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The offense involved a man, a piece of cardboard, and a smiling face.
On Monday, Jolovan Wham, a civil rights activist, was charged in a Singapore court with illegal public assembly for holding a cardboard sign with a smiley face near a police station in March. It was a protest by one person. He admitted that he had drawn the smiling face himself.
Against potential threats to its stable and orderly state, Singapore is bound by strict rules on civil liberties, such as freedom of speech and assembly. Public protest without permission is allowed in only one place in the city-state, and only after completing a registration process. The Online Tampering and Falsehood Protection Act, which was enacted last year, controls online activity.
Wham said he had held up the smiley face sign in support of two young activists who had been investigated for holding signs calling on Singapore to fight climate change by reducing the city-state’s dependence on oil.
“You would think that the Singapore authorities would be smart enough not to take on such a ridiculous case that it will make them a laughingstock around the world, but they are blinded by their command and control mentality that prefers the maximum response to the least provocation. . ”Said Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch.
Wham, who wore a smiley face T-shirt and a mask while traveling to his court hearing on Monday, was also charged with violating the Public Order Law for an incident in 2018 when he displayed a message typed on a piece of paper outside. the old building of the State Courts. The message called for the defamation charges against an online media editor and writer who had accused senior government officials of corruption to be dropped.
In both cases, Wham said it took just “more than several seconds,” long enough for photos to be taken and posted on social media. If convicted, you could be fined up to $ 3,725 for each violation.
“The Public Order Act was supposedly enacted to preserve public order and the safety of the people, which were not compromised when I took the photos and uploaded them to social media,” Wham said. “The charges show that our laws have the potential to be applied in a ridiculous and domineering way.”
Public protests without permission in Singapore are limited to one place, a place in a park called Speakers’ Corner. In a statement issued on Friday, the police said that “the Speakers’ Corner is the appropriate avenue for Singaporeans to express their views on issues that concern them and to allow Singaporeans to hold meetings without the need for a permit,” subject to certain conditions. met.”
With coronavirus restrictions in place, the Speakers’ Corner is currently not in use.
Mr. Wham, who has worked as a social worker, has also lobbied for the rights of migrant workers in Singapore. While the city-state has kept its coronavirus death toll below 30, the virus spread rapidly in overcrowded dormitories for foreign manual workers.
Earlier this year, Mr. Wham was jailed twice. In August, he served 10 days in prison for violating the Public Order Law by organizing a conference in which Joshua Wong, a Hong Kong democracy activist, participated by video. (On Monday, in another case, Mr. Wong pleaded guilty to an unauthorized gathering in Hong Kong.)
Upholding Mr. Wham’s conviction in that case and dismissing a constitutional challenge to the Public Order Act, the Court of Appeals said, “It is, unfortunately, an inescapable fact of modern life that national politics anywhere is often the target of interference from foreign entities or people who are promoting their own agendas. “
And in March, Mr. Wham spent a week in prison for contempt of court, having unfavorably compared Singapore’s judiciary to that of neighboring Malaysia.
Shortly before his first term in prison this year, Wham posted a message on social media.
“It should never be an offense to tell your truth,” he wrote. “If we cannot speak, meet freely and campaign without looking over our shoulders, the reforms we want can only be made on the terms of those in power.”
