Ho Kwon Ping, the founding chairman of Banyan Tree Holdings and Singapore Management University (SMU), said that while he believed that he was wrongfully detained, he does not "bear any grudges against neither Mr Lee (Kuan Yew) nor the PAP (People's Action Party)".

Ho revealed his feelings on the matter for the first time in his new book titled Asking Why: Selected Writings of Ho Kwon Ping.

Despite being detained by Lee’s government, Ho was fair in his assessment of Lee and his actions:

"The key difference between those who detained me - principally Lee Kuan Yew - and others who have wronged me in the business world is that I believe that Mr Lee acted for what he truly believed to be in the best interests of Singapore...

Lee Kuan Yew did what he thought was necessary for the good for Singapore. Some may argue that too often, what was good for Singapore was also convenient for him, and that the two became inseparable."

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Two-month detention in 1977, at age 24

Ho was arrested under the Internal Security Act (ISA), while writing for the Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER).

He was accused by the Internal Security Department (ISD) for making use of FEER as a vehicle to promote his pro-communist ideas.

In his book, Ho recounted how he was being detained in early 1977:

"I was surrounded by plainclothes officers, who put a hood over my head, and drove me to an undisclosed location. I was informed that a detention order has been served against me, and I could be held without trial for two years.”

Ho was taken in at age 24, and remembered that he broke into cold sweat as he had no sensation of time, and was in an environment with "absolutely no stimuli".

No sense of day or night

He described his experience in the room where he was detained:

"I was then put into windowless room of about four or five square metres with just a concrete bench...I led a solitary existence with no sense of day or night, or of time passing."

Ho spent two months in the windowless room with the lights permanently on, not knowing night from day, when mealtimes were supposed to be, or if he was feeling hungry at the right times.

Ho described how he spent his waking hours when he was in solitary confinement:

"I also watched with great concentration a single ant crossing the small cell, simply to focus my mind on something."

There was a “happy ending”: Ho finally got to watch the black-and-white televised confession about 30 years later upon his appointment as the chairman of MediaCorp.

Ho also managed to borrow a copy from the archives to show his teenage children who were curious about his imprisonment.

Ho's encounters with Lee after his detention

Ho said that he met Lee on numerous occasions since his release.

He added that Lee never once spoke about Ho's detention, nor even offered anything close to any apology.

This was because, Ho explained, Lee was focused "only of the tasks at hand".

Ho concluded that Lee showed a softer side of himself to him and his family in Lee's latter years.

Ho felt that it was Lee's way of saying that perhaps he was not a communist after all, and that Ho could contribute to Singapore in his own way.

Top image by Jonathan Lim