The magic kingdom of Singapore just charged two bloggers with sedition for posting rants against minorities including Indians, Malays and Muslims:
According to court documents, Lim’s forum message began with: “The masses are idiots. ‘Nuff said”. He went on to make disparaging remarks about Muslims. Then, turning his attention to the Chinese and Indians, he wrote that listening to the complaints of “Chinese and Indians … was no less irritating”.Koh was more pointed. Peppering his blog entry with vulgarities, he directed his tirade at Malays and Muslims. His blog had a picture of a roasted pig’s head with “a Halal look-alike logo”, according to court documents…
Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, and Nicholas Lim Yew, 25, were arrested and charged under the Sedition Act. [Link]
The tiny Southeast Asian city-state is 80 percent ethnic Chinese, while Malays make up around 15 percent of the country’s 4.2 million populace. [Link]
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p>Racist rants which don’t aim to incite violence are best dealt with by civil society, commercial boycotts or a good blog-whuppin’ rather than the legal system. But in the hypersensitive nation-state of Singapore, even jaywalking can get you arrested. It’s a place devoid of both street litter and truly free expression:
Visitors should be aware of Singapore’s strict laws and penalties for a variety of actions that might not be illegal or might be considered minor offenses in the United States. These include jaywalking, littering, and spitting. Singapore has a mandatory caning sentence for vandalism offenses… There are no jury trials in Singapore, judges hear cases and decide sentencing. [Link]
Laws in Singapore are generally strict with harsh punishments such as caning and execution and a stringent censorship of the media including magazines, newspapers, movies and TV programmes. Pornography, oral sex, anal sex and homosexual intercourse are illegal in Singapore. Some offences can lead to heavy fines or caning while murder and drug trafficking are punishable by death by hanging. According to an Amnesty International report, 400 people were hanged between 1991 and 2004, which the report claimed is “possibly the highest execution rate in the world” per capita. [Link]
Singapore’s definition of sedition is nearly as overbroad as that of a classically repressive state. It ordinarily means only direct incitement to rebellion:
Singaporean law defines sedition in S3(1) as “a tendency to raise discontent or disaffection amongst the citizens of Singapore or the residents in Singapore; or to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore…” [Link]Conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of a state. Insurrection; rebellion. [Link]
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Racist rants which donÂ’t incite immediate violence are best dealt with by civil society, commercial boycotts or a good blog-whuppinÂ’ rather than the legal system.
might white of you to offer such advice manish 🙂
though seriously, i had a roommate from singapore in college and i’d make fun of him all the time. you should have seen the first time we took him to an independent video store with a porno section, he stood there dumbfounded behind the faux-saloon doors which beckoned to dozens of box covers ranging from vanilla “couples” porn all the way to “tranny gangbangs.”
in any case, i singapore is very strict about controlling racial or religious incitement or disharmony. the purges against chinese in indonesia and racial riots in malaysia in the late 1960s are the backdrop. lee kuan yew doesn’t think that a multiracial society can tolerate the level of political and speech pluralism that you are suggesting. the singapore gov. even keeps track of christian missionaries and prevents mormons or jehovah’s witnesses from becoming citizens (because of fears of disloyalty of these groups to the gov.).
i’m skeptical, lee is as great leader, but taiwan seems to show that asia can do democratic liberalism. though taiwan is not a racially diverse society….
Singapore is not very racialy diverse either, at 80% chinese. To the extent that mutli-communal societues cannot be democracies, it’s a problem Singapore doesn’t have.
And Malaysia, which is more divere than Singapore, has managed much more democracy that its southern neighhbour. Opposition parties have ruled various states, and although elections are biased and constituencies gerrymandered, the ruling coalition would probably win legit.
Singapore’s real issue may be that it is a city-state. Richard Daley’s Chicago has very little democracy, and many other US cities have, or used to have, machine politics.
You say
Errr its that the whole point of a democracy. That you can throw the politicans out. If you can’t do that their it does’t count. What are you left with a system of offical sanctioned and encouraged racism, no freedom of speech, religious intolerance, no rule of law etc etc. it may be a democracy hell its not a LIBERAL-democracy.
I’ll rather have the well governed, respectable if authorian corporate state.
Singapore is not a classical repressive state, its a Mummyji state, its a dictatorship being run for the best interests of its citizens.
I though I completely agree on Taiwan as a beacon for democracy in South East Asia though.
On the brighter side, they don’t have abominations like ‘walking while black’, ‘driving while hispanic’, etc. They have a system that screws everyone which is better than selective screwing.
Laws are required to keep people in check. Though iy does seem a bit harsh.. After a Blog is a personal place with your own views…
BTW Nice Blog!
ikram……..not too sure about your claim that malaysia has acheived democracy and as for legit winning…you are definitely wrong about that…
singapore does look and smell like a hospital but there is greater freedom to do what you want and how you want to do it ( as long as it isn’t seditious) than there is for a Malaysian of Indian descent. I speak from experience…..in Malaysia – the Indians are truly downtrodden, the New Dalits, maybe.
Different strokes for different folks. I presume that most of you have not visited Singapore, nor would even know about it’s location unless you squint hard at a map. The historical context is important – we’ve gone through lots of racial turmoil since the end of WWII till the late 1960s. Singapore used to be a state of Malaysia, which is predominantly Malay, and is still a Muslim country. One the other side lies Indonesia, population 250 million and growing, and is incidentally the largest Muslim country in the world. With these two considerations, we have to be careful of racial slurs. Singapore is a salt grain in a Muslim club sandwich. Such is the disparity that we have to maintain social, racial and political stability. Taking all this into consideration, it is a true miracle that Lee Kuan Yew has steered Singapore to where it is now, and has one of the highest per capita GDP in the world, and to think that it is only 25 miles wide, with a population of 4 million people. I think you can all see the picture now.
singapore a dot in southeast but with a strong economic presence. But the dark side is everything is controlled , monitored and spied upon by the government = ruling party. The current ruling party is in power for past 40 years since independence slowly eliminating opposition party leaders and one being J.B.Jeyaratham , a indian christain. Indians in India will be shocked to this piece of information that any appeal to a judgement made in the lower court in a high court will end up with higher sentence. And one can every own a land in singapore as all are leased by govt. for a period of 99 years.
I think some distinctions are in order. It is acceptable to express views that others do not agree with. This includes controversial views on race, religion and the like. Legitimate views will have supporting reasons. I have, for example, not met, say, a Muslim, who was offended merely because say, a Christian expressed a view, in a serious religious text, that Islam was wrong.
What causes anger is unthought, casual, frivolous comments made without any basis at all for malicious reasons. The sedition charges in Singapore arise from extremely offensive remarks laden with hatred but, and here’s the nub, devoid of justification or basis. Hatred is not an alternative view that should be protected by free speech.