{"id":1436,"date":"2016-03-08T14:08:39","date_gmt":"2016-03-08T14:08:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=1436"},"modified":"2016-03-08T20:26:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-08T20:26:51","slug":"australian-behind-singapore-anti-foreigner-website-the-real-singapore-convicted-of-sedition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.southasiantimes.com.au\/?p=1436","title":{"rendered":"Australian behind Singapore anti-foreigner website The Real Singapore convicted of sedition"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"real<\/a>An Australian woman who admitted fabricating anti-foreigner articles on a Singapore website to boost advertising revenues has been convicted of sedition.<\/p>\n

Australian-Japanese Ai Takagi, 23, pleaded guilty to four of seven sedition charges lodged against her and her Singaporean husband, Yang Kaiheng, 27.<\/p>\n

The three other charges, as well as an additional charge of withholding information from the police, will be taken into consideration during her sentencing on March 23.<\/p>\n

Yang, however, is claiming trial.<\/p>\n

Both were based in Australia but arrested in February last year during a visit to Singapore.<\/p>\n

They are currently out on bail.<\/p>\n

Takagi, described by prosecutors as the owner and chief editor of the now defunct site The Real Singapore, was teary eyed as a statement of facts in the case was being read in court.<\/p>\n

The site was forced to close by the media regulator last year for playing up articles seen as fomenting racial hatred.<\/p>\n

Immigration has been a hot-button issue in Singapore in recent years.<\/p>\n

Yang and Takagi were also charged with withholding from police information on the website’s advertising revenues, which were estimated at $SG473,000 ($458,565) over a 17-month period.<\/p>\n

Court documents showed its Facebook page had more than 400,000 likes, while the site itself had almost 13 million views a month.<\/p>\n

At a district court on Tuesday, Takagi pleaded guilty to fabricating two articles attacking Filipinos and another targeting mainland Chinese.<\/p>\n

They included an article which said that a Filipino family instigated a fracas at a Hindu festival, and another alleging that a Chinese woman made her grandson urinate into a bottle inside a metro train.<\/p>\n

These articles tended to “promote feelings of ill-will and hostility” between different races and between Singaporeans and foreigners working in the city-state, court documents said.<\/p>\n

Singapore’s sedition laws make it an offence to promote hostility between different races or classes in the multiracial city-state, which is mainly ethnic Chinese.<\/p>\n

About 40 per cent of the labour-starved island’s 5.5 million people are foreigners.<\/p>\n

Each sedition charge carries a penalty of up to three years in jail and a maximum fine of $SG5,000 ($4,847), or both.<\/p>\n

They also face one month in jail and up to $SG1,500 ($1,454) in fines, or both, for withholding information from police.<\/p>\n

Last September, Filipino nurse Ello Ed Mundsel Bello was jailed for four months for sedition after insulting Singaporeans online and calling on his countrymen to take over the city-state.<\/p>\n

In 2009, a local Christian couple, Ong Kian Cheong and Dorothy Chan, were jailed for eight weeks each for distributing and possessing anti-Muslim and anti-Catholic publications.<\/p>\n

Source: AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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