bloggers jailed for racist comments posted on Wednesday, December 01, 2004
Financial Times 2005-10-08
Singapore yesterday jailed two bloggers for making racist comments on the internet, in the first use by the government against individuals of a 57-year-old sedition act, raising concerns of a broader regulation of websites.
Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, said this week that use of the sedition law was necessary to preserve Singapore’s racial and religious harmony when ethnic tensions in south-east Asia could increase in reaction to Islamic terrorism.
But the action has also led to comments in internet chatrooms about whether the use of the Sedition Act will have a chilling effect on public debate in cyberspace.
One of the ethnic Chinese bloggers, Benjamin Koh, 27, was sentenced to a month in jail and the other, Nicholas Lim, 25, a symbolic one day after they posted comments that insulted the country’s Muslim Malay minority.
Wong Kan Seng, a deputy prime minister and home affairs minister, recently suggested that penalties under the Sedition Act should be increased from a current maximum punishment of a three-year jail term and a SGD 5,000 (GBP 1,700, USD 3,000, EUR 2,440) fine.
The internet is the last largely uncensored medium in Singapore and has become a forum for free speech in a country where newspapers and broadcasters are tightly controlled.
A recent report by OpenNet Initiative, a partnership between Harvard, Toronto and Cambridge universities, said Singapore preferrred to use legal sanctions to control internet content rather than relying on technology to filter undesirable websites, as in China.
Singapore’s broadly worded Sedition Act can be used to punish those who promote race and class hatred in the multi-ethnic country, whose population of 4.2 million is dominated by ethnic Chinese.
The racist comments included those made in a discussion forum for dog-lovers about whether taxis should ban dogs since they are seen by Muslims as unclean.
The sedition act, introduced in 1948 by the former British colonial government, was originally intended to be used against communist insurgents.
Singapore authorities have taken action against other websites recently. The country’s top leadership and Temasek Holdings, the state investment company, last month received apologies and damages from Hong Kong-based FinanceAsia.com after threatening libel action for the first time against an international website.
Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based media freedom group, has said recent threatened libel suits by Singapore authorities against websites amount to “intimidation” that “could make the country’s blogs as timid and obedient as the traditional media.”
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Bloggers jailed for racist comments, by John Burton in Singapore
Financial Times 2005-10-08
Singapore yesterday jailed two bloggers for making racist comments on the internet, in the first use by the government against individuals of a 57-year-old sedition act, raising concerns of a broader regulation of websites.
Lee Hsien Loong, the prime minister, said this week that use of the sedition law was necessary to preserve Singapore’s racial and religious harmony when ethnic tensions in south-east Asia could increase in reaction to Islamic terrorism.
But the action has also led to comments in internet chatrooms about whether the use of the Sedition Act will have a chilling effect on public debate in cyberspace.
One of the ethnic Chinese bloggers, Benjamin Koh, 27, was sentenced to a month in jail and the other, Nicholas Lim, 25, a symbolic one day after they posted comments that insulted the country’s Muslim Malay minority.
Wong Kan Seng, a deputy prime minister and home affairs minister, recently suggested that penalties under the Sedition Act should be increased from a current maximum punishment of a three-year jail term and a SGD 5,000 (GBP 1,700, USD 3,000, EUR 2,440) fine.
The internet is the last largely uncensored medium in Singapore and has become a forum for free speech in a country where newspapers and broadcasters are tightly controlled.
A recent report by OpenNet Initiative, a partnership between Harvard, Toronto and Cambridge universities, said Singapore preferrred to use legal sanctions to control internet content rather than relying on technology to filter undesirable websites, as in China.
Singapore’s broadly worded Sedition Act can be used to punish those who promote race and class hatred in the multi-ethnic country, whose population of 4.2 million is dominated by ethnic Chinese.
The racist comments included those made in a discussion forum for dog-lovers about whether taxis should ban dogs since they are seen by Muslims as unclean.
The sedition act, introduced in 1948 by the former British colonial government, was originally intended to be used against communist insurgents.
Singapore authorities have taken action against other websites recently. The country’s top leadership and Temasek Holdings, the state investment company, last month received apologies and damages from Hong Kong-based FinanceAsia.com after threatening libel action for the first time against an international website.
Reporters Without Borders, the Paris-based media freedom group, has said recent threatened libel suits by Singapore authorities against websites amount to “intimidation” that “could make the country’s blogs as timid and obedient as the traditional media.”
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