Lee Kuan Yew: a towering figure who crushed those who crossed him

March 23, 2015, 11:25 a.m.

He warned Australians they risked becoming the "white trash of Asia" and crushed his political opponents at home.

He warned Australians they risked becoming the "white trash of Asia" and crushed his political opponents at home. He made laws banning chewing gum and jukeboxes and imposed severe restrictions on freedom of speech.

But Lee Kuan Yew, who has died aged 91, turned an island at the tip of the Malaysian peninsula into a glittering regional financial and technology powerhouse with a $US300 billion a year economy.

Mr Lee was a towering figure on the international stage, a man of integrity who stood apart from other Asian nation-builders because he did not become corrupt.

The Cambridge-educated lawyer - who ditched his Anglicised name Harry Lee for his original Chinese name - had a relentless urge to smash those who crossed him, overseeing a system where his opponents were jailed or driven into bankruptcy through costly libel suits; the media was stifled often through libel suits; and political dissent was crushed.

Chia Thye Poh, a physics lecturer and member of Singapore's parliament in 1966, refused to bow to Mr Lee, a decision that led him to become one of the world's longest serving political prisoners.

Mr Lee had accused Mr Chia of being a member of the Communist Party of Malaya and ordered him to sign a declaration renouncing violence. Mr Chia refused. Twenty-five years later Mr Chia was still incarcerated, by then confined to a small, brick guardhouse on Singapore's Sentosa island where he described Mr Lee's refusal to release him as mental torture.

"To renounce violence is to imply you advocated violence before. If I had signed the statement I would not have lived in peace," he said at the time.

The restrictions on Mr Chia, who was never convicted of any crime, were not lifted until 1998.

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Lee Kuan Yew: a towering figure who crushed those who crossed him