Some Malaysians look at Singapore with a perverse combination of sibling envy and adversarial hatred, while others hold it in reverence.

There’s no doubt that Singapore is the envy of much of the world for its achievements in the economic sphere and in social engineering. Modern Singapore’s founder, Lee Kuan Yew, was above all things a remarkable social engineer and visionary. But he was ruthless towards his enemies, and many found themselves imprisoned and detained on spurious charges, and their names dirtied and reputations destroyed through the government’s thorough use of its dominance of the media.

Famously, in 1966, Member of Parliament and Socialist Front member Chia Thye Poh was arrested along with 22 other party members under Singapore’s Internal Security Act. The detainees were offered freedom if they signed a document promising to renounce violence and to sever all ties with the Communist Party of Malaya.

Thye Poh refused to sign the document on the grounds that to sign it would be “to imply (I) advocated violence before.” He believed he would not be able to live in peace, knowing he had lied. And so, Thye Poh became one the longest serving political prisoners in the world, detained and persecuted without a single criminal charge or trial for 23 years, a jail term that’s almost as long as the term served by one of history’s most famous political prisoners, Nelson Mandela.

There are other stories like that of Chia Thye Poh’s, but one would never hear about them in Singapore’s mainstream – or even online – media.

One merely has to look at the coverage, or lack thereof, of the recent spat between Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and his sister, Lee Wei Ling. Wei Ling, who is a regular columnist for the Straits Times, had to resort to Facebook to publish an article meant for the column because the newspaper had declined to publish it.

In it, she derides her brother for attempting a dynasty-building exercise through a slew of public events commemorating their father’s death. Accusing Hsien Loong of trying to “hero worship” the founding father of Singapore, Wei Ling called her brother’s extravagant memorial to their father an “abuse of power,” to which he responded by saying he was deeply saddened by the accusations. He said the government was merely recognising the desire of Singaporeans to pay their respects to Lee Kuan Yew.

It comes as no surprise that while media outlets all over the world are talking about this rare public spat in Singapore’s tightly-controlled political sphere, no one is talking about it down south. Singapore’s media is all too aware of the punishments that await those who dare step over the line, and the Straits Times knew that if it published Wei Ling’s article, it would have put itself in the government’s crosshairs.

Sometimes we have an overblown view of just how bad things are in Malaysia. Sure, Prime Minister Najib Razak has displayed authoritarian tendencies, but his desire to be generally liked and accepted has probably checked whatever urge he might have to punish his critics.

Indeed, if one considers it for a moment, publishing this very column in Singapore would likely land us in hot water. And yet, despite the criticism we sling at him daily, Najib has not yet taken any action against us. Singapore, for all its advancement and high GDP, lags behind us in terms of press freedom.

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