Singapore bars Amnesty activist from speaking at forum: opposition group

So their methods and some research may be questionable. However, after having worked a while with them in Sydney, I must say that their intentions and enthusiasm are faultless.

SINGAPORE, April 15 (AFP) -

The Singapore government has barred Amnesty International spokesman Tim Parritt from speaking at a forum on the death, an opposition group said Friday.

Parritt, a Briton, was scheduled to speak at the forum, entitled "Death penalty and the rule of law in Singapore", on Saturday, the Open Singapore Centre (OSC) said in a statement.

OSC director Chee Soon Juan said the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority had denied Parritt's application for a professional visit pass without giving any reasons.

Chee told AFP Parritt was allowed to enter the country but was barred from speaking.

"Amnesty International is a prominent critic of the death penalty in Singapore," said Chee, who is also a leader of the opposition Singapore Democratic Party. "No reasons were given for the rejection. As usual, the reply came at the very last minute."

The human rights watchdog in a report last year singled out Singapore for executing more people than any other country relative to its population and renewed calls for it to abolish the death penalty.

It said more than 400 convicts, many of them foreign migrant workers, were executed in Singapore from 1991 to October 2003, which an Amnesty official at that time described as a "shocking number" for a country with just over four million people.

Chee said the forum would proceed on Saturday with mainly local speakers, including himself and another opposition leader, J.B. Jeyaretnam.