SINGAPORE – The police have issued an Account Restriction Direction to TikTok and a Disabling Direction to Meta to deal with social media posts by former Singaporean Zulfikar Mohamad Shariff.
The 54-year-old Australian has been making social media posts inciting hatred between different racial and religious groups in Singapore.
detained under the Internal Security Act
for promoting terrorism and online glorification of the terrorist group, ISIS.
His recent posts include one made on June 19 on TikTok, where he falsely claimed that Malay Muslims were forced to move away from Islam and assimilate into the Chinese community in Singapore.
Similarly, a video posted on Facebook on July 18 claimed the Chinese in Singapore were colonial settlers, not migrants, and that Singapore’s ideology had insulted, degraded and oppressed Malays.
The directions under the Online Criminal Harms Act (OCHA) would see the TikTok account and Facebook page disabled.
The directions were not issued to X, formerly known as Twitter, where Zulfikar continues to make similar claims.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times regarding this, a Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) spokesman said the police are investigating the content on Zulfikar’s other social media accounts and pages, and will consider issuing directions against them where necessary.
Checks by ST found Zulfikar has been making such posts from Australia, where he resettled with his family in 2002 and had held dual citizenship for Singapore and Australia.
He had received state grants and unemployment benefits from the Australian government.
He renounced his Singapore citizenship in August 2020.
