SINGAPORE: Dr Lee Wei Ling, the daughter of Singapore’s founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, died on Wednesday (Oct 9). She was 69.
Her death was announced by her brother, Mr Lee Hsien Yang, in a Facebook post shortly before 6am on Wednesday.
He said Dr Lee died at home. She was known to live at 38 Oxley Road, the family home of Mr Lee Kuan Yew, who died in 2015.
Dr Lee was also the sister of Senior Minister Lee Hsien Loong.
“I will deeply miss Ling. May she rest in peace,” said Mr Lee in a post on Facebook.
Describing her as “fiercely loyal to friends”, Mr Lee remembered her as someone who “sympathised instinctively with the underdog, and would mobilise actively to do something when she saw unfairness, or suspected wrongdoing”.
Dr Lee herself was aware of this quality. During a fundraising event in 2003 for a shelter for troubled teenage girls, Dr Lee, then 48, said she had always fought for the underdog.
She knew she had a privileged childhood. “I had maids and drivers but we were brought up to know how to be poor,” said Dr Lee in a 2003 TODAY article.
“We turned off the tap so that water was not wasted, we walked out of a room and the lights and fan were off. You don’t waste water, you don’t waste electricity.”
