They stood firm on their convictions despite the odds. Some paid a heavy toll for their beliefs – deprivations, long prison terms, lonely lives in self-imposed exile. But they never broke. Some will say the unflinching attitude of these dissidents against what they perceived as coercive authority has been an exercise in futility. Yet other say the course of Singapore’s history might have been altered if their will had prevailed. Their stories need to be told. The first of it’s kind, this book will inform and educate. Rather than to glorify their tough stance, these memoirs are a record of human endurance. It exemplifies the extremes sacrifices some people will make in pursuit of their ideals. Written by veteran journalist and author Clement Mesenas, this book chronicles the lives of twenty of this country’s leading dissidents – including Lim Chin Siong, David Marshall and Ong Eng Guan, among many others. Clement Mesenas started his career in The Straits Times in 1968, cutting his teeth in journalism as a young crime reporter before moving on to the sub-editors desk and then to the field of magazine publishing. He was branch union chairman and secretary-general of the Singapore National Union of Journalists. He also co-founded the Asean Confederation of journalists. He left Singapore in 1979 to become managing editor of the Kuwait Times, where he worked for 10 years before moving to the Gulf News in Dubai, where he served 10 years as its deputy editor. He returned to Singapore in 2000 to join MediaCorp’s TODAY newspaper as one of its pioneering editors and retired in 2011. He now publishes a number of community publications and is working towards establishing a global network through digital media platforms.
