The verdict has been delivered, and it doesn’t look good for the people who ran the now-shuttered sensationalist sociopolitical website The Real Singapore.
The former editor of the once massively popular and controversial website has since been sentenced to 10 months in jail, Channel NewsAsia reports. 23-year-old Australian Ai Takagi is convicted for publishing doctored and “patently false” material on the website after she pleaded guilty to four counts of sedition.
Through provocative posts and xenophobic slants, Takagi garnered immense ad revenue from The Real Singapore, pocketing as much as $492,500 from December 2013 to April 2015. Her posts were deemed to have fanned anti-foreigner sentiments, especially those from India, China and the Philippines — ironic considering she’s not Singaporean herself.
The Media Development Authority cracked down on the controversial website last May after the final straw seemed to be a post that claimed that Filipino family was behind the infamous Thaipusam altercation last year.
In court, her Singaporean husband Yang Kaiheng also faces similar charges of sedition for his alleged involvement in the website, but he intends to challenge them. The prosecution had sought for Takagi — who was revealed to be pregnant — to be slapped with a 14-month jail term after they claimed that she was “devoid of genuine remorse” for writing seditious posts for profit.
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