After weeks of silence over several high profile corruption cases, Law Minister K Shanmugam today (Jan 22) picked on parents warning them not to “spread untrue stories” or face consequences. The Law Minister was commenting on the three cases where strangers offered young girls from international schools “free rides”. International schools and parents reached out to their community warning their children not to walk alone in the street after two police reports were lodged. The Singapore Police however dismissed the cases saying that the men offered rides “out of goodwill”.
Many expat parents disagreed with the Singapore Police’s “investigation”, much to the dismay of the authoritarian Law Minister who always have problems with being disagreed at. Law Minister K Shanmugam stopped short of issuing a threat and hissed on his Facebook page:
“[ Stories of Attempts to Kidnap Children ] There have been stories and concerns about two female students being offered a lift by strangers, around the Dover neighbourhood. Some media reports have called them “kidnap scares”. Media reports have said that the van occupants in one of the incidents had gotten out to try to persuade one of the students to get into the van. That is untrue. The van provides transport services for the school, takes students to and from the school. Police have investigated both incidents thoroughly, interviewed the persons involved. There were no kidnap attempts. It is important for young children to be taught to be careful, when approached by strangers. At the same time, we need to be careful of spreading untrue stories and unnecessarily alarming parents.”
Law Minister K Shanmugam however did not call out Straits Times’s name even though the state media papers is the one sensationalising the story with the headlines “kidnap scares”.
The snake of a minister is currently in the process of censoring criticisms, K Shanmugam just wrote a Green Paper proposing to the Parliament to set up a Select Committee to handle what he claimed as “online falsehoods”. The Minister then sits himself in the very same committee to propose new censorships laws.