Nature as Last Resort: An Interview with Dr Pang Ming, founder of Zhineng Qigong

This article was published by Heaven and Earth Magazine in 1994

Right now we have 200 patients, all in the late stages.  We seldom have patients come in the early middle stages of their illness. They come to us after the doctors told them, you are going to die, and you have the last months to live. We are their last hope. As a result of the lost time and advanced deterioration of the body, our cure rate is low, about 5% {Editor’s Note: Over a period of 12 years, the cure rate was 40%}

Any patient who comes here is going to be depressed, and pessimistic about his chances of recovery. So we don’t talk a great deal about the theory and principles of qigong. We first show him a video of group practice, where a large concourse is filled with hundreds of people generating powerful fields of life energy. We show him demonstrations where patients quickly lose weight or reduce their blood pressure or eliminate tumors. We show him patients’ before and- after condition, the concrete results of practice. We don’t show this to promote ourselves, but only to raise his confidence. In his mind, he is near death. When he sees there’s hope, he practices qigong with determination.

Some patients’ illness responds quickly to practice, others’ more gradually.  One patient had lung and stomach cancer and he was a paraplegic. His doctors said he had one month to  live;  they advised him to leave the hospital and not waste his family’s money. He came here and stayed with us for 19 months, well beyond the time allotted him. Then he died.

Our cancer patients, even though they die, don’t suffer greatly. They don’t need medicines and anesthetics. They’re not emaciated or dispirited when they die. Some patients arrive as thin as a ghost. After practice, they put on weight.  Some die almost a pleasant death while asleep.  Others die while on the practice field;  they take a break and die.   Two died that way recently.  One can say that they died with real human dignity.

Do you find qigong practice has a better cure rate with certain kinds of cancer?

We find little difference.  Our practice is the same for all diseases.  Other qigong methods may be more specialized in their applications and treatment.  But among the many qigong hospitals in the country, ours may have the highest cure rate.  I say ‘may’ because we don’t have a comprehensive study done on this question yet. But if it is true, it is probably because our qigong method is not very complex or over-specialized.

In any case, our success is reflected in our growth in the list few years.  In 1988, we had 500 patients come for treatment. In 1989,900; in 1990,1700; and in 1991, we had 2800 patients.  {Note: in 1999, there were 10,500 patients treated in the Center.}  They come from all over the country.  We don’t promote ourselves advertise.  They come after hearing of other patients’ cures.

Qigong is not well understood in China today. If you advertise, it’s like you are selling something, and people get an unfavorable impression as a result. So we don’t promote qigong, the hospital, or myself. We rely on patients’ own testimony to get the word out. One time, a paraplegic was cured here. He returned home and the next month 20 paraplegics from his village came.

Each term we have 20-80 paraplegics, some so bad they can’t practice at all. They can’t stand or walk, so we sit them near the practice field and gradually movement returns to their limbs. Soon, they are standing and practicing with the group. Their recovery rate is 40%, which is any patient who comes similar to the recovery rate of many other diseases we treat here.

Qigong does not place the practitioner’s attention on forms or rituals outside himself.  It works with energy.

How would you talk about qigong as a tool in man’s quest to know himself?

Qigong is a very profound system of knowledge.  It belongs to the highest ranks of Chinese culture and indeed, world culture.  While India, Greece and Egypt did not use a terminology similar to qigong, all developed knowledge that belonged to the category of qigong.  Chinese people talk about life energy as the source of the universe that causes the growth of all things.  This is a much different creation theory than modern science.  Astrophysicists talk about the Big Bang–an enormous explosion and the universe was created.  But the Chinese talk about the primordial state of the universe in terms of life energy.  Energy that creates and transforms.  The ancients didn’t talk about why this is so, but rather, how can one harmonize with this reality and conserve one’s life energy.  Man has this life energy.  How is he going to use it? To cultivate life energy, one needs to replenish all the life energy that’s been lost.  How? Methods vary.

Most methods rely on cultivating life energy in the body, aiming to make up the loss.  China calls this the cultivation of jingqishen. Another method relies directly to the life energy of nature.  This is our approach.  We cultivate our own life energy through accessing nature’s great store of life energy.  This approach produces quicker results.

