2nd Pofma order issued to activist group in Aug over false claims on treatment of death row prisoners
Source: Straits Times
Article Date: 12 Aug 2024
Author: Ang Qing & Wong Pei Ting
The Ministry of Home Affairs said the Pofma direction was made to address two false statements of fact.
A Singapore-based activist group urging abolition of the death penalty has been issued its second correction order in August over false statements about the treatment of death row prisoners here.
On Aug 11, Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam instructed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office to issue a correction order to Transformative Justice Collective for social media posts on Aug 6.
This comes after the group was issued an order on Aug 8 under Singapore’s fake news law concerning posts on a Singaporean who was executed on Aug 2.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Aug 11 said professional networking platform LinkedIn also has to put up a correction notice on a post on its platform by self-styled whistle-blower Julie O’Connor, who shared the group’s Aug 6 claims.
MHA said the Pofma direction was made to address two false statements of fact in the Aug 6 social media posts concerning executions in Singapore, which could erode public trust in the Government and the judiciary.
First, the group had falsely claimed that the executions of two Singaporean death row prisoners on Aug 2 and Aug 7 were scheduled without regard for due legal process.
Second, the group and LinkedIn user had falsely claimed that the state uses capital punishment to arbitrarily decide whether people live or die.
The Aug 6 posts by the activist group claimed that the state had denied both men the opportunity to see through ongoing legal proceedings that they were involved in.
MHA said Singapore’s criminal justice system requires every accused person facing a capital charge to go through a full trial.
In its Aug 8 statement, the ministry said an execution will be scheduled only when prisoners on death row have exhausted all rights of appeal and the clemency process.
MHA had detailed the Aug 2 prisoner’s case history in its earlier statement. This included how three of his review applications had been dismissed.
Laying out the case history of the prisoner who was executed on Aug 7, MHA said the Singaporean was arrested on Oct 24, 2017, and convicted over having 35.85g of diamorphine, or pure heroin, for the purpose of trafficking.
This is more than two times the threshold to warrant the death penalty, and would have been sufficient to feed the addictions of about 430 abusers for a week, it added.
The man underwent trial in the High Court in 2019 and 2021, before being sentenced to death on Aug 10, 2021.
On May 11, 2022, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal against his conviction and sentence.
His application for clemency was denied by then President Halimah Yacob on Oct 14, 2022, and again on Nov 22, 2022, when another clemency petition was submitted on his behalf.
He then filed a legal review application, which was dismissed on Feb 28, 2023.
Another legal application, which the man filed jointly with other death row prisoners, was dismissed in March 2024. The Court of Appeal found that this application was an abuse of the court’s process, noted MHA.
On July 31, the man was given notice that his execution was scheduled for Aug 7. At the time, he had one pending civil appeal, which was made together with other death row prisoners.
On Aug 5, he filed a notice to withdraw the civil appeal, which the court accepted on the same day.
Hence, there were no ongoing legal proceedings involving the prisoner when his execution was carried out on Aug 7, MHA added.
Transformative Justice Collective had also claimed in its posts that the death penalty has “never been about justice or the safety and well-being of Singaporeans, but about demonstrating state power so extensive that it can control whether people live or die”.
Outlining the legal foundations and processes for those sentenced to the death penalty here, MHA said Singapore’s laws are not made arbitrarily, nor are they enforced arbitrarily.
“All persons in Singapore are subject to the law. If they choose to traffic drugs in Singapore, they will face the penalty according to the law. This penalty is the death sentence if they traffic drugs in quantities above the capital sentence threshold,” MHA said.
With the Pofma order, the group is required to carry correction notices alongside its Facebook, Instagram and X posts on Aug 6.
In 2023, the group had also been required to insert a correction notice for another social media post about the death penalty, and failed in its application against the order.
Activist group issued Pofma order over false claims about treatment of death row prisoners
A Singapore-based activist group pushing for the death penalty to be abolished here has been issued a correction order for posts making false and misleading statements about the treatment of death row prisoners.
On Aug 8, Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam instructed the Pofma Office to issue a correction order to the Transformative Justice Collective group concerning an article published on its website on Aug 1, as well as social media posts made on the same day on its Facebook, Instagram and X accounts.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) direction was to address four false statements of fact in the group’s posts.
First, that the execution of a Singaporean death row prisoner on Aug 2 was scheduled without regard for due legal process. Second, that such prisoners are denied legal counsel in court proceedings, and have to rush to prepare and argue their own cases, which are deliberately scheduled to be heard at short notice.
