The Singapore government is now free to act on suspicions of foreign influence, and their targets will struggle to clear their names
Singapore’s parliament has passed a controversial anti-foreign interference bill, just three weeks after its first reading on 13 September.
It was only to be expected that the Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill, or Fica, would pass – the ruling People’s Action Party has had a supermajority in parliament for decades, allowing them to push whatever legislation they want through the House. But the concerns that activists, journalists, academics and legal practitioners had before the bill’s passage persist.
Kirsten Han is a freelance journalist who runs the newsletter We, The Citizens, covering Singapore from a rights-based perspective.
