“Quality, independent and credible” news site States Times Review (STR) stirred up some shit recently when it published an article that accused Law Minister K Shanmugam of asserting that Eurasian Singaporeans are categorised as Indians.
The article — which was shared by dozens of angry Eurasians on social media — insinuated that Shanmugam had blatantly dismissed Eurasian people at a recent Institute of Police Studies Forum. Among other unverified statements, the anonymous STR writer alleged that Shanmugam asserted that Eurasians are considered as ‘Indian’ under the Presidential candidacy law.
The Minister, of course, denied all that bullroar. According to his side of the story, he said nothing about Eurasians, and there were no questions asked about Eurasians or any discussion at all about Eurasians. Then he did the standard procedure when things go wrong: call police.
Even the Ministry of Communications and Information came out to set things right — by calling the article a “disgraceful fabrication”.
“It is malicious of STR to spread such vicious falsehoods, calculated to sow discord among our different ethnic groups,” said the statement on Gov.sg. “The Government will review STR’s post and decide whether to take further action against STR.”
But! It seems like nothing much of consequence will occur, as STR is based in Australia, i.e., beyond the jurisdiction of Singapore’s sedition laws. The people behind STR know this, and they aren’t backing down. Already, they’ve published a follow-up piece that called the Law Minister “Law(less)” and another one that said he “can’t do anything“.
“States Times Review will exercise it’s full rights of freedom of speech in accordance to Australia’s laws. Law Minister K Shanmugam should start standing up for himself like any other politician in the world and stop using police reports and ludicrous laws he concocted as political tools like a coward. An advice for the pompous Law Minister is to do your job and stop oppressing criticisms.”
Salty stuff. But STR did kinda admit they were in the wrong when they quietly edited their original article from one that strongly accused Shanmugam of dismissing Eurasians to one that criticises the Presidential candidacy law as being racist. Credible, much?
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