Lee’s Anti-Hippie Cult Causes Row

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32381, 21 August 1970, Page 11

Lee’s Anti-Hippie Cult Causes Row

(From DAVID BARBER, N.Z.P-4. staff correspondent)

SINGAPORE, Aug. 20. The Singapore Government’s anti-long hair campaign; launched five months ago to stamp out any trace of a hippie cult in the island republic, has finally boiled over into the major diplomatic incident that has long been threatening.

Ultra-short back and sides haircuts given to three youug Malaysian tourists by Singapore police last Saturday yesterday caused the Singapore Prime Minister (Mr Lee Kuan Yew) to postpone an official visit to Kuala Lumpur and soured already touchy relations between the two neighbouring countries.

Mr Lee called off his trip for talks with the Malaysian Prime Minister (Tunku Abdul Rahman) less than two hours before he was due to leave, after hearing of planned student demonstrations awaiting him. The Malaysian Government later summoned the Singapore High Commissioner in Kuala Lumpur to the Foreign Ministry and handed over a diplomatic note calling for al full explanation of the hair-| cuts incident The Singapore Government'

offered its apologies “if the Malaysians had been wrongly and poorly treated” and pointed out that it was hard to tell Singaporeans and Malaysians apart” But Mr Lee dismissed the incident as “insignificant and not important” and told journalists that the long hair and anti-hippie campaign would continue to’ prevent foreigners “infecting Singapore with their fads and fetishes." An official Singapore Government statement admitted that the three youths, rrrested with four Singaporeans last Friday night as “secret society” suspects, had been given short haircuts and charged one Singapore dollar (about NZ35c) each, but said that the trio—with long unkempt hair—had consented. But the statement denied the youths’ claims, first reported in a Malay extremist newspaper and later repeated by Malaysian officials, that the police had made fun of Malaysian leaders, said that the Chinese there were oppressed and that the Malays “could go to hell.”

The anti-long hair campaign in Singapore, has been gathering pace in a way that has disturbed some foreign observers —since the initial ban on hippies was announced in April. A series of clashes with long-haired foreigners, whom (the Government accuses of polluting Singapore’s social environment with drugs, permissiveness and other degenerate habits, have occurred at

the island’s international air- j port and the causeway border c with Malaysia. Immigration officers have i instructions to refuse entry 1 to “hippies” and “help them I on to their next destination" f and diplomats based in Singapore have been called out on 1 a number of occasions by I long-haired tourists disavow- s ing the “hippie” tag. t The American ambassador 1 is said to have had a long 1 verbal battle to get his student son, sporting shoulderlength hair, admitted for a I holiday, and the daughter of i a former Anglican bishop of I Singapore is also reported to ' have had difficulty getting in. < The main problem has been the lack of a definition of a "hippie,” and Mr Lee, who has taken a leading role in the campaign, was today asked to provide this. Whether he clarified the situation is yet to be proved. “Anybody who dresses in a manner which leaves one with the unmistakeable impression that this is part of contemporary aberrations found in highly-developed and affluent societies and imitated by not so highlydeveloped and affluent societies, must prove otherwise,” he said, “The onus is on them (to prove they are not hippies) before we will take i them in.” i On the home front there ' have been persistent reports [ —seldom published in the . cowed local press—of police t round-ups of long-haired

youths and of enforced hair-1 cuts. 1 Public servants have been i instructed not to deal with long-haired customers, and I hirsute pop groups are barred i from television appearances. I The long-playing record of < the musical, “Hair,” is on the I banned list, along with a I string of "decadent” songs such as “Puff the Magic 1 Dragon” and films like “Easy I Rider” and “Woodstock” can- 1 not be shown. A Government television I propaganda programme i shown as part of the cam- < paign this week claimed 1 “long hair is the badge of I decadence. ... It leads to

drugs and permissiveness ..,. horrible crimes and tragedies.” And the Minister of Education warned last month that unless schoolboys and girls heeded the message, a standard short and neat haircut for both sexes would be enforced. But last week-end’s incident was the first in which visitors from a foreign country, who had apparently escaped the “hair net” at the causeway border, had been arrested, on suspicion and later freed without charges but given—with consent or otherwisehaircuts. “Maybe, having read that Malaysian leaders also do not approve of hippies, overzealous police officers might have been carried away by their desire to put these boys on the right path by doing what they would have done to Singaporeans, i.e. advising them to have their hair cut and keep themselves clean,” I said the Singapore Government statement. “It is a storm in a teacup.” And Mr Lee Kuan Yew added: “The hair will grow again 4n a matter of weeks.” He Offered the boys wigs. But Malaysian leaders are not taking the matter so lightly, and many foreign observers regret that the longhair campaign, which has shown disturbing signs of getting out of hand, should have further disrupted the ail too sensitive relations between two countries which only five years ago were one.