To Singapore's lasting shame:
Far Eastern Economic Review banned - in Singapore

Singapore (dpa) - Singapore revoked on Thursday approval for the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER) to be sold or distributed in the city-state.

"It is a privilege and not a right for foreign newspapers to circulate in Singapore," said a statement from the Ministry for Information, Communications and the Arts.

FEER's Hong Kong-based publisher failed to appoint a legal representative and pay a 200,000 Singapore dollar ($129,000) bond, the statement said, referring to the Review Publishing Co. Ltd.

The publisher had "not complied by the September 11 deadline, nor has it complied till today, despite a reminder sent to FEER on September 14," the statement said.

"It becomes an offense for any person to sell or distribute or import or possess for sale or distribution" FEER in Singapore," it added.
The article that got them in trouble is here.

Bravo to FEER for sticking to its guns and not pulling the article, as they were requested to, not putting ransom money in escrow and not appointing a legal sacrificial lamb. Perhaps more foreign publications need to do the same thing.

I don't think it matters whether you agree with the article or FEER's editorial line or not. Singapore's government needs to find a more progressive way to deal with news coverage it doesn't like. Banning uppity publications and wrapping censorship in a veneer of noble legalism is beneath a country that should know better. On the heels of the woeful WTO affair, it isn't doing much for the city-state's international image. But, then, they don't care about such trivial things as image, do they?