But cultivating one’s life energy is not the most fundamental; cultivating one’s spirit is. Mastery of life energy is really achieved through mastery of consciousness. We use consciousness in a careful, craftsmanlike way, to shape our life, to attain our goals. If we use modern terminology to name this process, we call it qigong. The ancients used the word life energy and this mystifies people. But in modern terms, qigong is just the refinement of consciousness to enhance the state of energy in the body.  This leads to vibrant health, a harmonious body and mind, and an awakened spiritual life.

Practicing qigong is very easy.  Using life energy to cure illness is also very easy.  Our patients can learn to use life energy to cure illness in 22 days.  After 3 months, 30-40% can use life energy to diagnose illness.  Diagnosis may be through a visual examination of the patient, or by intuiting or feeling a person’s disease.  Up to 40% learn this skill fairly quickly.  It’s not that complex.

Today, people have all kinds of notions about qigong.  They think one uses qigong and cures an illness and that’s it.  Even if they cure themselves, many don’t believe that deeply in the process.  But qigong is not so limited.  One can help others.  One can help turn other people’s lives around.

Why can qigong cure illness?

Qigong theory says that one’s health is dependent on the body’s normal life processes, which are all dependent on the unimpeded flow of life energy.  An illness is a disturbance of this flow.  Doctors would say functioning is impaired.  Qigong doesn’t focus on the cause of the disease, but rather on restoring the person to total physiological balance.  If the life energy is unimpeded, body processes will normalize and the illness will naturally disappear.  For example, people have unhealthy bacteria in their body but don’t get sick.  Why? Because their bodily functions and immune systems are strong.  They resist the illness.  But qigong does not rely on resisting diseases.  It eliminates the source of the disease altogether, rather than leaving it latent in the body.  In experiments, we see that a person’s life energy can kill bacteria outside himself. Practicing qigong will certainly kill bacteria within.

Why is it people who practice the meditative arts, which are ostensibly good for health, still find their health deteriorates?

This is because traditional practices, while having great benefits, also have drawbacks. Some rely on silence, like sitting practice.  To sit correctly, you must enter stillness.  If you cannot do it or do so poorly, there will be a negative effect on the life energy.  If you cannot enter into deep still states, you will not reap the rewards that come from stillness, like improved brain functioning, increased alpha waves, and decreased beta waves.  In our practice, we don’t over- emphasize stillness; we promote the natural processes in the body, creating greater flow, opening and balance.  These restored natural rhythms produce vibrant health.

Our qigong system differs from other practices in that it changes the ancients’ reliance on stillness.  Instead, we emphasize movement as a basis of cultivation.  The ancients always talk about attaining a state where “not a single thought arises.”  Don’t think this is easy. We say: just concentrate your consciousness, that’s good enough.  Focus on your feeling, awareness, consciousness, and spirit; eliminate the confused, fuzzy, weak, or negative.  The result is you become a master of your own life, not a slave of the material world.

Existentialists like Sartre say, “I want to be free.  I demonstrate for freedom, that makes me free!”  The freedom of qigong isn’t like this.  You must master the laws of life.  After you master them, you’re free.  If you don’t even know what they are, how can you find freedom?

What rules of life are you talking about?

The rules of life we hardly understand at all today.  Modern medicine, biology, and anatomy only describe the activity of living phenomena. They don’t talk about the basis of organic existence.  Geneticists today are able to see DNA’s molecular structure, but this brings them no closer to solving the questions of life.  Why? When the DNA double helixes are alive, you can duplicate them.  Why can’t you do so when they die? There is no life.  Reproduction is impossible.  This means that DNA is just the material base for life, not life itself.

The problem lies with reliance on inadequate scientific methods.  The life sciences employ the same methods as modern physics.  But modern physics explores the inanimate world.  It helps discover the rules of inorganic matter.  To use this method to investigate living organisms will not yield satisfactory answers regarding the nature of life.

The focus of qigong is to investigate life and its laws.  Unlike scientists, qigong practitioners use highly cultivated consciousness to understand life.  The subtlety and sophistication of this consciousness far surpass any methods or technology employed by physicists or chemists.  Life is beyond measurement and quantification.  Our ordinary consciousness can reflect the world around us, but cannot understand it.  Why? Because man places himself in a relationship of part to whole, even though his body and mind form a unity.

Only after cultivation and the attainment of high qigong consciousness, can you understand the laws of life, of living on this earth.

