Global Law Enforcers – PM Lee
PM urges global law enforcers to work together
By CHUANG PECK MING
PRIME Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday urged law enforcement agencies worldwide to work together as crimes go trans-national and become more sophisticated.
Mr Lee: ‘Crime, too, has become global… Criminals can move around more easily and run trans-national operations. They often direct crime from offshore bases.’
‘Crime, too, has become global,’ Mr Lee said at the opening of an Interpol-United Nations Ministerial meeting here. ‘Criminals can move around more easily and run trans-national operations. They often direct crime from offshore bases.’
Interpol brings together police from 187 member countries and facilitates international cooperation – even where there are no diplomatic ties between particular states.
Noting that criminals have also gone high-tech, Mr Lee said that they are employing modern communications to freely exchange information, coordinate operations and even share ‘best crime practices’.
‘Jihadist terrorism, drug trafficking, human trafficking and cyber crime are all global in scale and trans-national in nature,’ he said. ‘The same modern technologies and techniques that improve our lives are as easily applied to more sinister ends.’
So to deal with crooks and terrorists, police must become smarter and better equipped, he said. ‘Police officers must learn the latest technologies, understand how they might be abused by felons, as well as how they could be deployed to enhance policing work. Police services must raise the capabilities of their officers, help them master the new tools and always stay one step ahead of criminals.’
Countries must cooperate more closely by sharing intelligence, watching for fugitives and conducting joint enforcement actions, Mr Lee said. ‘Only by working together can we effectively tackle trans-national crime and terrorism.’
Interpol’s constitution prohibits intervention or activity of a political, military, religious or racial character, which encourages member countries to pool information on fugitives, terrorists, stolen goods and stolen and lost travel documents.
‘Such cooperation has enabled countries to extend the long arm of the law beyond traditional borders to take collective action against a common enemy,’ Mr Lee said.
Singapore has gained much from international police cooperation, he said. Through Interpol, criminals and terrorists have been returned to Singapore to face justice.
Interpol-coordinated operations have also scored big successes, including two involving Singapore, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam that were aimed at illegal soccer gambling controlled by organised crime gangs. One of these two joint operations alone led to the arrest of over 1,300 people across various countries and disrupted betting records of almost US$1.5 billion.
Mr Lee also favours deploying civilian police forces to help with peacekeeping. ‘While military forces are indispensable for establishing initial security, civilian police forces are more suited for law and order tasks and for maintaining security,’ he said.
