Amos Yee case shows Singapore applies its laws fairly and evenly: Shanmugam

SINGAPORE – The Amos Yee case showed “tremendous hypocrisy” on the part of some media in the West and some Singaporeans who thought of themselves as intellectuals, said Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam.

When the then teenage blogger was dealt with in 2015 and 2016 for engaging in hate speech and publishing an obscene image, outlets like The New Yorker and human rights advocates held him up as a brilliant young man who was being persecuted for speaking up.

Yee later fled to the US and was granted asylum in 2018. A few years later, he was indicted by a grand jury for solicitation and possession of child pornography, and subsequently deported to Singapore.

“I would like to know what The New Yorker now wants to say, and if they have any sense of decency to come back and say they’ve got it wrong,” said Mr Shanmugam in an episode of The Rishi Report podcast, published on April 6.

Asked by comedian Rishi Budhrani for his reaction to the Amos Yee case, the minister said: “Well, I wish the Americans had kept him.”

He added: “My only reaction to him coming back is the Americans, you know, city on a hill, their democracy, they believe in free speech. Why not just keep him since they gave him asylum?”

Yee, now 27, was arrested at Changi Airport on March 20 and handed three charges, including for having left the country without a valid exit permit. He is out on bail pending trial for the Enlistment Act offences.

His case showed that Singapore has clear laws when it comes to speech that denigrates any racial or religious group, and applies these laws fairly and evenly, said Mr Shanmugam.

“It’s people who try to give it subjective descriptors and try to paint the Government’s actions as a repressive government that, you know, affects free speech rights,” he said.

“What free speech when you want to use four-letter words on Christians and Muslims?”

On the podcast, Mr Shanmugam said Singapore takes a very tough view on hate speech to prevent the normalisation of divisions between an in-group, usually the majority, and the out-group, which could be minorities by race, skin colour, language or religion.

In societies where this has happened, the out-group is dehumanised regularly and violence then becomes acceptable, he noted.

“(It’s) like what Hitler did to the Jews, and once the majority start thinking of you along those lines… they can treat you like (you) are subhuman,” he added.

In Singapore, people are allowed to praise their own race or religion, but the line is crossed when a person wants to run down anybody else along these lines, said Mr Shanmugam.

He cited the case of a former polytechnic lecturer, who in 2022 was sentenced to five weeks’ jail and a $6,000 fine for offences that included making racist remarks to an interracial couple in Orchard Road.

Mr Shanmugam noted that similar remarks about an Indian or coloured person walking with a white girl in Western societies would be commonplace, but in Singapore, they resulted in serious consequences.

This outcome boils down to the values system that each society has, rather than whether security policies are more sensible in Singapore than in other countries, he added.

Singaporeans are prepared to accept the Internal Security Department and detention without trial on the order of the Minister for Home Affairs, and to accept very tough laws that prohibit hate speech, he noted.

“Of course, if you abuse that power, then you know, this is a highly literate, educated society, and they will know that you’re abusing the power,” he added.

Conversely, people in other societies may be less tolerant towards giving more powers to the government on areas like detention, said Mr Shanmugam. “Each society finds its own balance.”

Mr Shanmugam said he has had to issue Internal Security Act arrest warrants for 62 people in the past decade, including to 14- and 15-year-olds.

Asked if he was shocked when presented with ISD investigations of such young people getting radicalised, the minister said it did not shock him, but instead saddened him.

“The way I look at it is, if I didn’t arrest them and did not detain them, a number of them would have gone on to kill, and if they are of age, they will face the death penalty,” he said. “If they are not of age, they will be detained for a very long time. Their lives are gone, effectively.”

If these radicalised individuals had gone overseas to fight, they would have been killed in the fighting, as has happened to a few Singaporeans, he added.

By detaining them and rehabilitating these individuals, they go on to reintegrate and hold jobs. “So, I say to myself, we’re actually saving their lives,” he said.

The one issue facing Singapore is complacency that terrorist attacks will not happen in Singapore, he said.

While a number of radicalisation cases were picked up by the authorities through reports by family members, teachers and classmates, the awareness of potential security incidents here is not very high, said Mr Shanmugam.

He said the Government has been telling people that such incidents can happen here, but people are “so used to the high levels of security that the mindset doesn’t kick in at all”.

As a major tourist centre and airport hub, millions of people visit Singapore. The city-state has to be an open society, as its economy, trade, and very existence depend on being open, including to all the influences of the world through the internet, he added.

While the security agencies have done a very good job so far, one must assume that sometimes, somebody slips through from outside and an incident will happen, said Mr Shanmugam.

“So never let complacency set in,” he said. “In my view, it’s a question of when, not if.”