What we understand today is not a macro-view of life, but merely an expression of life phenomena. There are various states of consciousness: one is sick or well, alert or sleep, active, passive, angry, happy… Beyond these is a qigong state.  Qigong focuses on the relative states, seeks to understand their laws and processes, and refines our consciousness to avoid their limitations. Through this understanding, it seeks to move to a non-relative state.  But science inquires through measurement, which is relative.

What it sees in a certain state is no more than an observation.  Science has no means to understand higher states.  It has difficulty in understanding how to return the body and mind to balance and health. This is qigong’s area of expertise.

Qigong cultivation aims to move a practitioner from illness to health and ultimately spiritual attainment. We can see a process of development here. How does this compare to Buddhism and Taoism, which move from lower to higher stages?

For the most part, religions don’ talk about curing illness.  They talk about transcendence, escaping the impurity of life. They talk of paradise. But qigong is interested only in living better on this earth. This is a fundamental difference.

Taoists talk of becoming an immortal.  Hinayana speaks of the 4 dhyanas and samadhis. Mahayana advocates “illuminate the mind and see one’s self-nature.”  It is not very easy.  One must pass many stages, undergo many transformations before reaching this level.  If you have a single thought or a single attachment, you can’t attain it.

An ordinary thought would obscure illumination?

Any thought whatsoever would become an obstruction.  Thoughts are distractions tied to the outside that force one into a relative relationship. One thought can stop you.  One place where your mind is stuck will stop you.  Illuminating the mind is relatively easily.  Penetrating to one’s self-nature (essence) is extremely difficult.

Do you teach specific qigong practices for each illness or do all patients undergo a similar training?

Everyone practices the same set of practices.  The emphasis is on movement, not stillness.

Do you include traditional Daoist concepts like dazhoutian, xiaozhoutian, dantian, meridians, etc.?

It is not necessary.  If you teach that, progress is slow.

When the ancients cultivated, they reached very high levels.  When they had those attainments, they did not need practices such as dazhoutian, xiaozhoutian, or dantian.  They practiced “every point on the body is a dantian” a state where man and nature become one.

What we do here with our patient’s aims at that level from the beginning.  We use posture, movements, changes in consciousness and sounds, to amplify and maximize the connections between man and the  environment.

There are many zhoutian, heavenly circulation practices.  The most traditional is to transform jing into life energy, which gathers and stores sexual vitality and circulates the jingqi in the dantian.  When one achieves the lesser heavenly circulation, xiaozhoutian, it has the effect of lessening or eliminating sexual desire.  How many people today could accept the elimination of their love life?

The next practice is to transform life energy into shen, which creates the great shen and produces the “inner child” (yinger).  Yinger is just a term for an entity created by consciousness and life energy. In this practice, you send the child outside yourself.  When you bring it back, it returns with an external life energy, which you distribute to all points in your body. In this way, man merges with nature.  This is an example of an early practice called dandaogong.  Daoist practices are extremely numerous; this is just one.

So you can see how complex it can get.  Of the tens of millions studying qigong in China today, probably not more than a few have attained the first level, much less the heights of Taoist attainment.  In our practice, we begin with the method of “man and heaven inter-penetrate.”  Using life energy and consciousness, we cultivate the connection between inner and outer, we refine and store the life energy.  We avoid the long, complex practice of zhoutian.

What about the relationship of energies?

We just talk about life energy, which includes jing and the body.  Our body is actually just life energy.  Physicists say mass is the materialization of energy; formless energy manifests as a form.  There is truth to this.  Traditionally, the universe was seen as a result of the transformation of primordial life energy.

After this transformation life energy occupied what we can call the middle position, shen (Mind) the upper, and form (body) the lower.  What we call form or the body is just jing.  Every cell of our body is jing.  The reproduction of a cell is jing.  There are a number of different nuances involved here which makes this terminology difficult at first. The basis of this jing is life energy.  Therefore, to understand life energy is to establish a real root,  a real stability in your life.

How did you develop your understanding of life energy?

I practiced many different kinds of spiritual cultivation. Through the years I kept asking, what has value?  What is useful?  What really works? Gods and bodhisattvas? Mantras? Through this long period of searching and experimentation, I found life energy is the foundation of all.  If you understand it, you will really achieve something in your spiritual life.

