Two charged over anti-foreigner forum The Real Singapore
Singaporean man and Australian woman could face jail for sedition
A Singaporean man and an Australian woman behind an online forum that often attacks immigrants and foreign workers in Singapore have been charged with sedition, an offence punishable by jail.
Singaporean Yang Kaiheng, 26, and Japanese-Australian Ai Takagi, 22, each face seven counts of sedition for articles published on a website called The Real Singapore and its Facebook page between October 2013 and February this year, court documents showed.
The two, described by local media as a couple based in Australia, were also charged with withholding documents on the website's finances from police. They immediately posted bail.
The Real Singapore's Facebook page has more than 415,000 followers, and commentators say the website probably earns thousands of dollars a month in advertising revenues.
Singapore clamps down hard on anyone seen to be inciting communal tensions after bloody racial riots erupted in the 1960s.
The case comes a week after a Filipino nurse who insulted Singaporeans online and called for the takeover of the city-state by his countrymen was charged under the Sedition Act, a rarely used colonial-era law.
Among other matters, the law makes it an offence to promote hostility between different races or classes in Singapore, which is mainly ethnic Chinese.