Revisiting Operation Coldstore

The Straits Times

11 April 2015

In recent months, several historians and former detainees have questioned the legitimacy of a major government crackdown on communists and leftists in 1963, saying Operation Coldstore was politically motivated. Officials and several academics have responded to these claims, saying the communists posed a real security threat, while some say more evidence ought to be made available.

… In “Original Sin”? Revising The Revisionist Critique Of The 1963 Operation Coldstore In Singapore, historian Kumar Ramakrishna rebuts three broad claims made by those who argue Coldstore was politically motivated.

These are: that the communist threat had been neutralised by the 1960s, that Barisan Sosialis leader Lim Chin Siong was not a communist or a security threat, and that Coldstore had been mounted to get rid of the progressive left.

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