But how do you cultivate life energy?  You strengthen it with the body and refine it with consciousness.  This was my discovery and conclusion after so many years.

I am a doctor.  I practiced Western medicine for many years.  Since 1962, I’ve practiced Chinese medicine and acupuncture.  But even my Chinese medical study did not help me solve the profound problems of human existence.  Fortunately, it provided many insights because it’s also a system based on life energy.  Insert a needle to treat inflammation and the swelling disappears. Where did it go?  This is the function of life energy.

So your teaching relies on absorbing and storing the life energy outside oneself and seeks to develop a powerful field of life energy, through group practice.

Yes, we use the field in a special way. We have hundreds of people practicing together, building up a field. This has a tremendous power. During practice, we ask those who have tumors that we can actually see or feel, to come forward so we can observe the results of their practice. After a group session, the tumors shrink or even disappear.  This is something real, something valuable.  It is the same with those with high blood pressure.  After one practice, their pressure drops remarkably.

In China, a lot of people practice qigong and experience uncontrolled laughing, crying, yelling, shaking, hearing voices, etc.  This means they have no base. They falsely confuse these things for real progress.  Some teachers will manipulate their students to have these psychological releases.  But I think it’s really shallow.  We want to look at something real.  A great many Chinese have tumors.  If we can show qigong practice has a beneficial effect on reducing or eliminating tumors, then that’s useful.  It’s a certifiable result.  You can see it.

It may be difficult for people to understand the power of an energy field.

I think it’s best not to introduce [the theory and concepts of] this practice in the beginning.  The more you talk about qigong as miraculous, powerful, extraordinary, the more difficult it is for people to accept it.  Even in China, I only introduce teaching that is close to people’s real experience, something they can actually use.  So I say, first talk about qigong as a cultivation to cure illness.  People must learn to cure their own illness and not hope that a teacher will rub them or save them in some way.  First establish your own health.  A lot of people think, the more complicated a practice, the more profound it is.  Actually, the more complicated a practice, the less effective it is.  So if you learn how to harness and use this life energy of nature, to cure illnesses in yourself and others, you’ve really learned something fundamental. You have a stable base from which to go forward.

Mr Lee Kuan Yew’s lawyer, Davinder Singh, remembers the man

MAR 23, 2015 Rachel Chang Assistant Political Editor

SINGAPORE – Top litigator Davinder Singh, who represented Mr Lee Kuan Yew in his controversial lawsuits against opposition politicians and foreign media outlets, said on Monday that it was a “wild dream come true” to work for a man who was his parents’ hero.

“When I was growing up, I would hear my parents describe Mr Lee Kuan Yew as the greatest man alive who gave his people, especially the minorities, the ability to live with dignity and in safety,” he wrote.

When Mr Singh was a cadet in the Singapore Armed Forces Training Institute in the 1970s, there was once a parents’ visit where Mr Lee was guest-of-honour.

“My father immediately stood up when it was announced that Mr Lee had arrived, even though he must have known that, standing so far away in the midst of hundreds of parents and cadets, Mr Lee would not have been able to see him. After he stood up, others from all races followed. It was then that I truly realised what this Chinese man meant to my Punjabi father who was not even born in Singapore.”

“I will also not forget the time when my mother was moved and actually applauded when towards the end of one of his National Day Rally speeches, Mr Lee said that that he would get up even as he is lowered into the grave, if something went wrong. And she did that while sitting on the couch at home.”

“It were these spontaneous reactions from migrants, who had seen what life was like in their home countries and now felt protected by a man they completed trusted, that made me pause and think.”

Mr Singh, who is chief executive of law firm Drew & Napier, said that working for Mr Lee was “the greatest, most unforgettable experience of my life.”

Mr Singh won court victories on Mr Lee’s behalf against opponents like opposition politicians Tang Liang Hong, Chee Soon Juan and foreign media outlets like The Economist, Bloomberg and the New York Times.

“I sat with and talked to this genius who, more than anyone, understood human nature and societies, who had the third eye and could see trends and dangers which we mere mortals were blind or oblivious to, and who knew with complete confidence what was best for his people and Singapore.

“It was not possible to leave a meeting with him without being spellbound. Although he had not practised for decades, he remembered the finer points of the law from his days at university.”

