Declaring that States Times Review editor Alex Tan’s submission as “not made in good faith”, the Select Committee censored his submission and refuse to disclose the content:
“Three written representations were not published,two written by Dr Damien Cheong and Dr Gulizar Haciyakupoglu concerned matters of national security and international relations. Their oral evidence was heard in private sessions. The third was from Mr Alex Tan, founder of The States Times Review, as it was not made it good faith and should not, as a matter of principle, be protected by parliamentary privilege.”
In his submission, Alex Tan pointed out that the government is a dictatorship and the Select Committee is essentially a single party effort to enforce censorship on free media while giving propaganda fake news greater exposure.
You may read Alex Tan’s submission to the Select Committee here.
Alex Tan also wrote a second email requesting for a video conference interview with the Select Committee, which the government did not take up.
The Select Committee has concluded their public hearings and decided that new censorship laws will be written. Several international human rights groups including Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch, have also slammed the committee as a publicity stunt, and called for the government to dismantle existing censorship laws instead of legislating new ones. Facebook, Google and Twitter also spoke out against the government, cautioning them that the government is never always the “arbiter of truth”.