Seditious, Seditious

It is midnight as Mr Wang begins typing this. He really should be in bed. Or working on his book project. But here he is, composing yet another post on the Case of the Seditious Bloggers.

Mr Wang is feeling ... a bit frustrated. He has just poked around the blogosphere. He gets the impression that many bloggers out there simply do not understand the situation. So Mr Wang feels duty-bound to forgo his sleep again, and help to cast some light into the Collective Darkness of the Blogospheric Superconscious. Well, God bless Mr Wang's noble heart.

Where to begin? First, the name of the statute - the Sedition Act. Woah, soooooo scary. Don't be silly, children. The name in itself tells you nothing. What matters is the substance of the law in it. The word sedition has all kinds of nasty connotations but if you really want to know whether the law is scary, you have to look at the actual provisions.

Under the Sedition Act, first-time offenders can be fined up to S$5,000, or jailed up to three years, or both. As maximum sentences go, this is not particularly scary. The maximum sentence here is roughly the same as that for simple theft (the least serious form of theft), which is punishable with up to three year's imprisonment and fine (no limit specified).

Also note that in practice, maximum sentences are rarely imposed. For example, although the maximum sentence for simple theft is three years and a fine, the reality is that first-time thieves usually get a fine and no jail time at all (if they do get a jail term, it is typically for a day or two).

Maximum sentences are reserved for the most severe kind of cases that you would be able to imagine, for each type of offence. Most of the time, maximum sentences are just theoretical, something that SPH journalists always bother to tell you about, but which hardly happen in real life.

Also Mr Wang wishes to point out that it is not as if the Sedition Act suppresses all speech about race and religion. Mr Wang does not think that any blogger who wishes to engage in serious, sincere debate and discussion about social issues has any real reason to fear the Sedition Act. The Act itself says:

"Any act, speech, words, publication or other thing shall not be deemed to be seditious by reason only that it has a tendency:

(a) to show that the Government has been misled or mistaken in any of its measures;

(b) to point out errors or defects in the Government or the Constitution as by law established or in legislation or in the administration of justice with a view to the remedying of such errors or defects; [or]

(c) to persuade the citizens of Singapore or the residents in Singapore to attempt to procure by lawful means the alteration of any matter in Singapore
..

if such act, speech, words, publication or other thing has not otherwise in fact a seditious tendency."

Mr Wang is aware, of course, that bloggers may respond, "But Mr Wang, all this is pretty subjective, isn't it? Who is to say what constitutes serious, sincere discussion, and who is to say when such discussion will cross over into sedition?"

Well, of course there is an element of subjectivity. But are you unnecessarily frightening yourself? Do the facts of the present case, as we currently know them to be, warrant alarm on your own part? We already know that the two bloggers had advocated ethnic cleansing. One posted a doctored picture clearly designed to insult the Muslim religion. This is really extreme. Were YOU planning to go that far, in your "serious, sincere" discussion?

If so, then be afraid. Be very afraid. And when you too are charged under the Sedition Act, Mr Wang will clap his hands in glee. You deserve it.

On a separate note, Randy Kluver, NTU's well-known Internet expert, wonders why the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act was not used instead. I am too lazy to poke around and refresh my memory of how the MRHA works. But from what I can recall, I think it is much more preferable to proceed under the Sedition Act.

If I recall correctly, the MHRA has provisions whereby the Minister can directly order action to be taken against the offending persons. As in the Internal Security Act, the MHRA excludes the courts (and the prosecution) from the process. From a civil rights perspective, this is not ideal. It is far better to have the bloggers charged under the Sedition Act, and brought to trial in open court. There is more fairness and transparency.

Also, the MHRA deals with religion, not race. Whereas the bloggers' posts were offensive not just on religious grounds, but also on racial grounds. Thus the MHRA is just not completely right to deal with these bloggers. Whereas the Sedition Act, designed to deal with the promotion of hostility between "different races or classes of the population of Singapore", comes a lot closer to the heart of the matter.

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Useful Link

As usual for hot topics, if you want to know who's saying what about this topic in blogosphere, all you need to do is visit Singapore Angle.

TODAY on the Seditious Bloggers

For your reading pleasure - TODAY's report on the sedition case is reproduced below.

Mr Wang just wishes to point out to his readers is that this stage of criminal proceedings (the accused persons being charged) is quite procedural. The judge will not go into the details of the case yet, and neither will the prosecution.

So it is not as if the authorities are hiding the details of the alleged offence from the public. It is simply that the time has not come for all the details to be made public. That time will come later.

At the present stage, the key idea is that the prosecution, by formally charging the accused in court, is telling the accused clearly what he is being charged for. This is in fairness to the accused. The accused will then be given time (usually a few weeks) to engage a lawyer and decide whether he will plead guilty, or defend himself in court.

The so-called "charge" is just a one-paragraph document providing brief but specific particulars of the offence that the prosecution thinks that the accused has committed. And there is only so much information that can be crammed into one paragraph.

Full details of the case (for example, complete details of what the accused person wrote in his blog or the forum) will only emerge in court at the time the accused pleads guilty or, if he chooses to go to trial, at the time of the trial itself. In either scenario, the proceedings will be conducted in open court, which means that any member of the public can walk in and witness the proceedings.

Aren't you bloggers so lucky that Mr Wang is around to explain all these things to you? Three cheers to Mr Wang!

Net closes in on blogs of hate

Two charged over online racist rants; other Netizens may watch their words

Tuesday • September 13, 2005

Ansley Ng
ansley@newstoday.com.sg

BLOGGERS have become used to letting off steam, while invective in Internet forums is nothing new. Yesterday, however, the online community received a little reminder that real laws still apply in the virtual world as two men were charged in court for taking their racist outpourings too far.

Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, and Nicholas Lim Yew, 25, were arrested and charged under the Sedition Act.

Investigations into the case, which has created a buzz among bloggers, began after someone called the police hotline at 3am on June 19 to complain that Koh's blog on www.upsaid.com "discussed topics that would disrupt racial harmony".

Inquiries into that complaint led the police to postings on an online pet forum, www.doggiesite.com, where Lim, a marketing executive, apparently made his own brand of racist remarks. The two men are believed to know each other.

Koh faces three charges while Lim faces two for remarks made between June 12 and June 17 this year. If convicted, they could be fined up to $5,000 per charge or jailed up to three years, or both.

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.

The two men, who attempted to evade the media as they left the court, are out on bail of $10,000 each. They will return to court on Sept 21.

Meanwhile, the case is likely to have a temporary "chilling effect" on the Internet community, said lawyers and media academics.

"Everyone will definitely become more careful about what they say," lawyer Siew Kum Hong, himself a former blogger, told Today. "Blogging is no different from other forms of speech in everyday life."

The same rules that apply to newspaper writers and at the Speakers' Corner also apply to bloggers, he said.

"Whether they create a riot or not, the very act of saying those words or publishing them becomes an offence." Someone who was overheard making racist remarks might also be charged under the Act, he added.

"But they (the police) won't set aside resources to deal with that sort of situation, unless there are special circumstances, or if it was a high-impact case involving public Internet postings," said Mr Siew.

Agreeing, Dr Ang Peng Hwa, director of the Singapore Internet Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University, said someone could "technically" be charged if a racist remark was overhead and reported to the authorities.

"(But) only when the audience size is large enough will the impact of the statement be meaningful," said Dr Ang.

"Many bloggers do not know the law, unlike trained journalists. People assume there is a cloak of secrecy. But you can still track people down.

"There are a lot of remarks out there (on the Internet) that are defamatory, inflammatory racist remarks.

"These are not taken seriously in many parts of the world," said Dr Ang. "They are seen as rants and people usually ignore them.

"Singapore is an unusual case."

While Lim used a "measured tone" in his remarks, Koh's sounded like the "rantings of a madman", Dr Ang noted.

"It has never been a right to defame people, and never a right to make racial remarks. People will be upset."

Blogger Lee Kin Mun, better known as mrbrown, told Today: "A vast majority of bloggers here don't go into race or religion ... we have other things to write about.

"Besides, there are other ways of discussing race or religion that will not get you into trouble with the law."

Two Bloggers Charged under Sedition Act Over Racist Remarks

Goodness. This is rare. I don't think I ever came across a single case under the Sedition Act when I was working as a Deputy Public Prosecutor. I don't even recall ever looking into the Sedition Act.

Does anyone know which blogs and which web forum are being referred to in the Channel NewsAsia article below? And what was the nature of the racist remarks? How do they compare to the racist remarks made by you-know-which PSC scholar in his own blog?

For the first time in Singapore, two bloggers have been charged under the Sedition Act with making racist remarks. Twenty-five-year-old Nicholas Lim Yew faces two charges and 27-year-old Benjamin Koh Song Huat faces three.

A subordinate court was told that both their blogs had racist content, which sparked off a heated discussion online.

The charges read that Lim had, on 16 and 17 June 2005, posted racist remarks on a web forum. Koh was alleged to have done the same on 12, 15 and 17 June on another website.

In doing so, they are alleged to have committed an act which had a seditious tendency. This is defined as promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races of the population of Singapore.

Both men are out on bail of S$10,000 each. The case is expected be heard again on September 21.

A person is deemed to have committed an offence under the Sedition Act if he performs any act which has a seditious tendency, or conspires with any person to do so. It is also an offence to utter any seditious words or to print, publish, sell, distribute, reproduce or import any seditious publication.

First time offenders can be fined up to S$5,000, or jailed up to three years, or both. For subsequent offences, they can be jailed up to five years and have their seditious publications forfeited and destroyed. - CNA /ct/ls

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This event has also been noted on Blog Timeline.SG, which tracks the history of the Singapore blogosphere. (I am a dutiful member of the blog, hence I help to publicise and promote it).

Why Do Opposition Politicians Adore Mr Wang So?

Mr Wang discovers that he has been listed on Workers' Party member James Gomez's website. Please note that Mr Wang is not in fact affiliated with the Workers' Party in any way.
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"Basically I just have no originality. The Singapore Democratic Party linked you first, so I felt that I just had to follow suit." - James Gomez.

Embracing Chinese Culture

My rather unremarkable previous post, Mr Wang Speaks Mandarin, attracted a remarkable number of interesting comments, surprising myself. Obviously some readers feel strongly about the issue, one way or the other, which is rather ironic because the blogger himself, Mr Wang, is the Indifferent Chinese Singaporean who doesn't.

For the purposes of further discussion, I'm inviting readers to share their thoughts on what exactly it means to be a Young Chinese Singaporean Who Embraces Chinese Culture. So please comment.

Should he enjoy Chinese class in school? Must he be able to speak fluent Cantonese to his Cantonese parents? Must he be well-versed in the plot of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms? Should he cheer loudly when Beijing hosts the next Olympics? If he fails his Mandarin AO levels disastrously, is he someone whom self-respecting Chinese Singaporeans should disapprove of? If he prefers U2 to Jackie Cheung, is there something wrong with him? Should his personal values be steeped in the ideas of filial piety and respect for elders, rather than, say, in outspokenness and independence? Should he be well-acquainted with Chinese history? Does he share a common bond with Taiwanese people, HongKongers and PRC Chinese?