Monthly Archives: February 2016

Chief witness against Tan Wah Piow convicted of embezzlement

This article first appeared in Asia Sentinel 2016 Feb 01 by Asia Sentinel Correspondent.

Tan Wah Piow, a onetime student leader who fled Singapore after a trumped-up trial that found him guilty of participating in a 1975 riot in a union hall, is asking that his conviction be quashed 42 years later after the chief witness against him was convicted last month of long-running embezzlement of union funds.

Tan, arguably Singapore’s most prominent political exile – although not the only one – became a bête noir of the late Prime Minister Lee Kuna Yew, who 12 years later accused him of being the mastermind behind a so-called conspiracy from overseas involving 16 young Catholics who were arrested in 1987 for allegedly planning to overthrow the government to form a Marxist state. read more