Not in their gang

More and more news coming in about the bans on campaigners entering Singapore - so far we know of two campaigners from the Philippines who were deported immediately on arrival, and others being detained - including the former director of the School of Economics at the University of the Philippines, who now works for Social Watch, and three campaigners from ActionAid - one from Vietnam, one from Kenya and one from Brazil. Another campaigner from the USA was allowed in only on condition that she left straight for Indonesia.

The detainees are being held and questioned for, as far as we know, up to six hours. They are having their mobile phones taken away so they can't even phone colleagues to let them know about the situation. We're sitting here in Singapore wondering where people are - some arrive and tell us about their detentions, some are still missing presumed detained / deported / somehow banned.

In protest, we and at least 80 other organisations (and counting) are boycotting the official programme out here. Instead we are organising our own events, meetings and protests to draw attention to this further silencing of the voice of poor people and the organisations that work with and for them.

And you can see here the famous front page (see below) of yesterday's Strait Times - with another article from today about what campaigners are here for - at least in that one there is some recognition of the fact that we're here to get out a message about economic justice, not to bring chaos to Singapore.