Crackdown at Dawn

While Malaysia steeled itself for possible combat against Sukarno, Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew moved to crush anti-Malaysia Communist dissidents in his teeming island state. Less than 24 hours after Lee's People's Action Party scored a smashing pro-Malaysia election victory, his government started proceedings to deprive millionaire Communist-Fronter Tan Lark Sye of his Singapore citizenship. A China-born rubber tycoon, Tan, 67, helped found Singapore's Nanyang University, turned it into a hotbed of Communism, encouraged students to be campaigners, speechwriters and street-corner bullyboys for extreme-leftist political candidates.

Led by tough security agents of the new federal Malaysian government, Singapore police then tackled the university itself. In a dawn raid, dozens of government policemen smashed through a gauntlet of stone-and-bottle-heaving students at Nanyang, broke down dormitory doors and took into custody five student suspects under a security law that permits "subversives" to be arrested and held without trial.

Throughout the city, cops rounded up twelve other youthful, Red-lining agitators, also arrested three Communist-front candidates defeated in the elec tion, including the Chinese journalist who had run against Lee himself.

"Harry" Lee was happy to see the agitators locked up. But fearing that they might become martyrs to students and intellectuals among Singapore's overwhelmingly Chinese populace, Lee hastily issued a statement pointing out that the university crackdown was sponsored by the federal police, who under the terms of the new Malaysian constitution are now responsible for Singapore's internal security. "So long as this security action is directed against Communists, we consider the action of the federal government to be justified," he declared, adding reassuringly, "The Singapore government will, as in the past, safeguard Chinese education."

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