Saying Goodbye to Mr. Lee

By Jay Branegan/Hong Kong

"We'd like to express our regret," declared the editorial in last week's Wall Street Journal worldwide, "that we are suspending our remaining circulation in the Republic of Singapore." Daily copies of its Asian edition sold in the bustling Southeast Asian city-state, the piece noted, had already < been cut by official edict from 5,000 to just 400. A new Singapore press law requiring foreign publications to be licensed annually and to post a deposit against legal judgments makes clear that "what the government of Singapore wants is for the foreign press to practice self-censorship," the editorial continued. "We cannot accept the implicit bargain." With that, the newspaper announced that it would no longer sell any copies in Singapore.

The move leaves Singapore (pop. 2.7 million), one of the Pacific Rim's most dynamic centers, as that rarity, a non-Communist country without some edition of the far-flung financial newspaper (worldwide circ. more than 2 million). The Journal's decision also marks the latest step in a long-running feud between the island republic and foreign-based publications in general about the government's right to reply to coverage. The circulation of the Asian Wall Street Journal was cut in 1987, when the paper refused to print in full a lengthy government letter about an article on a proposed new stock exchange. Another Dow Jones & Co. publication, the Hong Kong-based weekly Far Eastern Economic Review, stopped Singapore distribution in 1988 after its circulation was crimped from 10,000 to 500.

TIME too has had its problems. The magazine's circulation was cut from nearly 19,000 to 2,000 for seven months in 1987, after it failed to print promptly a government letter citing errors in a story about an opposition leader. The circulation of Asiaweek, a regional weekly owned by Time Warner, was cut from 11,000 copies to 500 in 1987 for similar reasons, then recently raised to 7,500.

Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, a Cambridge law graduate who has run the former British colony since independence in 1965, makes no secret of his distrust of Western media and their influence. In a speech last week, Lee argued that TV news broadcasts, with their dramatic reports on protests in Korea and the Philippines, led to last year's Beijing student massacre. The broadcasts, he alleged, misled China's students into thinking they too could force speedy government change. As for his own government, Lee said, it "can and will insist on no foreign interference in the domestic politics of Singapore."

With reporting by Leslie Whitaker/New York