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The bungalow was built for a Dutch trader in colonial times, but it has become part of modern Singaporean lore. It was where Lee Kuan Yew lived for decades, where he started his political party and where he began building Singapore into one of the richest countries in the world.
Mr. Lee had said that he wanted the house to be demolished after he died rather than preserved as a museum, with the public “trampling” through his private quarters.
But the wording of his will left the property’s fate in limbo and caused a rift between his three children – one that reflects an intensifying debate over Singapore’s semi-authoritarian political system.
Lee Hsien Yang, the youngest child, joined those who complain that the city-state’s prosperity has come at the cost of a government that lacks accountability.
After Lee Kuan Yew’s death in 2015, the eldest child, by then Singapore’s prime minister, argued that his father’s instructions for the bungalow were ambiguous. His siblings wanted it demolished, though one continued to live in the house, and as long as she did, its fate remained unresolved.
Then, after her death in October, the dispute resurfaced – and escalated sharply. Lee Hsien Yang, called Yang by his parents and siblings, announced that he had obtained political asylum in Britain because he feared being unfairly imprisoned in Singapore over the disagreement.
Yang said his brother, Lee Hsien Loong, had abused his power in the conflict over the house.
Yang, 67, described what he called a pattern of persecution by the Singapore government in recent years. In 2020, his son was charged with contempt of court for criticizing Singapore’s courts in a private Facebook post. That year, his wife, a lawyer who had arranged for the witnesses at the signing of the patriarch’s will, was barred from practicing law for 15 months. Then the couple faced a police inquiry about lying under oath. In 2022, they left Singapore.
In October, Yang announced that Britain had granted his asylum request, ruling that he and his wife “have a well-founded fear of persecution and therefore cannot return to your country.”
Yang, the youngest child, wants to honor his father’s wishes for the house…
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