I wish to draw readers’ attention to Singapore’s relationship with the brutal Burmese regime.

Despite the pariah status of the military junta controlled country as a flagrant violator of human rights and being the engine room of the notorious opium Golden Triangle, Singapore has been one of its key trading partners.

For more than a decade, Singapore has shrugged off evidence that some of its business has gone directly to Burma’s drug kingpins, specifically the infamous heroin trafficker Lo Hsing Han.

In 1997, former US Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Robert Gelbard, said: ‘Since 1988 … over half (of the US$1 billion) investment from Singapore have been tied to the family of the narco-trafficer Lo Hsing Han’.

In 1992, Lo founded one of Burma’s largest conglomerates, the Asia World Company which allegedly acts as an upmarket front for money-laundering. Lo’s son is married to a Singaporean who runs three ‘overseas branches’ of the conglomerate in Singapore itself.

In 1996, it emerged that the Singapore Government Investment Corporation had co-invested with Lo in the Traders and Shangri-La Hotels in Rangoon through a 21.5% stake in the US$39 million Myanmar Fund.

Many Singaporean firms are involved in the Asia World Group and the $S1 billion-plus a year that the republic pours into Burma in private investments. The contradiction of Singapore executing those caught with heroin while doing business with drug barons is not lost on many people.

What credibility will Asean have when persons like Singapore’s Foreign Minister George Yeo talk about ‘firm action’ to be taken against Burma?

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