“Every discussion was an exhilarating lesson which he taught with conviction and passion. It would invariably begin with the matters on which he needed legal advice, but he would always use the occasion to share his views about the issues of the day and to remind me of the importance of standing up to those who would do us harm and of showing them that we are their equal. He was the consummate teacher, giving his time and attention to every detail, even if it was just to show me how to elegantly sharpen a barb.”

“I do not know why the stars contrived to give Mr Lee Kuan Yew to Singapore or why they bestowed on me the priceless gift of working for him. But they did, and for that, my family and I shall always be grateful.”

Arbitration pioneer Alvin Yeo offers tip to young lawyers

Whether it is handling the decade- long Susan Lim court saga or a $250 million arbitration spat involving firms backed by famed Malaysian and Indonesian tycoons, Senior Counsel (SC) Alvin Yeo is a master of his craft – both in litigation court work and arbitration advocacy.

The former MP and veteran lawyer, who led teams in the two high-profile cases, told The Straits Times both were equally challenging but required the two different skill sets. He also advises young lawyers to cut their teeth in court work first, before plunging into arbitration where both your competitors and your markets are global.

SC Yeo, who turns 55 tomorrow, was last week lauded by the renowned London-based legal directory Chambers Asia-Pacific with the Outstanding Contribution to the Legal Profession award in its 2017 honours list for the region at a gala event held here.

Chambers Asia-Pacific described Mr Yeo as “an excellent strategist as well as a first-rate litigator” who is a “deeply impressive and extremely capable individual”, and who provided leadership on Singapore International Arbitration Centre and International Chamber of Commerce proceedings. The rare award is another mark of recognition for SC Yeo, who in 2000 became the youngest lawyer appointed senior counsel here at age 37.

SC Yeo was called to the Bar in 1988. He, current Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon and Senior Counsel Wong Meng Meng were the three founding partners of WongPartnership in 1992.

The firm, then a boutique litigation firm with 11 lawyers, has today become a top-tier full-service firm with some 300 lawyers and has offices in six countries in Asia.

CLIENTS’ EXPECTATIONS

The largest source of stress from disputes work stems from the win-lose nature of the work. At the end of the day, the client is looking for a positive result from his case, not just a valiant losing effort.

SENIOR COUNSEL ALVIN YEO

Mr Yeo is currently chairman and senior partner of the firm, which is the youngest of Singapore’s Big Four law firms, with each of the three others being more than twice its age.

SC Yeo’s legal work also spans the growth of Singapore as an international arbitration centre, being a pioneer in the field more than two decades ago.

Two high-profile cases he led in the areas of open-court litigation and closed-door arbitration attest to his broad experience and ability.

In litigation, he was lead counsel for the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) in its disciplinary proceedings against Dr Lim for overcharging in relation to a $24 million bill for a patient in 2007. She was eventually suspended for three years and fined $10,000 in 2012.

In the course of the saga, Dr Lim took the SMC to court to appeal against the outcome and failed.

SC Yeo said it was “one of the most contested SMC cases” and had an “international element”.

But, if he had his way, there would have been little publicity on the details of the case.

“This was a case which attracted so much media attention. In accordance with the SMC’s approach of preserving the confidentiality of its proceedings, I applied on its behalf to have the court proceedings held in camera,” he said. This was done to protect the reputation of the doctors facing disciplinary proceedings, prior to the conclusion of those proceedings, he added.

“Unfortunately, this was resisted, and the proceedings were held in open court, with all the resulting publicity,” he said.

By contrast, in the case of arbitration hearings, publicity is not an issue as confidentiality is a condition. But an arbitration case comes to the public’s attention when the private award is challenged in court.

He cites the spat over a failed pay-television venture between the Astro group controlled by Malaysian billionaire Ananda Krishnan and the Indonesian Lippo group where eight Astro units sued three units of Lippo to enforce the arbitration award in Singapore.

The Court of Appeal in 2013 overturned the $250 million arbitration award won by Astro, and Lippo’s PT First Media and PT Ayunda Prima Mitra had to pay about $700,000 to five units of Astro.

SC Yeo said the challenges in such an arbitration case stem from a range of issues which are fought out across a span of jurisdictions.

In the case, the proceedings took place in Britain, Singapore and Hong Kong, with a host of personalities of different nationalities as, variously, the arbitrators, the legal counsel, expert and factual witnesses.

