Mr Shanmugam says Singapore has laws and policies to prevent riots like those seen in the UK recently because Singapore takes a very stringent approach concerning freedom of expression by giving priority to maintaining law and order. (ST, 17/8/24)
He was referring to the riots that erupted, in no small measure, because social media users were speculating, in the absence of information from the police, that the 17-year-old boy who stabbed three young girls to death, is a Muslim immigrant (he isn’t an immigrant), stoking anti-immigration and anti-Muslim sentiments.
He says that in Singapore, while freedom of speech is important, there is little tolerance for fake speech, racial or religious hate speech or speech that incites violence. Also, people who organize protests may have good intentions, but these are often hijacked by people who want to create violence. Thus, permits have to be obtained to safeguard law and order.
It is the job of the government to maintain law and order and one can’t fault Mr Shanmugam doing his job zealously. But in outlawing fake speech and misinformation he is assuming that he and the government know everything.
During the Covid pandemic, many social media postings that pointed out that the mRNA vaccines were not effective in preventing infections, that they were dangerous, that there were inexpensive and readily available alternatives to cure Covid, were censored. But it has now turned out that there is more than a grain of truth in what they were saying. By censoring them, the government had denied itself and society a portion of the truth and thereby were unable to make better decisions. To slightly veer off point, we now have extremely high excess deaths, we are also one of the highest mRNA vaccinated countries in the world, is there no correlation between the two?
The point is, no one is infallible. The truth is out there, represented by different points of views, even opposing points of views. Only by debate, can we obtain a clearer picture of the truth.
As said earlier, no one can fault Mr Shanmugam for doing his job, but he needs to be more positive and more ambitious and embark on a longer term endeavor whereby the end result is that we can all talk openly, even about sensitive topics, even about seeming untruths, even protesting calmly, without descending into chaos.
Just by imposing draconian laws on freedom of expression to maintain law and order is not only setting the bar too low but is also tantamount to throwing out the baby with the bath water.
Foong Swee Fong
