Wall Street Journal article that criticised MM Lee

I have read one of the Wall Street Journal articles for which Singapore’s attorney general is accusing it of contempt of court.

The article, Democracy in Singapore, which appeared on June 26, described a courtroom hearing when Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew met his arch-critic, Chee Soon Juan, whom he and his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, successfully sued for defamation. I blogged about the article at the time and wrote in my post:

The Wall Street Journal failed to note the opposition is getting more coverage in the Singapore media than it used to -- and it is not invariably a hatchet job.

The article was critical of MM Lee and also mentioned the case of Gopalan Nair, the Singapore-born American lawyer who was jailed for insulting a High Court judge.

The article mentioned that MM Lee had never lost a libel suit.

I can’t recall it being openly critical of any specific court decision.

But there was a sting in the tail of the article where it talked about the “price of political dissent”.

I have not read the other article, Judging Singapore’s Judiciary for which the Wall Street Journal is being sued.

Reuters reports:

Singapore's attorney general accused the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday of waging a two-decade campaign to besmirch the Singapore judiciary, at the start of a contempt of court case brought against the newspaper.

Singapore first took legal action against the Wall Street Journal in 1985 for contempt of court for an editorial commenting on the trial of late Singapore opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam. The Wall Street Journal apologised and was fined $7,600, according to newspaper reports. (The Wall Street Journal’s publisher, Dow Jones, is now being represented by the late opposition leader’s son, Philip Jeyaretnam.)

The case is the latest in a string of legal actions brought by the Southeast Asian country against foreign news organisations.

Singapore leaders have won damages, settlements and apologies in the past from foreign media groups when they reported on local politics, including The Economist, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times.