Singapore uses fake news law against Malaysian watchdog that alleged ‘brutal execution methods’

SINGAPORE, Jan 22, 2020, SCMP. Singapore’s home affairs ministry on Wednesday said it would invoke its fake news law against a foreign entity for the first time, demanding that a Malaysia-based non-profit organisation correct “spurious” allegations against the city state’s judicial execution methods, South China Morning Post reported.

In a statement, the government said a “correction order” would be issued to legal reform watchdog Lawyers for Liberty under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) over a January 16 statement on its website.

The watchdog claimed that prison officers in Singapore had been instructed to carry out a “brutal procedure” during hanging, and that hanging methods were “unlawful”.

This included how officers were “told to kick the back of the neck” of prisoners whenever the rope broke because that would be “consistent with death by hanging”.

“The officers are told not to kick more than two times, so that there will be no telltale marks in case there is an autopsy,” said the statement.

Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the allegations were “entirely unfounded”.
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It said judicial executions in Singapore’s Changi Prison were conducted in the presence of the Superintendent of the Prison and a medical doctor, among others.

“For the record, the rope used for judicial executions has never broken before, and prison officers certainly do not receive any ‘special training to carry out the brutal execution method’ as alleged,” said the statement.

“Any acts such as those described in the [Lawyers for Liberty] statement would have been thoroughly investigated and dealt with.”

The Malaysian watchdog, which has in the past been linked to prime minister-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim’s People’s Justice Party, has been actively critical of capital punishment in the neighbouring state.

Last year, its adviser and former Member of Parliament N Surendran took potshots at Singapore’s law minister over the issue, denouncing him as “arrogant and silly”.

The Lion City is among the few Southeast Asian countries to retain capital punishment as a legal penalty for crimes such as drug trafficking, saying it is an important component of a comprehensive anti-drug strategy.

Malaysia has moved towards abolishing the death penalty, and has currently put a moratorium on the punishment in place.

In Wednesday’s statement, Singapore’s MHA said “correction orders” would also be issued to entities “spreading” Lawyers for Liberty’s allegations, including Singaporean anti-death penalty activist Kirsten Han, media platform The Online Citizen, and Yahoo Singapore.

In a Facebook post on Wednesday, Han, who is also editor-in-chief of New Naratif, said she had sent a query to the Singapore Prison Service on January 16 after reading the statement by Lawyers for Liberty, asking for their response and for the protocols surrounding executions.

“Such information is usually very hard to come by, but in the light of such disturbing claims, I thought it was important for there to be more information about what actually happens in the execution chamber,” she wrote, adding that she did not receive a response from the prison even after following up.

“Instead of responding to media queries, a Pofma order was made instead.”

Han said she was given a day to decide if she would comply with the correction order.

The South China Morning Post has contacted Lawyers for Liberty for a comment.

This will be the fifth time the controversial law has been used since coming into effect in October last year.

It has come under fire for being invoked primarily on opposition figures, including Lim Tean, who leads the opposition party Peoples Voice, and the Singapore Democratic Party, which has took on the government in court.

The Singapore government had earlier said it was a “coincidence” that the first few people to fall foul of its controversial fake news law have political leanings.