INCARCERATED somewhere in Singapore are perhaps two dozen young men who have been deprived of their liberty for refusing to perform national service.
Their jailer, the Government, will not disclose who they are or where they are held. Officials from the city-state will not approve requests to visit them.
Most, if not all, are Jehovah's Witnesses, a Christian group that has been a niggling thorn in the side of the authorities for more than 30 years. Its members say donning a military uniform runs counter to their strongly held beliefs, which do not permit 'taking up the sword'. The Government says their refusal is 'disruptive of the national ethos' and indicates it is prepared to go on jailing those refusing to serve.
The curious showdown has drawn little in the way of public attention, either locally or from foreign media. Singapore is better known for its hard-earned efficiency and well-honed pragmatism than as a place that regularly puts dissidents into military detention.
But the treatment of the men - who number just a fraction of those who perform the compulsory service each year - highlights a yawning divide between Singapore's rulers and human-rights campaigners. While the Government stresses the interests of the many over the needs of the few, the activists charge that individual beliefs must be respected.
Those serving time have said that when forced to choose between remaining true to their beliefs and losing their freedom, or yielding to the directives of the state, they feel there is only one course of action open to them. 'I am just doing what Jehovah requires me to do,' one of the accused told an Australian newspaper at his court martial in the late 1990s. 'It's very plain in the Bible.'
