20 Aug 2025
Excerpts from The Silent Roar by Iris Koh:
The Other Side of the Vaccine Story, Aug 9 2021-2025. (Chapter 10)
NATIONAL DAY 2025: THE CASE FOR A NATIONAL INQUIRY
Death 1:
On the morning of Singapore’s 60th birthday, while the nation prepared to celebrate, tragedy struck. At Hendon Camp, home of the SAF’s elite Commandos, a young serviceman was found unconscious at the swimming pool during training.
At just 7.15am, a symbol of youth, strength, and protection collapsed without warning. Despite immediate CPR and evacuation to Changi General Hospital, he was pronounced dead at 7.44am. He left behind his family, his army friends and a nation in shock. The news spread quickly, and questions reverberated quietly through society: How could a healthy, trained young commando die so suddenly?
On the very day we celebrated our nation’s endurance and strength, the sudden loss of one of our finest felt like a national wound. Beneath the grief, an unspoken question lingers: Did he take the vaccines?
Yet, this would not be an isolated case of operationally fit, healthy soldiers dropping dead suddenly. Just weeks before that…
Death No. 2:
On June 21 2025, a Certis auxiliary police officer died after collapsing during a National Day Parade (NDP) rehearsal at the Padang, said the Ministry of Defence (Mindef) and Changi Airport Group (CAG). The 47-year-old man was from the OneChangi contingent for the parade and ceremony segment of NDP 2025.
Death No. 3:
On June 30, another NS man died after collapsing outside Maju Camp on the evening of June 30. The 30-year-old had completed a National Service Fitness Improvement Training (NS FIT) session at Maju Fitness Conditioning Centre between 6.50pm and 8pm.
These losses demand more than condolences. They demand scrutiny, transparency, and ultimately, a National Inquiry.
Four years on from the vaccine rollouts, Singapore — among the most highly vaccinated countries — has also faced questions about excess deaths, a pattern echoed in other nations. Families and citizens deserve accountability for sudden deaths, adverse events, and lasting injuries.
Three sudden deaths of operationally fit servicemen within weeks is more than a string of coincidences; it is a pattern that demands honest investigation.
On National Day, it became a painful mirror of our silence — a reminder that there is an elephant in the room that too few dare to name. We owe it to these men — and to all Singaporeans — not to let their deaths pass without examination.
Four years ago, on National Day 2021, the parade was postponed — a disruption in a country that prides itself on order and predictability. It was a stark reminder of how deeply the pandemic had unsettled even our most enduring traditions.
Now, on National Day 2025, disruption returned in a different form. Both moments, though different, carry the same lesson: Our country is not as unshakable as we like to believe. Cracks appear — in postponed parades, in sudden deaths — and they remind us that ignoring emerging data about the Covid-19 vaccines worldwide cannot hold out forever. I
have done my part. If there is to be a National Inquiry, it must be carried forward by those who remain — those who, like me, have realised that we cannot do nothing because we owe it to those we loved and lost to demand answers that cannot simply be buried away.
Whether we will finally see accountability after all these years depends on our collective courage — the courage to face the truth, to resist the temptation to “let sleeping dogs lie,” and to remember that silence is not safety, but wilful blindness. As the old adage warns: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Four years on, I started my journey with this petition and I now mark this milestone with another important petition — not just mine, but ours. I cannot do this alone. Let us demand truth, transparency, and justice for our nation.
I hope with this petition, I can end all petitions and finish the work that I set out to do, so I can retire from my activism. Please help me to retire. It would be good to live a normal life again.
Sign this petition: https://bit.ly/3NSMen
Get the Book and find out what happened National Day 4 years leading to this point.
https://bit.ly/silentroarishere
Thank you very much.
Iris Koh.