‘Edz Ello’ gets 4 months’ jail for seditious posts

SINGAPORE — In taking to social media to disparage Singaporeans, he had not only incited “public disquiet and impassioned responses”, but also potentially harmed relations between Singaporeans and Filipinos here, at a time where local-foreigner relations are a “challenging fault line in society”. 

For his provocative conduct, Filipino Ello Ed Mundsel Bello was today (Sept 21) sentenced to four months’ jail, with District Judge Siva Shanmugam saying that offences like Bello’s will be “met with the full brunt of the law in the form of a deterrent sentence”. 

Bello, 29, was last month convicted under the Sedition Act on one count of promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility. He was also convicted of two counts of providing false information to the police. Two more charges, one under the Sedition Act and another for lying to the police, were taken into consideration in sentencing him.

Delivering the sentence, DJ Shanmugam said Bello’s remarks — posted online on January — were a “seditious publication” laced with “inflammatory comments”.

“(His) provocative conduct, if left unchecked, could possibly result in discrimination against the innocent and law-abiding minority Filipino residents in Singapore,” the judge said.

He also disagreed with defence lawyer Mark Goh’s earlier argument that Bello should be granted a less harsh sentence as his case did not involve the “delicate golden threads” of race and religion.

Pointing out that the local-foreigner divide has remained a challenging fault line in society in recent times, DJ Shanmugam said: “Unlike the limited effect and reach of distinct racial or religious issues, this divide affects all and sundry and cannot be regarded as any less delicate or sensitive in the current context.

He added: “In a nation whose only resource are its people, we simply cannot afford to condone any act which poses a threat to our social stability and security.”

In a post on “The Real Singapore” Facebook page in January, Bello called Singaporeans losers, and said that Filipinos were better and stronger, and would evict Singaporeans from their country as well as take over their jobs, women and future. He ended his post with the declaration: “REMEMBER PINOY BETTER AND STRONGER THAN STINKAPOREANS.”

Bello, who was then a nurse working at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, deleted his posts later the evening, but they had already attracted backlash and were republished on other websites, such as The Kaki News Network, and several police reports were filed against him. 

During police investigations, Bello initially lied that he did not post the comments, and that someone had accessed his Facebook account at a cybercafe in Lucky Plaza. 

DJ Shanmugam said Bello had exploited the anonymity provided by his Facebook account to post “extremely provocative” comments. In directing his comments to all Singaporeans on a page with wide following, Bello “would have known that he would be enraging a large number of persons,” the judge said. The postings received more than 600 replies.

Citing past cases of a similar nature, DJ Shanmugam stressed it is important to send a strong signal that the Internet is not an entirely unregulated space where “calls to violence or messages laced with racial slurs are treated as...acceptable”.

The court must also send a clear signal, he added, that offences like Bello’s will be “met with the full brunt of the law in the form of a deterrent sentence.” 

For promoting feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the Singapore population, Bello could have been jailed up to three years and fined S$5,000. For giving false information to the police he could have been jailed up to a year and fined S$5,000.

In 2012, engineer Gary Yue was jailed two months for an online post inciting violence on National Day two years before that. In 2005, animal shelter assistant Benjamin Koh was jailed one month for posting vicious remarks against Muslims and Malays online. 

Today, the Ministry of Manpower also warned it takes a “serious view” of work pass holders who break the law. “Foreigners who are charged in court, convicted and sentenced to jail will have their work passes revoked and be permanently barred from working in Singapore,” it said.