I had to reread that headline a few times before I remembered Massive Attack is a band 😑

Ever since the first Gulf war.

They kinda did tricky dirty. But over all yeah.

They care about enforcing censorship and keeping a lid on "politics" disrupting "social harmony". Once again Palestine is an issue that unearths the deeper fractures and contradictions in a society.

Well, theres this really insane military power that they're close trading partners with that really cares about their little ethnostate vassal.

Don’t they have other things to worry about on the other side of the planet?

Palestine-Singapore is not that far away compared to, say, Palestine-USA.

When publicly stating alignment with Israel or Palestine, you have to choose if you want to be hated by the government, or the actual people on the street.

Possibly, but unlikely.

Singapore has a lot of very strict laws, and they apply them rigorously. Famously their drug possession laws have a ton of prison time, and often the death penalty for trafficking.

From the article, it is a very narrow but all encompassing law, originally passed in 1949 and the last update in 2021 predates the most recent conflict...

The decision is tied to Singapore’s policies on public speech, which prohibit publicly displaying foreign national emblems without a permit or exemption.

https://sso.agc.gov.sg/Act/FNECDA1949

It always amazes me how different people and entities are held to different standards.

☝️

According to the article, yes:

The decision is tied to Singapore’s policies on public speech, which prohibit publicly displaying foreign national emblems without a permit or exemption.

You can freely wave the flag of Singapore in Singapore, but for any other national flag, there could be a problem if you don't get permission first.

There's just a lot of weird laws in Singapore.

The German government is apparently blocking EU Sanctions to Israel but that's because it's pretty easy to block things in the EU.

Making the EU actually do things (such as banning this band from entering the Schengen zone) on the other hand is way more difficult since the other ones can block it (which Spain would almost certainly do it on this subject and many others would do simply because they're against blocking people to enter the EU just because one EU nation's government discords with them politically - the bullcrap about criticism of Israel being anti-semitism has very little traction in most of the EU and apparently judging by recent news it has no traction even in the German Justice system).

They've only had 1 party rule, it's technically a democracy but it's as rigged as it can be without crossing the line into actual rigging.