1965 Singaporean independence
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 8 August 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On 9 August 1965 Singapore announced it had left the Federation of Malaysia and become an independent sovereign state. Explaining the separation at a news conference, the prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, was overcome with emotion.
Fifty years later in 2015, Catherine Davis spoke to Manjeet Kaur who was 15-years-old when Singapore became independent.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Lee Kuan Yew, Prime Minister of Singapore, announcing secession from the Federation of Malaysia. Credit: John Cantwell/AP Photo)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to witness history from the BBC World Service. We're the podcast that takes you back to a moment in history. We bring it all to life through incredible archive and the amazing memories of key witnesses. episodes are just nine minutes long and they come out every weekday. |
| 0:22.7 | If that sounds like your thing, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts |
| 0:27.2 | and turn your push notifications on so you never miss a program. |
| 0:30.8 | Today we take you back 60 years to the declaration of a new sovereign state, |
| 0:35.9 | now one of the richest countries in the world, Singapore. |
| 0:39.3 | In 2015, Catherine Davis spoke to a Singaporean woman who was just 15 when Singapore announced |
| 0:45.7 | it had left the Federation of Malaysia. |
| 0:51.8 | It's the 9th of August, 1965, and in a television studio in Singapore, |
| 0:57.9 | the country's Prime Minister, Li Kuan Yew, is about to explain why his country is no longer part of the Federation of Malaysia. |
| 1:06.2 | The atmosphere is charged. |
| 1:08.0 | I had belief in merger and the unity of these two territories. |
| 1:15.2 | You know, it's people connected by geography, economics, and ties of kingship |
| 1:27.6 | with your mind if we stopped for a while |
| 1:32.7 | visibly upset |
| 1:34.2 | Li Kuan Yu pauses and wipes his eyes |
| 1:37.0 | Singapore is now an independent sovereign state |
| 1:40.9 | separated from its larger neighbour |
| 1:43.1 | the news conference is broadcast to the nation. |
| 1:46.7 | You're all watching TV in one of the neighbours' house when we saw Lee Kuan Yew cry. |
| 1:52.2 | And we all look at each other and we wonder why. |
| 1:54.9 | I think they were so shocked. |
| 1:55.9 | Even I, when I saw him cry, I was shocked myself because I was only a little kid. |
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