Benjamin Cheah, Main Stories, Top Story - Tuesday, December 30, 2008 11:07 - 151 Comments

2008: The year of the blogger-activist

Benjamin Cheah / Senior Writer

On January 2nd, artist and blogger Seelan Palay held a hunger strike outside the Malaysian High Commission. He intended to protest against the detention of five leaders of the Hindu Rights Action Force under Malaysia’s Internal Security Act. Nobody realised that this would be the harbinger of things to come – a year marked by more active expressions by ordinary Singaporeans.

This article aims to review 2008 through the New Media framework, focusing on events in which users of new media have played a significant role as actors or commentators.

Mas Selamat’s Escape

In the afternoon of 27 February, suspected terrorist Mas Selamat bin Kastari escaped from Whitley Road Detention Centre.  This sparked an unprecedented island-wide manhunt conducted by the army and police, which is still ongoing today, albeit on a much smaller scale. Singaporean bloggers, even those who do not normally blog about socio-political events, poured out their fears, anger and resolve on the Internet. But as the circumstances surrounding the escape gradually came to light, these bloggers, too, started to scrutinise the Government’s response to the escape. Inevitably, the questions that they raised were intertwined, rightly or wrongly, with criticisms of the workings of State. Continue…