Sorry but I am not turning my blog off today

I feel the need to start this piece with a disclaimer: I hate the fucking PAP. Fuck the PAP. There, now that we've established that, I feel I can proceed with the point I am going to make.

Many blogs in Singapore (and indeed outside Singapore) have gone black for 24 hours in protest against the MDA's Broadcast Act and to promote the #Freemyinternet protest at Hong Lim Park this Saturday. I admit, I did feel very tempted to black out my blog as well as it got to 5 pm in London (we're 7 hours behind Singapore in summer time) but then I read this comment on Facebook which made me think twice.

Can the blog blackout actually achieve anything?

The netizen commented that whilst the intent of the blackout is admirable, it is only really disruptive to those people who are looking for alternative news sources which are not blatantly pro-PAP. It is ironically beneficial to the PAP (and their cronies) who would rather bloggers like me who are anti-PAP just shut the hell up - even if it for one day. Woah. At that point I thought, this netizen has a point. At least for the next 24 hours, the PAP has free reign over the media because bloggers have silenced themselves in protest - giving the PAP exactly what they want.

I am divided here. Whilst I do see the irony in the bloggers silencing themselves in protest, they are drawing attention to the event happening in Hong Lim Park on the 8th June #FreeMyInternet which will hopefully attract a large number of Singaporeans who will stand united against the PAP. So if this blackout can raise the profile of the event, then great - I hope it is really well attended this Saturday. However, I am also watching the events happening in Turkey very closely and can't help but make a comparison between the situation in Singapore and that in Turkey.

I have a special place in my heart for Turkey having lived and worked there - albeit for a short time, but still I totally fell in love with Istanbul when I was working there. I learnt Turkish when I was there and whilst I wasn't fluent, I was still able to make basic conversation even with those who didn't speak a word of English. They were all very curious of course, as to why this Chinese-looking guy could speak some Turkish - don't forget, ethnic minorities are very rare in Turkey despite Istanbul being quite a cosmopolitan big city. You don't really see black or Chinese looking people there walking down the streets - so naturally I stood out as the guy from Singapore.

I know the center of Istanbul really well - the old Town on Sultanahmet, the main shopping areas in Beyoğlu and of course, Taksim Square and Gezi Park. It was shocking for me to see these familiar areas transformed into a war zone as the anti-government riots clashed with the police. I remember seeing a photo of the riot police gathered in front a shop where I used to buy fresh pomegranate juice, I wondered if the little old Turkish lady who sold juice was hiding in her shop, her eyes stinging from the tear gas. I am following what my Turkish friends have been saying on Facebook and Twitter all day and it is harrowing to see what they are reporting.

Limpeh having a coffee in Istanbul

The Turkish media have imposed a black out on reporting the riots - they are pretending everything in normal in Turkey. Instead of reporting on the massive anti-government riots which have spread across the country, they are showing nature documentaries about animals, cooking programmes and beauty pageants on TV. This is why Turks have turned to social media to report on what is happening in Turkey and it is truly inspiring to see how brave and well organized the Turks have been. They are an inspiration to many.

Let's look at the protest that started this entire episode - it was the plans to turn Gezi Park in central Istanbul into a mall. Environmentalists protested because Gezi Park is one of the few green spaces left in a very congested central Istanbul so they occupied the park in protest, #occupygezi to prevent the bulldozers from coming in to dig up their beloved park. Now let's compare that to the Singaporean situation, the MDA wants to move into our cyberspace and ensure that the citizens 'read the right thing' - so in protest, what do we do? A 24 hour self-imposed blackout by bloggers? Isn't that the equivalent of the environmentalists effectively boycotting Gezi Park for 24 hours in protest of the redevelopment of the park? Am I the only one who did a double take then?

I have fond memories of Istanbul. 

Think about this please people, #occupygezi had the right idea - the Turkish government wanted to take away a space from the people, they occupied the space and laid their claim to it. What I would like to see is a mass protest by Singaporean netizens occupying and claiming their cyberspace, #occupysgcyberspace or something like that. This would mean bloggers and netizens showing the government their displeasure by rightfully voicing their opinions online - such as going to the Facebook pages of the PAP and all the PAP MPs and ministers, writing to them there and telling them how wrong MDA's broadcast act is. Let's make our presence felt online!

I'm not suggesting anything illegal like hacking, but I would love to see more Singaporeans take the fight to the MDA and the PAP over this issue, the same way the Turkish have stood up to their government this week. Turkish protesters raised US$55,000 for a full page ad in the New York Times to bring their cause to a global audience, highlighting their plight and the situation in Turkey. I would love to see Singaporeans do the same thing to try a similar move to try to raise the profile of their campaign to an international audience, to reclaim our right to express ourselves in cyberspace and for journalists to criticize the PAP when they want to.  There is just so much Singaporeans activists can learn from what is happening in Turkey right now.

There needs to be an active decision to reclaim and occupy this space that the MDA is trying to lay claim to - and I'm sorry, but blacking out your blog for 24 hours does not reclaim this contested cyberspace at all. You need to take the fight to the PAP and show them that you're not going to just quietly go away after you've made an eloquent but effectively useless gesture of protest. What is the point of such a gesture then?  Let me give you an example of one such elegant yet useless gesture of protest in Turkey.

