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CPJ
slams PAP: S'pore govt bent on stifling critics
10
May 06
New
York, May 5, 2006—The
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is deeply concerned about
criminal defamation charges recently filed by Singapore Minister
Mentor Lee Kuan Yew and Prime Minister Lee Hsein Loong against
politicians responsible for the production of an opposition-run
newspaper, The New Democrat.
The Lees’ lawyer
also threatened to file defamation charges against Melodies Press
Co., which prints the paper. The New Democrat, an
officially licensed political news publication since the
mid-1990s, is managed and produced once or twice a year by a
12-person executive committee consisting of opposition Singapore
Democrat Party members.
The Lees filed the charges last
week against the newspaper’s entire executive committee.
The case stems from an un-bylined story that ran in the latest
edition of The New Democrat, which questioned the People’s
Action Party-led government’s handling of a recent
corruption scandal at the National Kidney Foundation. The story
broadly criticizes the government for creating a “secretive
and non-accountable system” and contends that higher-level
officials should be held accountable.
The aggravated
defamation charges come in the middle of an unusually heated
parliamentary election campaign. The vote is scheduled for May
6.
Singapore’s media is tightly controlled through
prohibitive laws like the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act and
the Defamation Act. The Undesirable Publications Act allows the
government to prohibit the import, sale, and circulation of any
publication it judges to be “contrary to the public’s
interests.”
People’s Action Party members,
including party founder and former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew,
have sued for defamation in several suits against local and
foreign journalists.
“The tactic of using the courts
fools no one; the government is clearly bent on stifling its
critics,” CPJ Executive Director Ann Cooper said. “We
urge the government leaders involved to immediately drop these
criminal charges and begin to allow more political discussion in
the media.”
Aggravated defamation charges carry
monetary damages of up to 500,000 Singapore dollars (US$312,500)
and possible jail terms. Six of the eight politicians directly
involved in the production of The New Democrat‘s
most recent edition have publicly apologized for the story.
Rather than face the cost of legislation and possible punishment,
Melodies Press also apologized its role in producing the
publication through a paid advertisement in the
government-controlled Straits Times newspaper.
Chee
Soon Juan, the Democratic Party secretary-general, and his
sister, Chee Siok Chin, a candidate, have refused to apologize
for the article.
The Lees’ lawyer has also
threatened to hold the accused parties liable for additional
defamation charges for each copy of The New Democrat sold
since the suit was filed in the last week of April. A Singapore
Democrat Party member told CPJ that the party had sold around
5,000 copies of the 10,000-copy print run when the Lees filed the
charges last week.
People’s Action Party leaders,
including former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, have a long record
of filing defamation complaints against opposition politicians,
bankrupting several in the process. Chee Soon Juan, a free speech
advocate, recently lost a three-year battle in a defamation case
brought by Lee Kuan Yew.
In early April, the People’s
Action Party-led government banned political discussions over the
Internet during the election campaign, effectively pulling the
plug on opposition parties’ plans to bypass the
state-controlled mainstream media and promote their policies and
broadcast their rallies using Internet technologies.
The
Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent, nonprofit
organization founded in 1981 to promote press freedom worldwide
by defending the rights of journalists to report the news without
fear of reprisal.
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