Andrew loh /
British author Alan Shadrake’s appeal against a conviction for contempt of court was dismissed by the Singapore Court of Appeal on Friday.
The author was arrested in July last year, the day after he had launched his book, Once A Jolly Hangman, at a public event. (See here.)
Mr Shardrake was eventually charged and found guilty of “scandalizing the judiciary” last November for comments he made in his book, which highlighted the use of the death penalty in Singapore. He was sentenced to six weeks jail and a S$20,000 fine.
The book highlighted prominent capital cases which had occurred in Singapore and questioned the handling of these cases. In bringing charges against Mr Shadrake in November, Singapore’s Attorney General said “public confidence in the Singapore Judiciary cannot be allowed, in any way, to be tarnished or diminished by any contumacious behaviour.”
Mr Shadrake’s defence was based on Article 14 of the Singapore Constitution which provides for “fair criticism on matters of compelling public interest.”
It was dismissed by the court.
In response to Friday’s Court of Appeal dismissal, international rights group, Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the verdict was “a major setback for free expression in Singapore.”
“The prosecution of Alan Shadrake for doing nothing more than calling for legal reform is a devastating blow to free speech in Singapore,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at HRW. “More broadly, until the government releases its iron grip on basic freedoms, the Singaporean people will remain all the poorer.”
Once A Jolly Hangman is planned to be released in the US and the UK in the coming months.
Mr Shadrake has been allowed by the courts to undergo a medical test before serving his jail term on Wednesday.
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It is fortunate he is sentenced to only 6 weeks and a $20,000 fine. In China, he will get at least 10 years, if not more. JB Jeyaratnam and Chee Soon Juan were sued to the tune of at least $200,000 and eventually prosecuted till bankruptcy. If one were cynical about it, one can conclude the PAP still favor Foreign Talent over our citizens when it comes to prosecuting them. :))
Doppelganger,
The root cause of all these is the power can be used without accountability from behind the laws to get things his way.
Look at the how the government is run. The party secretary general decides who is to run as MPs or appointed as ministers. Who will be the chief justice, high court judges etc. Who will be the CEOs in all the GLCs.
Laws continue to be passed allowing power to be exercised by proxies who will take the rap for wrong doing.
Just look at benchmarking of salary (fill up own pay cheques) where a committee will take the rap shielding any traces of wrong doings.
If the committee finds that the minister should be paid equivalent of lucky lottery winners in the private sector, what can you do?
No one can really jail the wayang committee.
Dear Robert Teh,
So you have your eyes open too.
We must inform the UN Human Rights Council or some such body about State oppression in our civic life including the monopoly of connected persons at the honeypots of the country.
Droppelganger,
Be alert, of obstacles and live one’s purpose another day.
I do not appreciate outsiders & foreigners meddling with our country own internal affairs.
I’m also suspicious of foreign groups or persons real intentions of getting involved in our country. There are many worse regimes around the world that they can pick fights with. Citizens of these countries need them more, much more.
Please stay away. If we really need you, we’ll asked for it.
So thank you & come only when we call.
Putting the house in order is of higher priority than denials of past mistakes like ISA and use of libel suits to clamp down on basic freedoms for participating in fair and level-playing-field electoral process.
I pray for Mr Shadrake’s well-being and wish that he’ll emerge from this ordeal much better and stronger and help poor S’poreans from being in the ‘dark ages.’Always believe that evil will not surmount the good and so will wait patiently for the intervention of the great MOTHER NATURE to eradicate these anomalies.
Shadrake has revealed the most obvious things about the Ruling Party’s rule over Singapore. For the most part these things do not impinge on the lives of the common citizenry and does not irk anyone in a serious way. The fact of the matter is that the Ruling Party has set the rules very tight for the citizenry for 50 years. For instance you are not allowed to say that judges are corrupt when in fact some of them are very corrupt. These judges are willing to do anything required of them by the Ruling Party. Of course the Ruling Party has made the Judges sacred as it is the heart of their machinery of oppression. Let us go on to other parts of the machinery. Do you know that some Law firms who have close connections with the Ruling Party such as lawyering for the the members of the Ruling Party ( in eg their defamation cases against opposition people) are able to commandeer the ISD and other State Institutions to run errands for them for their corporate business, usurping State Resources and taxpayers’ money? The ISD is virtually a department of these elite favored Law firms, an army ever-ready to do their bidding to soften their targets before Court Hearings. Do you know that conflict of interest is commonplace in Singapore as many elites hold private sector interests as well as decision making positions in Government posts, and make use of their Government positions to enhance their private business? Do you know that the elites who manage our national business enterprises are connected to each other? Do you know that the greed of the Ruling party boiled over in 1994 when they wrote their own salaries through a rubberstamp Parliament? Do you now conclude that all these gagging of the populace is to facilitate further schemes of enrichment for themselves? If no one talks about it, why Singapore can be sold off to the highest bidder, that is to the hordes of foreign talents. And anything else that works to enrich themselves can be done pronto with no protest or squeek of objection. Do you think that the longevity of the Ruling Party in Singapore has not some resemblances to those ruling in Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia etc? The only difference is in the degree of oppression for here there is yet no genocide, assassination and other forms of physical violence against the citizenry. But bankruptcy through Court proceedings, detention by the Political Police without trial, attachment of the computer identity records without known criminality so as to harass certain of the citizenry etc may be worse than violent death at the hands of powerful elites crouching for prey in every corner of the urban landscape. Shadrake does not even come close to what is the state of the art as actually practised by the Ruling Party.