“It is mastering the sheer breadth of issues playing out over multiple proceedings and executing an overall, coordinated strategy that is the biggest challenge,” he said.

“The arbitration process tends to be very intense, where everything is crammed into a week as some of the parties fly in from abroad and you start very early and finish very late.

“In court, it is not so cramped; they might give you four weeks, six weeks for your trial. In that sense, it’s slightly more spaced out but the fact that you are on your feet for four, six weeks itself is a challenge.”

He advised young lawyers to start off in court litigation to acquire the advocacy and cross-examination skills which they can then apply to the arbitration context.

“In arbitration, your chances for oral advocacy are actually more limited. So you have to make sure it counts because you actually have less time.”

Asked about winning and losing cases, he said: “The largest source of stress from disputes work stems from the win-lose nature of the work. At the end of the day, the client is looking for a positive result from his case, not just a valiant losing effort. If the outcome is not successful, which does happen, you have to analyse what the reasons are, learn from your mistakes, and move on. There is no other way to survive in this practice.”

U2 – All I Want is You

“All I Want Is You” is the final song on U2’s 1988 album, Rattle and Hum, and was released on 13 June 1989 as the album’s fourth and final single.

Bono wrote the lyric of the 1988 song “All I Want Is You” as a meditation on the idea of commitment.He later said, “[It]’s clearly about a younger version of myself and my relationship with Ali [Hewson],” and added that by nature he was a wanderer, not a family man, and that “The only reason I’m here is because I met someone so extraordinary that I just couldn’t let that go.”

Jarryd James – 1000x ft. Broods

“1000×” (pronounced “a thousand times”) is a single by Australian singer-songwriter Jarryd James featuring New Zealand indie pop group, Broods. It was released on 17 June 2016.

Even if I’m leaving you at the door
Even when I know that you’re never lonely
Harder than imagined
Harder when it’s cold
Even when I’m playing in the fire
Even when I’m doing it for all my life
Harder than imagined
Harder when I let it go

Tell me that love is enough
The seas will be parted for us
Tell me that love is, ooh

In another lifetime
I would never change my mind
I would do it again
Ooh, a thousand times
Just to let you in here
Where you make me lose my mind
In another life I’d do it all again a thousand times

Never would I ever let my love escape you
Never keep you from the promises I gave you
Further than imagined
Further than we’ve ever known

V. K. Rajah: The ‘reluctant’ A-G and his ethos of fairness

Mr V. K. Rajah, who retired as Attorney-General last Saturday, hailed the work of AGC staff who work long hours in the belief of “serving a wider cause”. An AGC initiative for lawyers to work with abused foreign workers was also introduced under his watch.

Straits Times, 18 January 2017

Retired Attorney-General reviewed AGC sentencing positions to avoid ‘disproportionate’ punishments

Before he became the Attorney-General in 2014, Mr V. K. Rajah twice declined the offer in 2007 and 2013.

“I was a reluctant A-G, but once I decided to be A-G, I put my heart and soul into it,” he said in an interview with The Straits Times at his office last Friday. “I put in 110 per cent, and as long as I held office, I wanted to discharge my responsibilities to the best of my ability.”

In a wide-ranging interview, Mr Rajah, who left the post last Saturday, said one of the changes he implemented soon after taking the job was a reporting mechanism to review the prosecution’s sentencing positions. If the position was excessive or disproportionate, the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) would inform the defence counsel to go ahead and appeal, and prosecution would not object.

Mr Rajah, 60, said prior to this, prosecutors reported to the senior leadership matters that might attract media or public attention.

“I was more interested in (other) matters and our sentencing position that would affect the larger swathe of the population, from shoplifting to property, offences of any sort… and I wanted us to review our sentencing position on every possible area of criminal activity,” he said.

V. K. Rajah on two cases of significance
  • WHY AGC DID NOT PUSH FOR A HEAVIER SENTENCE FOR DAD WHO KILLED SON Banker Philippe Marcel Guy Graffart, then 42, had killed his five-year-old son last year amid a bitter custody battle.The charge was reduced from murder to culpable homicide as the Belgian national was assessed to be suffering from a major depressive disorder.

    His estranged French wife had engaged lawyers to press for a higher sentence.

