Historian Thum defends work, maintains Operation Coldstore was ‘politically motivated’

SINGAPORE — Defending his work in detail for the first time since he had been criticised as having "fallen completely" short of the standards of an objective historian, Dr Thum Ping Tjin stood by his original assertion that Operation Coldstore was politically motivated.

On Thursday (May 3), the Oxford-trained historian released his follow-up submission to the Parliamentary Select Committee looking into deliberate online falsehoods on Internet publishing platform Medium.

In the publicly-available document, he said he was submitting it as a "follow up to my hearing to be entered into the record, to address points raised which I was unable to fully address during the hearing".

It included clarification to points, sources, and documents raised during the hearing, as well as submission of documents requested during the hearing on specific incidents.

Dr Thum, a Singaporean academic, has been in the news since his appearance before the Select Committee at a public hearing on March 29.

He had claimed in his written submission to the committee that historically, there has only been one body that has peddled falsehoods — the People's Action Party (PAP) Government, which has been spreading "fake news" about Operation Coldstore, for example, "for narrow party-political gain".

Operation Coldstore was a 1963 internal security dragnet that saw more than 100 alleged leftist leaders and trade unionists arrested and detained.

Dr Thum was grilled on his research for six hours by committee member, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam, who challenged him with evidence to the contrary.

However, on Thursday, citing various sources and explaining in detail his original argument that Operation Coldstore was conducted for political purposes, Dr Thum reiterated that there was no evidence that the detainees of Operation Coldstore were involved in any conspiracy to subvert the government.

He also stressed that the "fundamental arguments" of his work remains "substantially unchallenged", and that at "no point" did he accept that his work was "inaccurate or misleading".

He also repeated that the crux of his original submission was not addressed in the public hearing. Instead, the Select Committee focused on another article — The Fundamental Issue is Anti-colonialism, Not Merger: Singapore's "Progressive Left".

On Wednesday, three Oxford professors defended his doctoral thesis and academic credentials, after doubts were cast by the Select Committee. This was on top of an open letter in support of him and academic freedom in Singapore surfaced and has been signed by nearly 300 academics from various countries.

Making public an email correspondence between some of the academics who have declared their support for Dr Thum, Select Committee chairman Charles Chong has accused Dr Thum of working with a foreign counterpart to engineer public support for himself, and "to try to influence and subvert our parliamentary processes".

On Thursday, Dr Thum did not address Mr Chong's comments in his further submissions.