Yap Thiam Hien was like the main character in Plato's Allegory of the Cave, written 25 centuries ago. John, as the human rights activist was known to friends, was the protagonist who managed to free himself from the chains that had bound him to the wall of the cave since birth. He then went outside, was awestruck by what he saw of the real natural world and understood what human freedom meant for the first time.

He then went back into the cave an