    The Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC), said Mr Rajah, would use the full force of law to prosecute cases that were cold-blooded and premeditated.

    “Where homicide takes place as a result of mental issues, it’s unpremeditated, where there is a momentary loss of control, we appraise the facts differently,” he said.

    He also observed that the case arose out of a bigger divorce squabble.

    This is why family law should be practised in a more collaborative and amiable way, he said.

    Mr Rajah added: “Unfortunately after reading the file – and I went through it very thoroughly – I felt that the lawyers advising the couple added fuel to the fire.”

    WHY PROSECUTION APPEALED TO REDUCE CYCLIST’S SENTENCE 

    Mr Rajah said the public might not be aware but the AGC has informed counsel to appeal when a sentence is excessive or disproportionate after reviewing the case.

    The 2015 case involving Mr Lim Choon Teck, then 35, was different as he did not have a lawyer. Mr Lim had received a jail sentence of eight weeks for knocking down an elderly pedestrian while cycling on a pavement. After a review, Deputy Public Prosecutor Prem Raj Prabakaran appealed to have the sentence reduced, arguing that the prosecution believed the original sentence was disproportionate to his culpability and the fact that he had pleaded guilty at the first reasonable opportunity.

    “If (Mr Lim) appealed, there was no certainty that the High Court judge might agree with him… So I directed my colleagues, and they were taken aback that we should appeal,” said Mr Rajah. Mr Lim’s jail term was cut to three weeks.

    Mr Rajah said: “I’m glad the case was publicised because it also assured the public that AGC was trying to do right rather than to punish people excessively.”

    Ng Huiwen

All cases that were concluded were reported in the form of a summary report and Mr Rajah would review these cases every evening.

In one unusual case, the AGC even appealed for a sentence to be reduced. The accused, a cyclist who had knocked down an elderly person, did not have his own lawyer.

Originally sentenced to eight weeks’ jail in 2015, his sentence was reduced to three weeks after the Deputy Public Prosecutor appealed to have it slashed.

Mr Rajah said his “obsessiveness for looking at things granularly” boiled down to a need to exercise the power of the prosecution carefully. Not all were on board at first with the decisions he made, including the move to appeal to have the cyclist’s sentence reduced.

Some colleagues had told him the decision would not have been possible in the AGC a decade ago, because “that’s not part of our culture”.

“But having said that, I think all of them were immediately on the same side because they realised and appreciated that this accorded with their role as ministers of justice.

“My operating ethos in every … office that I held is to ensure fairness. And fairness includes, apart from due process, proportionality. It’s in no one’s interest for individuals to be punished harshly,” he said.

Another initiative launched in his time involved lawyers in the AGC who volunteered to work with abused foreign workers. They halved the time it took to resolve cases that otherwise would require the foreign workers to stay for months or even years in Singapore to resolve their situation in court.

Mr Rajah hailed the work of AGC staff. “Many officers in the AGC and in the public service work anonymously as they should and get very little credit.

“They put in long, long hours of work over weekends, over holidays, and they do this not because they are looking for recognition, but they do this because they believe it’s the right thing and they are serving a wider cause.”

Mr Rajah spent 20 years in the private sector, becoming managing partner of law firm Rajah & Tann. In 1997, he was among the first lawyers to be appointed Senior Counsel.

V. K. RAJAH…

ON HIS ROLE AS ATTORNEY-GENERAL

I was a reluctant Attorney-General, but once I decided to be A-G, I put heart and soul into it. I put in 110 per cent and, as long as I held office, I wanted to discharge my responsibilities to the best of my ability. There is no point having a half-hearted A-G.

ON UPHOLDING FAIRNESS

My operating ethos in every appointment or office that I held is to ensure fairness. And fairness includes, apart from due process, proportionality. It’s in no one’s interest for individuals to be punished harshly.

ON SELECTING HIS TEAM

I pay particular attention to the way people interact and I am less than impressed by people who manage upwards and are all brown-nosed… I rather let the work speak for themselves.

He was then on the Bench for 10 years, first being appointed Supreme Court justice in 2004 and then Judge of Appeal three years later. It was then, in 2007, that he first declined the Attorney-General post.

“I enjoyed my work. Further, I was keen to continue working with Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong, whom I greatly respected. I regard him as the finest legal mind who has held public office in Singapore.”

