TODAY: What’s ‘sedition?’ debate goes online

Excerpt:

Blog­gers react to news of charge against 2 for ‘racist rants’
TWO blog­gers were charged on Mon­day under the Sedi­tion Act for allegedly racist com­ments made on an online forum and on a web­site. Nat­u­rally, this has sent rip­ples through the blog­ging community.

Read more at TODAY­on­line. (PDF ver­sion here).

Tech­no­rati Tags: blog, sedi­tion, sin­ga­pore, TODAY

‘Coup de Grace’ (coupdegras.zenguerrilla.org) reflects one imme­di­ate reac­tion of blog­gers just hours after news broke. Since his own blog entries have “spo­ken out against Singapore’s ver­sion of affir­ma­tive action, does that make me liable to charges?” he asks.

Argu­ing that the legal action would “sti­fle” ben­e­fi­cial expres­sion and debate, he describes the sec­tions of the Sedi­tion Act under which the blog­gers were charged as “dis­turb­ing [sic] vague”.

Indeed, it was the first time sev­eral blog­gers had ever heard of the term ‘sedi­tion’ or the Sedi­tion Act. The intro­duc­tion was a lit­tle con­fus­ing for some.
Sin­ga­porean “Zee­nie” (zeenie.blogspot.com) reveals: “The only (other) time I’ve heard the word ‘sedi­tion’ used was in (the movie) Last of the Mohi­cans.”
Those curi­ous enough started look­ing up the Act online (statutes.agc.gov.sg).

Blog­ger “Jeff Yen” (jeffyen.blogspot.com), 29, who was one such, admits he “also didn’t know at first what ‘sedi­tion’ meant”, and look­ing up its def­i­n­i­tion con­fused him a lit­tle – since, he writes, “‘Sedi­tion’ actu­ally means words or actions that make peo­ple rebel against authority.”

Stu­dent “Aga­googa” (gssq.blogspot.com) also asks: “Am I the only one who still doesn’t really get what a “sedi­tious ten­den­cy” is? If it’s any­thing that raises dis­con­tent or dis­af­fec­tion, or pro­motes feel­ings of ill-will and hos­til­ity, how does that dif­fer from any num­ber of casual remarks made by a per­son… in the course of a given day?”

“David” (rocklah.com), a national ser­vice­man in his 20s, says the fact that peo­ple can be arrested “for voic­ing their opin­ion” strikes fear into him. “Peo­ple may argue that if I play by the rules, I’ll be fine. But, who deter­mines the rules?”

Oth­ers ques­tion if the use of the law is a double-edged sword. Shanghai-based Cana­dian blog­ger Myrick (asiapundit.com) observes: “This doesn’t solve the prob­lem of racism, it forces it under­ground to fes­ter.”

But, per­haps in antic­i­pa­tion of an avalanche of pro-free speech hyper­bole from other blog­gers react­ing to the case, ‘Alee J’ (aleej.com), a Uni­ver­sity of Bris­tol law stu­dent, notes that Sin­ga­pore isn’t the only coun­try with lim­its on free speech.

“Some­how, peo­ple tend to for­get that even the nations that are, pur­port­edly, the great­est sup­port­ers of free speech and democ­racy have sim­i­lar mea­sures to our Sedi­tion Act in place.”

‘Alee J’ also holds the view that the blog­gers charged in court on Mon­day should have fol­lowed this sim­ple maxim: “Free­dom of speech is a tool that must be exer­cised judi­ciously and with great cau­tion, as with any tool of great power.

“It is not a shield that one should be able to cower under should com­ments be made that it does not cover. This is not merely a local con­cept … clearly, if these lads had fol­lowed the same approach they wouldn’t have been indicted.”

Mr Miyagi a.k.a. Ben­jamin Lee, has been enter­tain­ing blog read­ers for a year at www.miyagi.sg, and never offends or insults any­one with his innocu­ous blog posts.

BOX 1:
WHAT THE LAW SAYS:
Sec­tion 3.1 of the Sedi­tion Act defines a “sedi­tious ten­den­cy” as a ten­dency to…
(a) bring into hatred or con­tempt or to excite dis­af­fec­tion against the Gov­ern­ment;
(b) excite the cit­i­zens of Sin­ga­pore or the res­i­dents in Sin­ga­pore to attempt to pro­cure in Sin­ga­pore, the alter­ation, oth­er­wise than by law­ful means, of any mat­ter as by law estab­lished;
© bring into hatred or con­tempt or to excite dis­af­fec­tion against the admin­is­tra­tion of jus­tice in Sin­ga­pore;
(d) raise dis­con­tent or dis­af­fec­tion amongst the cit­i­zens of Sin­ga­pore or the res­i­dents in Sin­ga­pore;
(e) pro­mote feel­ings of ill-will and hos­til­ity between dif­fer­ent races or classes of the pop­u­la­tion of Sin­ga­pore.
—

BOX 2:
WHAT BLOGGERS SAY:
Some off-the-cuff tips on how to avoid being accused of sedition…

Sheena (merenwen13.blogspot.com):
“Mod­er­ate your words online in such a way that they express your feel­ings but aren’t com­pletely dis­re­spect­ful or insulting.”

Michael Chua (michaelchua.blogspot.com):
“If we don’t want to get into trou­ble, then steer clear of those of topics.”

Cow­boy Caleb (cowboycaleb.liquidblade.com):
“The (Web) is a pub­lic place, and as such if you have noth­ing nice to say then shut the hell up.”

Aga­googa (gssq.blogspot.com):
“Bet­ter by far to stick to infan­til­ity, I say.”

Tym (toomanythoughts.org/blog):
“Be per­sonal, be polit­i­cal, cer­tainly be respon­si­ble, and pray very hard that no one finds you sedi­tious.”