.
No, they are not.
If they were super efficient, they would have allowed Fozan entry into Singapura, even and especially if they suspected him of being a potential terrorist who was embarking on his new terror campaign in the country.
They should have done that and allowed him entry into Singapura where they can immediately arrest him under the International Security Act (ISA) and be incarcerated for a long period of time, and then file charges against him for which he could not defend himself.
But unfortunately, the immigration officers did not do this, so they allowed Fozan to return to Johor.
But they defaced his international passport by stamping a W2 mark on it. He was worried if this stamp would also bar him from entering into another country. So he immediately took a bus to cross into the Siamese border to go to Pattani.
The immigration officers of Malaysia and Siam did not create any fuss and allowed him entry into Southern Siam.
But Fozan was still reeling at the denial of entry into Singapura, for the purpose of attending the Singapura international film festival. What possible crime could he have committed to deserve the cold treatment from the Singapura immigration officers?
Was it wrong for him not to fly direct into Changi Airport to prove that he is a bona fide traveler to Singapura?
Why can’t an Indonesian from Banda Aceh fly into KLIA and then take the bus or train to go to Singapura?
Did the Singapura immigration officers fear that he might want to do something nasty in Singapura in his short stay there?
Why couldn’t they just call Philip Cheah to confirm that he had been invited to participate in his film festival? Is this difficult for the Singapura immigration staff to do?
I was stopped by some police officers on my last trip to England last July, and they called the few persons whom I was in contact with when I was there, and they then allowed me to go on my trip around London, without creating any fuss.
Maybe I can teach the Singapura authorities some interesting education here. They pride themselves for being a super efficient country with its staff properly and well trained.
But this one incident proves to me that this is not so. So this means that they could do with some education, and I am going to give it to them for free. It will make Singapura look a lot better in the eyes of the world.
They always say they want to strive to achieve perfection. But this is not easy if some of their staff do not toe the line and do what they please.
And when Fozan was in Kuala Lumpur at the invitation by Pena, the national literary association of Malaysia two weeks ago, we went to the Singagapura high commission which is just a stone’s throw from the old Rumah Pena building and met some staff of the high commission.
We were told that the immigration officers at the immigration check-points in Woodlands, as in this case, had the arbitrary control to make any decision which they deem fit, on whether to allow anyone into the republic or not. Fine.
This gives the officers a lot of responsibilities, too. And to give such persons immense authority of this nature, he should first be trusted to enforce immigration laws as well as to be able to detect who can be allowed to enter the country or is denied.
In Fozan’s case he was denied. So the said officers must be thinking he had done Singapura a great big favor by denying Fozan entry into their country. Thus, Singapura was saved from having to deal with a potential illegal worker from Indonesia, or worse, a potential terrorist.
So, since nothing had happened since Fozan was denied entry into Singapura, the officers must surely be commended for having denied him entry.
But at the same time, it was only a matter of time for the decision to deny Fozan entry into Singapura to show its true colors. That Fozan had been able to travel freely to Siam and return to Malaysia, to attend yet another literary event in the city, shows that the decision made by the immigration officers in Woodlands was also wrong and bad.
One of the officers was Chinese, and he seemed to be insistent in denying Fozan entry into his country.
However, even after he was later told about Fozan’s reason for wanting to come to Singapura which was to participate in the Singapura film festival, he became anxious and agitated. But he did not relent, for fear of ‘losing his face’, so Fozan was denied entry into Singapura.
This brings the question of whether this Chinese immigration officer was well-trained to deal with such matters, especially those concerning the entry of non-Chinese into Singapura?
Maybe he is not so well-trained after all.
And I find it strange how the Singapura authorities could entrust such a person such a heavy task of ensuring only bona fide travelers and visitors to Singapura to enter the country, who wanted to sample the ‘Uniquely Singapura’ experience.
In a way, it is a ‘Truly Uniquely Singapura’ experience for Fozan and maybe many others who were also denied entry into the country.
I thought a Singapura Melayu immigration officer can better tell if his fellow Melayu from Malaysia, Indonesia or any other country in the Nusantara Melayu of Southeast Asia is coming into the country to do the indescribable to the tiny republic, because he can see it written all over his face, with no, or not many non-Melayu immigration officers of Singapura can.
This is not a racist statement, but a statement of fact which the Singapura immigration authorities ought to take into account, if they truly want to make sure their officers perform to the T, especially when they are confronted with similar cases as Fozan’s who is still eager to visit Singapura in the near future.
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