Outside of his office, Mr Rajah reads extensively on social and political issues that affect Singapore and the wider world, as well as the sciences, such as psychology and neuroscience. “But since I became A-G, I’ve read only a handful of books,” he said, as he spent more time reading up on ongoing cases, even the minor ones, such as shoplifting.

Mr Rajah said: “I could leave my law firm when I wanted to and the fact that it continues to thrive 13 years after I left it means that I left it with good foundations and in good shape.” Former defence minister Howe Yoon Chong, in a conversation with Mr Rajah years ago, called the same quality a “walking capital” and the term stuck with him.

He entered the role as the “reluctant A-G”, but with his retirement, he said: “I made sure everything that I’ve done, every institution I’ve done, I have left it in better shape.”

Shiri – When I Dream (1999)


Shiri (Hangul: 쉬리; RR: Swiri) is a 1999 South Korean action film, written and directed by Kang Je-gyu and starring Han Suk Kyu, Yunjin Kim and Song Kang Ho.

Swiri was the first Hollywood-style big-budget blockbuster to be produced in the “new” Korean film industry (i.e. after Korea’s major economic boom in late 1990s).

The movie was released under the name Shiri outside of South Korea; in Korea, the title was spelled Swiri. The name refers to Coreoleuciscus splendidus, a fish found in Korean fresh-water streams. At one point Park has a monologue wherein he describes how the waters from both North and South Korea flow freely together, and how the fish can be found in either water without knowing which it belongs to. This ties into the film’s ambitions to be the first major-release film to directly address the still-thorny issue of Korean reunification.

The total budget of the film was US$8.5 million, at the time the single biggest budget allocated to a Korean movie. Part of the funding was covered by the Korean electronics giant Samsung. The film was a critical and financial success in Korea and broke box office records. Shiri was seen in South Korean cinemas by 6.5 million people, beating the previous record set by Titanic of 4.3 million.

Sia – The Greatest

According to various outlets, the video honors the victims of the Pulse Nightclub shooting which occurred in June 2016 in Orlando, Florida.

Directed by Sia and Daniel Askill and choreographed by Ryan Heffington, the video stars Maddie Ziegler, the young dancer who also brought Sia’s visions to life in videos for “Chandelier,” “Elastic Heart,” “Cheap Thrills” and “Big Girls Cry.”

The clip starts on a black screen with the words #WEAREYOURCHILDREN printed across. Then, we see a crying Ziegler wiping paint under her eyes, as if crying rainbow tears, or perhaps applying warpaint for battle. A large group of kids lies on the ground below her, motionless, and she begins screaming (though we don’t hear her), urging the kids to get up.

Once the music starts, the group begins moving in unison, with Maddie leading the charge. Attitude reports that the children represent the victims killed in the deadliest mass shooting in America’s history ― “49 dancers for 49 lives lost,” as the magazine put it. With lyrics like, “Don’t give up, I won’t give up / Don’t give up, no no no” and “Running out of breath but I / oh I I got stamina,” it’s hard not to draw those parallels.

The kids dance through an old house, eventually coming together as one group. They jump up and down, moving together as a single entity (much like individuals would at a club as music blares through the speakers) before collapsing to the ground, leaving behind the haunting visual of bodies on the floor.

Writers from numerous media outlets, including E! Online, Cosmopolitan, Variety, People magazine, concluded that the video was a tribute to the victims of the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting. The video opens with a low drone and cuts between shots of a fraught Maddie Ziegler smearing rainbow colors on her cheeks. She frees 48 other young people trapped in a cage (49 being the number of people killed in the shooting); their freedom is shortlived, however. Later, a wall is seen riddled with bullet holes as everyone falls to the ground, and tears stream down Ziegler’s face. Kornhaber wrote:

Absent of any social context, it’s all striking and beautiful and ineffably sad. With the knowledge that it was inspired by queer youths and friends gunned down in the act of coming together and enjoying themselves, it becomes almost unbearably poignant. Sia keeps singing about having stamina; Kendrick Lamar’s verse, omitted from the video, is all about surviving adversity and haters. What’s so potent about the video—and so specifically awful about this massacre—is that its subjects do seem to have struggled and triumphed to find the freedom to flip out together, and they are still cut down. It’s bookended by Ziegler crying: As is appropriate, there’s no take-home moral to make what happened seem okay.