🇰🇭 Mech Dara bailed after recorded apology

Hello friends!

Two updates on two stories I love to talk about. Firstly, Mech Dara is bailed! It’s not over yet, but what a relief to him and his community. Secondly, I cannot get enough of Lee drama ever. Someone call HBO.

See you next week,
Erin Cook

🇰🇭 Mech Dara, finally, has been bailed

The beloved Cambodian journalist was charged with incitement at the start of the month after a series of social media posts. Notably, he’s very well-known for his coverage of the country’s scam compounds and the connections to those in power. The arrest prompted an outpouring of support from media freedom groups and other governments, particularly the US which has previously awarded him for his work. 

The US brought in the heavy hitters. Aid boss Samantha Power visited Dara’s family and raised his case with the government while in Phnom Penh announcing US$38 million in new aid projects, Reuters reports. 

On Wednesday, he appeared clad in a prison uniform and apologising in a video posted to government-aligned outlet Fresh News. In the video, he apologised to both Prime Minister Hun Manet and his father Hun Sen and said that his posts involved “false information that is harmful to the leaders and the country,” as per the BBC.

The case isn’t over yet, and for Mech Dara it’s been a terrible drain. “I thank everyone who helped get me out of jail on bail … My health is weak. My brain is not working yet,” he told media as he was released from jail yesterday. 

🇸🇬 Lee family drama escalates with asylum claim

Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest child of Lee Kuan Yew and brother of long-serving former prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, has claimed asylum in the UK and it sounds like he’s gearing up for war.

The argy-bargy with his brother over the years, including a string of high-profile spats (get these guys off Facebook) and the occasional legal case, means it is no longer a safe city for him, he says. It has “escalated to the point where I believe for my own personal safety I should not continue to live in Singapore,” he told the Guardian in an excellent exclusive. 

In this interview, he goes off about Singapore as a lynchpin in global financial crime. “People need to look beyond Singapore’s bold, false assertions and see what the reality really is like. There is a need for the world to look more closely, to see Singapore’s role as that key facilitator for arms trades, for dirty money, for drug monies, crypto money,” he said. Nervous tittering all around in the Foreign Office, I’m sure. 

But, this being Singapore, it comes back, in part, to property. Lee Hsien Yang has long been pro-tearing down the Oxley Road property owned by his father in which the People’s Action Party — and Singapore, in a way — was born. The house’s fate came roaring back to headlines after the death of  Lee Wei Ling, the only daughter of Lee Kuan Yew, earlier this month. She had been living in the house since LKY’s death in 2015. 

Now is the time to take it down, Lee Hsien Yang said. He is a firm believer in his father’s wishes that it not become a monument to the dead greats, something he, allegedly, always detested. Lee Hsien Loong, on the other hand, says his father tempered on this with age and instead suggested he’d be happy with a well-maintained, but not sacred, conservation. The former PM-turned-senior-minister has said he’s hands-off. 

Luckily there are so many agencies, then. The National Heritage Board has waded in, announcing yet another assessment of the property. The study, announced yesterday, will see if the house “has national historical, heritage and architectural significance as to be worthy of preservation,” the Straits Times reports. 

“These options are not exhaustive. The intention is for a future government to consider these, and other options that could emerge later, and make an informed and considered decision in the fullness of time, taking into consideration the wishes of Mr Lee Kuan Yew,” the NHB said.