Twenty Years of The Online Citizen

On 6 March 2006, The Online Citizen (TOC) registered its domain.

What began as a small volunteer-run blog — a handful of people who believed Singapore deserved independent online commentary — has stayed the course for two decades.

Twenty years later, TOC remains independent, still publishing, and still covering the stories that matter in Singapore’s public life.

We are grateful to everyone who has read, shared, supported, and contributed over the years. TOC has never been a large operation. It has always been sustained by people who believed that independent journalism in Singapore is worth having.

In February 2026, TOC editor Terry Xu travelled to Geneva to present a statement to diplomatic missions at the United Nations ahead of Singapore’s Universal Periodic Review.

He met with representatives from several state missions, briefing them on issues including POFMA’s impact on press freedom, the absence of freedom of information legislation, capital punishment, and migrant workers’ rights — topics that have been raised in previous UPR cycles and are expected to be discussed again when Singapore appears before the Working Group on 1 May 2026.

The following month, TOC received a Correction Direction under section 11(3)(b) of POFMA, requiring publication of a correction notice in a national newspaper at TOC’s expense.

TOC complied with the Direction. We are currently considering our options regarding an appeal, and have been humbled by the response from readers who have stepped forward to support that effort.

Today, we received a second POFMA direction, our 25th according to Ministry of Home Affairs, again requiring publication of a correction notice in the Straits Times at TOC's expense — another bill of S$10,400. We are still reading it.

Twenty years is a long time. It has not always been easy.

But the reason TOC exists today is the same reason it began — because independent coverage of Singapore’s public life matters, and because silence was never an option we were willing to accept.

We intend to keep going.

Thank you for being part of this.

A Decade of Impact: (From left) TOC Co-founder Remy Choo Zheng Xi (second from left) stands with "Civil Society Advocate Organisation of the Year" awardees from The Online Citizen, including editors Howard Lee, Terry Xu, and Co-founder Andrew Loh at the 2015 Singapore Advocacy Awards.