Sunflowers, sub-machineguns greet IMF-WB delegates , which may not be a big deal to those people who are used to travelling with air marshalls on their flights, but still.

these are interest groups that are, generally, non-violent but very outspoken. the majority of them are just going to wave placards and make a lot of boo-ing and hiss-ing noises when they see a delegate they have a dislike for.

treating them like would-be criminals is not only stupid, but way overreacting. i mean, seriously, ‘high security alert’? they’re demonstrators and interest groups, not rioters.

the police here in london, when faced with demonstrators, generally just let them do their thing, set up road blocks so the demonstrators don’t get run over, break up fights between demonstrators, etc. sure, some of them are armed, but most of the time they are looking out for the welfare of the demonstrators, the people, they’re own.

maybe a mounted policeman or two, police vans with reinforced windscreens and lots of walkie-talkie-ing, but no submachine-guns, no tall spiked fences.

i’m not looking forward, at all, to the explaining i’m going to have to do when my friends read about it, because i don’t feel in the least inclined to defend what singapore has done.

it’s shameful, it’s transgressing on human and civil rights, and it’s just downright embarrassing that as a supposedly developed and first-world nation the government behaves like some backwater fiefdom/junta/pre-89 soviet satellite, and has no respect for other non-governmental, non-diplomatic, non-financial-connected opinions.

do we not all have a right to be heard?

it’s like bad-parenting style gone wrong - telling one’s own kids to shut up, and then leaning over to tell someone else’s kid to mind their business and shut up as well whilst that kid’s amazed parent looks on in horror at one’s audacity and rudeness.