Unhappy with US financial news giant The Economist’s damning report on the Singapore government, the High Commissioner for Singapore in London Foo Chi Hsia published a fake news claiming that Amos Yee was jailed not for political dissent.
Foo Chi Hsia took offense with a few statements in The Economist’s article which wrote:
“Immigration judges often grant asylum with a simple, spoken ruling. This one explained himself over 13 pages… Yee’s online posts as a profanity-laced video…calling Lee a horrible person, an awful leader and a dictator… Yee had only mocked Christianity in small part, around 30 seconds, of the 519-seconds long video.”
The Singapore government through its High Commissioner alleging The Economist of publishing fake news:
“These assertions were not true, adding that Yee had disparaged Christians and Muslims in his online posts.”
State media Straits Times followed up on the High Commissioner’s publication as part of its propaganda, and even reproduced the hate speech and vulgarities on its website. You may view the link here.
The High Commissioner then criticised America for calling bigotry as free speech:
“The Economist may agree with the American judge that such bigotry is free speech. But Singapore does not countenance hate speech, because we have learnt from bitter experience how fragile our racial and religious harmony is. Several people have been prosecuted for engaging in such hate speech.”