Many older women who are too afraid to go into the streets to protest (the police are using tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons - it is like a war zone) have taken to standing by their windows and banging pots and pans together, making a lot of noise. Some others have also taken to switching their lights on and off many times at night, creating quite a sight when many such women are doing exactly the same thing across the city at night. When I first saw the video below, I thought, okay at least they're doing something - eloquent, memorable if not useless.

My Turkish friend Orcun told me, "I'm not convinced that this kind of thing helps - this is not the first time we have had anti-government protests in Turkey, but what the government usually does is that they allow the people to protest, make their point in an eloquent but useless gesture that doesn't change anything in the long run. The protesters feel like they've made their point, the government allows them to let off some steam for a few days and then things go back to exactly how they were before. This is why the people are out in the streets of Turkey now. They want real change, they don't want some conciliatory gesture from the government to say, 'oh you can have Gezi Park, we have listened to you and you have saved the trees in Gezi Park'- this protest is about so much more than Gezi Park now. Gezi Park was the last straw the broke the camel's back - the people have been so angry with the government for so long already. I will be very disappointed if nothing comes out of this after all we have done. I might just leave Turkey for good."

I did ask another Singaporean blogger this evening what he felt about this blog blackout protest - he is not blacking out his blog either. "What is the point? We should be protesting about this ridiculous move by the MDA on our blogs, condemning the government for it. But silencing ourselves in protest over censorship? That's like a vegetarian protesting about the eating of meat by slaughtering a cow. Okay, it is a simple, eloquent and low-risk gesture on the part of these Singaporeans. If you were to go protest in front of the MDA, the way the Turks are in Taksim Square and Gezi Park, you will risk getting arrested and thrown in jail. But if you were to blackout your blog for 24 hours, few people would even notice. It is a small token of a gesture by some kiasi Singaporeans who are still inherently very afraid of the government they hate. They want to feel like they have done something and made a statement - and they are willing to ignore the fact that it is ultimately a futile gesture."

What will happen at the end of this week - after the blackout on Thursday and the Hong Lim Park event on Saturday? Would there be any real change in the government or would it be (as the cynics suspect) no more than a number of beautiful orchestrated eloquent yet ultimately useless gestures on the part of those who oppose the MDA's censorship? Will the government actually pay any heed to what will happen at Hong Lim Park?

I would like to see something bigger and more effective come out of this episode, such as a campaign to reach out to those on the dark side, yes I am talking about the 60.14% who voted for the PAP in 2011. It is something very constructive we could all do, even if we all just started engaging with one person who voted for the PAP and try to engage them in a discussion about what kind of society we want in Singapore. That could be one more vote for change, one less vote for the PAP - it is a small baby step, but one in the right direction. Such a campaign would achieve far more than this blog blackout protest.

You can do something constructive today - talk to someone who voted for the PAP.

This is exactly what they are doing in Turkey right now - it is a very divided society. You have the well educated liberals who live in the big cities and then you have the poorer, more traditional and religious folk who live in the countryside and those in the countryside are far less demanding of their government than those in the big cities. This is why the unrest has started in Istanbul, the richest and most cosmopolitan city in Turkey. Younger, well-educated, English speaking Turks are far more aware of what is happening in other democratic countries in the West and are far less tolerant of their government's mistakes. Many Turkish activists are using this opportunity to engage with those in the rural interior of Turkey who have never really been involved in politics before to open their eyes to the faults of the government and make them think about the issues at stake.

In Singapore, there is a divide but it is along a different lines. My mother is a staunch PAP supporter and she is in her 70s - she doesn't use the internet and she is quite ignorant when it comes to how democracies function in other countries. She is pretty much a frog at the bottom of the well when it comes to her view of the world as she takes very little interest in what is happening outside Singapore - so she is blissfully unaware of the direction the PAP is taking Singapore. I see people like her as the key targets in this campaign to engage the 60.14% - we need to drag them out of their ignorance and make them confront the facts. Heck, even my father has proudly crossed over from the dark side and proudly supports the opposition now - but we still have to work on my mother as she just doesn't get it.

So there you go. I am not just a cynic who has nothing better to offer - I am offering a pragmatic and simple campaign: engage the 60.14%. Talk to them, reason with them, engage them, listen to them and start a conversation. You may or may not be able to change their minds but at least you are bringing them out of their shell. It is often apathy that makes many older voters default to the PAP - people like my mother don't understand many of the issues at stake, so they default to what they have known and trusted for years not because they actually like the PAP, but because they don't know what else to do. All you can do is to make such people think about the issues that matter to them in Singapore, make them consider the facts and what the PAP is doing and hopefully, they will come to the right conclusion.

What do you think? Did you black out your blog today? What did you think about this gesture of protest? What should we be doing in defiance? Where will all this lead to? Leave a comment, let me know. Thank you for reading.

Limpeh in Istanbul