Next up was FEER. On December 26, 1987, two months after limited copies of Asiaweek appeared on Singapore’s newsstands with white stickers denoting government approval, the Review was gazetted for writing about those arrested under Operation Spectrum. ^[33] Singapore’s leaders harbored no affection for the publication; after the passage of the 1986 press law, the government had singled out the Review ’s coverage as an example of the kind of journalism the law aimed to prevent.

The Review ’s December 17 article, “New Light on Detentions” by Michael Malik, focused on six detainees—whom the government alleged were Marxist agitators—held for six months. The article also described a June meeting between Prime Minister Lee and Gregory Yong, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Singapore, regarding the detentions. (Many of the jailed activists were linked to the church.) Details of the meeting were provided by Edgar D’Souza, a Catholic priest who was not at the meeting, and who then fled to Australia and renounced the priesthood. ^[34]

Under the gazetting order, Review circulation was cut to 500 from 10,000 copies. FEER responded immediately with a conciliatory offer. Trying to learn from the mistakes of Time and the Wall Street Journal , it had instituted a policy of “right of reply” giving virtually unlimited space to official letters. It now offered to print any letters the government submitted.

This time, however, the prime minister wanted something else. Lee alleged that, even if the Review printed letters of rebuttal, the article presented a “false and defamatory” account in a series of “distorted and mischievous articles” that were “calculated to discredit and denigrate the Singapore government.” ^[35] In January, after giving the Review three days to retract and apologize for the article, Lee sued for libel. He alleged that Malik portrayed him as intolerant of the Catholic Church, and that the Review tried to undermine the fragile balance within Singapore’s diverse society by pitting the church against the state.

FEER fought the suit in court but lost. In 1991, a Singapore judge ordered FEER to pay $100,000 in damages. ^[36] In the meantime, FEER—which had just transferred printing operations to Singapore two years earlier—in 1988 decided to stop printing in Singapore.