Teo Soh Lung, Kevin Desmond de Souza, Tang Lay Lee, Ng Bee Leng, William Yap Hon Ngian, Kenneth Tsang Chi Seng, Wong Souk Yee, Chng Suan Tze, and Tang Fong Har said that even though they had hitherto kept a "fearful silence", they decided to release a statement because of "the constant barrage of Government taunts and its public invitation to speak the truth". The following are extracts from the statement: One day after release of the statement, all the signatories except Tang Fong Har, who was in the United Kingdom at the time, were re-arrested. Patrick Seong Kwok Kei, a Law Society Council member and one of the lawyers who had acted for several of the detainees in 1987, was also arrested on the same day. On 6 May 1988, lawyer Francis Seow, who was representing Teo Soh Lung and Patrick Seong Kwok Kei, was arrested under the Internal Security Act while waiting inside the Internal Security Department's headquarters to meet his clients. He was supposed to have filed for writs of habeas corpus for his clients on the same day. The government accused him of "colluding with foreign diplomats and officials to lead a group of opposition lawyers and professionals into Parliament." He was alleged to have misused his status as a legal counsel as a cover for political propaganda and agitation. Seow was held in detention for 72 days and was released, subject to restrictions on his freedom of movement and association, as a result of pressure by international human rights organisations. He was later charged and convicted in absentia for tax evasion, having left Singapore to live in exile in the United States where he became a Fellow at the Department of Asian Studies at Harvard University. In response to the ex-detainees' allegations of ill-treatment, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced on 19 April that a Commission of Inquiry would be held to determine if the Marxist conspiracy was a government fabrication and whether the detainees were assaulted and tortured. Trade and Industry Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that "the Government does not ill-treat detainees. It does however apply psychological pressure to detainees to get to the truth of the matter... the truth would not be known unless psychological pressure was used during interrogation." Ow Chin Hock, Member of Parliament for Leng Kee, revealed later that Singaporeans, notably intellectuals, had "harped on the need to protect