“There is a war going on for your mind. If you are thinking, you are winning”.

In light of recent arrests under the name of ISA (Internal Security Act), the launch of Singaporean publication, Our Thoughts Are Free, could not have come at a more apt, or darker, time. The book is a collection of poems and prose written by victims who have suffered under the draconian enforcement of the Singapore Internal Security Department and/ or forced to live in exile, dragged and casted away from the country they lived for, fought for, faced internment for and willing to die for.

The political poets, Said Zahari, Tan Jing Quee, Wong Souk Yee, Ho Piao, James Puthucheary, Teo Soh Lung and Francis Khoo, have varying styles of writing. Tan Jing Quee’s emotive and intensely descriptive imageries contrasts with Said Zahari’s simple verses that are coloured with rage, defiance and, pain.

It was an emotional read for me, knowing the history of my country and now learning the agony of these rebels who have fought and fallen for their rights and their nation but never gave up in ensuring their voices are heard over the loudhailers of white-washed history. In my mind, the pages read like one painful confession after another, professing their innermost thoughts behind the bars of political power-play and within walls of media-printed truths.

Suggested through its title, the book is a product of the authors’ desire for freedom in spite of what they have undergone. Through the initial confusion, suspicion and ill-feeling that resulted from their internment, they emerged with a hard won clarity in their search for truth and poetic resolve.

If there is anything that we learn from this episode of our history, it is that those who are defiant against cruelty and injustice are effectively courting legal persecution. However, there are those among them (or us) whose moral conviction triumph the fear of this punitive repercussion, manifesting their commitment to the abolishment of this archaic law through various channels of activism. Literary output is just one of them.

The ISA can pick off one, two, thirteen men but how can it stand against the political will of a critical mass? Clearly, a publication as daring as this is a rarity, given the evidence of political repression in Singapore and Malaysia.

Our Thoughts Are Free will be launched this Saturday, 16^th May 2009, 3pm at the Annexe Gallery. The launch will begin with an introduction to the publication followed by a video screening on the ISA, a sharing session by Singaporeans, Francis Khoo and Said Zahari  and a dialogue session with the editors. For queries and RSVP, please contact Adeleena
event AT ethosbooks DOT com DOT sg.

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Zahirah Suhaimi is on a 2 month internship with ARTERI. She is currently waiting to begin her term as an undergraduate in Communication Studies (though she would rather be studying Sociology). A multi-tasker with notable OCD, she is also the editor of Singapore’s only alternative literary and fine arts underground magazine – Godspeed Magazine.