mantareads’s Reviews > The 1963 Operation Coldstore in Singapore: Commemorating 50 years > Status Update

"He [Rajaratnam] smiled awkwardly while I smiled broadly".

Imagine being so petty and bitter with the PAP that you have to compare smiling styles with them.

I wonder if one is allowed to sympathise with the horrible experiences of the detainees' incarceration without having to agree with whether or not their detention was justified. On this issue, and at this remove, is it "fair" to be "objective" about the mental torture of ppl jailed for decades? This collection is so full of rage, it sounds a little shrill at times... and yet who can fault these men?

For all the talk about recovering counternarratives, a lot of these essays put Lee Kuan Yew front and centre of their subject matter, as if he were the Primary Antagonist in the story. Where was the rest of the PAP? What was Raja or Goh thinking? If these accounts are to be believed, the rise and fall of Singapore starts and ends with the Machinations of Power-hungry Lee...resistance here ironically reinforces.