Third, that scheduled executions are arbitrarily stayed at the last minute. And fourth, that the state arbitrarily makes laws in relation to the death penalty.
“The Government takes a serious view of the deliberate communication of falsehoods,” MHA said.
This is not the group’s first brush with Singapore’s fake news law. In May, MHA had also issued it a correction direction, which required the group to insert a correction notice at the top of a Facebook post, stating that the post contained a false statement of fact.
The Aug 1 posts by the activist group had claimed that the notice period given to the death row prisoner was shorter than the seven days usually granted, as his execution notice was issued on July 29 to inform him and his family that his execution was scheduled for Aug 2.
The posts also claimed that his execution was scheduled before the court judgment was out, and went on to state that, as abolitionist activists, the group has borne witness to “plenty of abuse and contempt”. This includes expediting legal applications to mere days, as well as putting prisoners with no legal counsel, resources or legal training in the position of rushing to prepare and argue their own cases against state prosecutors, the group said.
In its statement, MHA said it is false and misleading to suggest that the execution of the man in the offending posts was scheduled without regard for due legal process. The man had been found in possession of 36.93g of heroin for the purpose of trafficking back in 2016.
He was afforded due legal process, the ministry said, adding that an execution would be scheduled only when a prisoner had exhausted all rights of appeal and the clemency process.
The death row prisoner’s case history
Laying out the man’s case history, MHA said he was arrested on April 12, 2016, underwent trial in the High Court in 2018, and was convicted and sentenced to death on Feb 15, 2019.
He subsequently appealed against his conviction and sentence, but had the application dismissed by the Court of Appeal on Nov 25, 2019.
He also had his application for clemency denied by then President Halimah Yacob on May 20, 2020.
Thereafter, the man went on to file three review applications, two of which were filed within days of his scheduled executions, MHA said.
He was first scheduled for execution on Sept 24, 2020, and filed his first review on Sept 22 that year. A day later, then President Halimah granted him an order of respite so the Court of Appeal could consider the application, but this application was dismissed on Oct 12, 2020.
He filed his second review application on April 19, 2024, seven days before his next execution date, and the Court of Appeal dismissed this application on May 21.
On June 27, he filed a third review application despite being statutorily prohibited from doing so. This application was dismissed, again by the appellate court, on July 30, MHA said.
On July 29, the man was indeed given notice that his execution was to take place on Aug 2 while two legal applications were still pending. These were his third review application and a civil appeal.
But MHA said the third review application, which was similar to the first two applications that were previously dismissed, was prohibited under the Criminal Procedure Code.
In any case, when the Court of Appeal dismissed this application on July 30, it found the application to be “totally without merit” and an abuse of court processes, the ministry highlighted.
The outcome of the civil appeal, on the other hand, would have had no bearing on the man’s conviction and sentence, MHA added. It noted that the Court of Appeal had confirmed this on Aug 2 before the man’s sentence was carried out.
MHA also said the man was not denied legal counsel at any stage. It pointed out that he was not only represented by counsel of his choice in all three review applications, but he was also represented by no fewer than eight lawyers throughout the legal proceedings.
The ministry also said that while the man was also a joint applicant with other death row prisoners for three other legal proceedings, these have all been dismissed by the High Court and the Court of Appeal as they were found to be unmeritorious.
Zooming out of the man’s case to address whether death row prisoners are fairly treated, MHA said some of them abuse the court process by deliberately and repeatedly filing last-minute applications to prevent the punishment from being carried out.
In such cases, the stay of execution, if granted by the court, is occasioned by the prisoner’s own decision to file applications at the last minute, and not given arbitrarily by the state, the ministry added.
And if the executions are stayed, they would be by reason of the prisoner’s own applications, it pointed out. “Where such applications are filed, the court will have to consider if there is merit in them,” it said.
The Transformative Justice Collective had claimed in its posts that new laws have been passed to make it even more difficult for death row prisoners to file post-appeal applications. MHA said all laws in Singapore are considered and enacted by the legislature, which comprises the Parliament and the president, according to proper legal process.
“Any law that is sought to be introduced or amended, must go through the parliamentary process and be assented to by the president, before it becomes law. Our laws are not made arbitrarily,” it said.
With the Pofma order, the activist group is now required to carry correction notices on its website and alongside its Facebook, Instagram and X posts.
Source: Straits Times © SPH Media Limited. Permission required for reproduction.
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