Authorities reject activist group's Pofma appeal over Facebook post on drug trafficker's death sentence

SINGAPORE — Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo on Tuesday (May 30) rejected an application by an activist group to cancel or vary a correction direction issued to it under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma).

The Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), which campaigns against the death penalty, was issued a correction order over a Facebook post concerning the capital sentence that had been meted out to convicted drug trafficker Tangaraju Suppiah. 

Tangaraju, a 46-year-old Singaporean, was hanged on April 26 after being convicted of abetting the trafficking of more than 1kg of cannabis.

“The conditions for issuing the correction direction are satisfied, and the application did not disclose any grounds to the contrary,” the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said in a statement on Tuesday (May 30).

“After having carefully considered the application, the Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs has decided to reject it. TJC has been notified of the rejection.”

MHA said that TJC posted the "false statement of fact" on its Facebook page on April 23. 

The correction direction that was issued to TJC on May 19 required the group to insert a correction notice at the top of their Facebook post, stating that the post contained a false statement of fact, together with a link to a Factually article which sets out the correct facts. 

TJC was also directed to post the correction notice as a new post on its Facebook page.

Correction directions were also issued to activist Kirsten Han, lawyer M Ravi, The Online Citizen Asia (TOCA) and TOC co-founder Andrew Loh. 

In a statement earlier this month, MHA said their social media posts and articles contained false statements about Tangaraju's capital sentence, including being denied an interpreter during the recording of his statement and that he was later found to be not guilty. CNA