In 2023, I experienced something I never expected in a country like Singapore. Not once, but twice, I was detained and interrogated at Changi Airport—not for breaking any law, not for carrying suspicious items, but for my work as an academic and journalist who writes on Middle Eastern affairs, especially Palestine.
I am an Indonesian citizen. I grew up in Qatar due to my father’s work relocation and completed my high school and undergraduate education there. I later studied in the UK, and between 2022 and 2025, I lived and worked in South Korea as a Research Professor at Busan University of Foreign Studies. My writing has long focused on the politics of the Middle East, with a consistent interest in Palestine—a cause rooted in personal history, moral clarity, and scholarly duty.
In February 2023, my wife and I were in transit in Singapore, flying back to Indonesia from South Korea. We had planned a quiet evening during our overnight layover, including a stop to try halal noodles at Tampines Mall. But instead of a peaceful layover, I was stopped at immigration and taken to a secluded room beside the counter. My wife was told to wait nearby, confused and anxious.
After a short wait, three men approached me, identifying themselves as Singapore’s security officers. They questioned me about my background, my travel history across the Middle East, and most tellingly—my academic and journalistic work. They seized my phone and combed through its contents. One of them referred to me as a “prolific writer,” a remark that made it clear they had done prior research on me before the encounter. Another asked, “Why do you write about the Middle East, especially Palestine?” They also pressed me on my views regarding the situation in the Middle East, suggesting a deeper interest not just in what I had written, but in the perspectives I held.
They never explicitly accused me of wrongdoing. But their fixation on my publications, and on my years living across the Middle East, was a clear indication that my intellectual work had triggered their attention. Later, my wife told me that one officer had directly told her that they were questioning me because of my journalism. After hours of interrogation, I was released and escorted to the departure gate. We never got to try the noodles, and we were told to wait until morning for our connecting flight. Before letting me go, one officer gave a parting warning: “Don’t write about our encounter.”
I’m writing about it now because such intimidation cannot go unchallenged.
Seven months later, in September 2023, it happened again. I was on a flight from Busan to Yogyakarta via Singapore. Because the transfer wasn’t automatic, I had to go through immigration to recheck my bags. The moment my passport was scanned, I was flagged and pulled aside once more. The questioning this time was shorter, but the tone and focus were the same. Even when I returned in the morning to board my next flight, I was flagged again and directed to a “special” immigration counter.
These were not isolated or accidental encounters. My name and passport had clearly been red-flagged.
Ironically, I have professional ties with Singapore itself. I am affiliated with the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore—one of the country’s premier academic institutions on Middle Eastern affairs. But that did not seem to matter to the security officers who questioned me. My intellectual contribution meant nothing in the face of state suspicion.
I have traveled to over 40 countries. Like many Muslims and Middle East-focused researchers, I’ve experienced scrutiny at airports, including once under the UK’s notorious Schedule 7 counter-terror law at Manchester Airport. But to face this kind of treatment in Singapore—a country I had visited multiple times in the past without issue, and the very first country I ever traveled to as a young student—was deeply unsettling.
Singapore’s position on Palestine is telling. While it officially supports a two-state solution and often expresses concern over violence in the region, its foreign policy leans heavily toward Israel. Military cooperation between the two states is robust, including procurement of Israeli-made weaponry. As such, open criticism of Israel or public support for Palestinian rights may be quietly discouraged within Singapore’s tightly controlled public sphere. For foreign nationals like myself, even transiting through the airport can be enough to trigger scrutiny.
This raises critical questions about freedom of expression and academic independence—not just inside Singapore, but across a growing network of states that prioritise geopolitical alliances over basic rights. The chilling effect is real. After these experiences, I now actively avoid flights that transit through Singapore. I decline invitations to speak or participate in events there. I no longer feel safe traveling through a country that punishes intellectual inquiry into the Middle East.
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We must ask: what kind of global academic and journalistic space are we creating when states begin punishing people not for what they do, but for what they write? When security officers begin quoting your articles to justify a border interrogation, you know you are not just being profiled—you are being surveilled for thought.
Journalists and scholars must remain vigilant. We must continue to speak truth to power, especially when it concerns oppressed peoples like the Palestinians. It is essential to continue challenging power through critical inquiry and to document the subtle and overt ways in which restrictions on freedom of expression and dissent extend beyond national borders.
Singapore, for its part, must be held accountable. If it wants to remain a respected hub for global transit, business, and academia, it cannot target people based on their views. It cannot pick and choose which intellectual conversations are permissible. And it certainly cannot suppress writing on Palestine without revealing its own complicity in a much larger effort to silence that struggle.
Let us be clear: Palestine is not a taboo. Palestine is not a crime. Writing about it should not make anyone a suspect.
I was told not to write about what happened to me at Changi Airport. But silence is not an option.
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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.
