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Alex Au fined S$8,000 for contempt of court

SINGAPORE — Blogger Alex Au was fined S$8,000 by the High Court today (March 5) for contempt of court, for an article in which he alleged that hearing dates for two challenges against laws criminalising homosexuality were manipulated.

Blogger Alex Au. TODAY file photo

Blogger Alex Au. TODAY file photo

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SINGAPORE — Blogger Alex Au was fined S$8,000 by the High Court today (March 5) for contempt of court, for an article in which he alleged that hearing dates for two challenges against laws criminalising homosexuality were manipulated.

The 62-year-old told TODAY he would be appealing against the court’s decision, but decided to pay the fine first.

Punishments for contempt of court can be a fine or imprisonment, with no limit set on the amount or duration. The Attorney-General’s Chambers had asked for a S$10,000 fine to serve as a general deterrence.

“The object of imposing the penalty for the offence of scandalising contempt is to ensure that the unwarranted statements made by the contemnor are ‘repelled and not repeated’,” the prosecution said, adding that scandalising contempt is “essential an offence against the authority of a public institution, ie. the Court.”

On Jan 21, Justice Belinda Ang found Au to be guilty of contempt by implying in an Oct 5, 2013 article that Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon had shown partiality towards two constitutional challenges against the law criminalising sex between men.

In the article, titled “377 wheels come off Supreme Court’s best-laid plans”, Au wrote that the court’s “strange calendaring” had allowed a gay couple’s constitutionality challenge against Section 377A to be heard first although they had launched the bid after a similar contest by Mr Tan Eng Hong, 51, who was caught having oral sex with a man in a public toilet.

This, Au alleged, was because the Chief Justice wanted to be on the three-judge Court of Appeal to hear the constitutional challenge against Section 377A. CJ Menon could not do this otherwise due to conflict of interest, as he was Attorney-General when Tan’s criminal case was heard in court.

The article carried a “real risk of undermining public confidence” in the Singapore judiciary, the judge said. This is because it had wrongly promoted the “impression that access to justice in Singapore can be flouted in the sense that the authority of the Singapore legal system as a whole can be flouted”. Statements made in the article also insinuated that the Chief Justice has a “vested and improper interest” in upholding the constitutionality of Section 377A of the Penal Code.

Au has since taken down the article from his blog.

Justice Ang, however, cleared Au of contempt for a second article the AGC had brought him to court for. In it, he criticised a court’s decision to strike out a suit brought by a gay man who claimed he was harassed into resigning because of his sexual orientation.

This article did not cross the line because he had not insinuated that there was “some sort of systemic bias that had no bearing on the merits of the case”, the judge added.

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