Malaysian court throws out rights group Lawyers for Liberty’s lawsuit against Shanmugam over Pofma order

SINGAPORE — Malaysia’s High Court has struck out a lawsuit brought against Singapore’s Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam by human rights group Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) after it failed to serve its court papers on the minister.

In a statement on Thursday (Oct 1), Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said that the Malaysia-based group’s conduct in starting and publicising its legal action against Mr Shanmugam, and then failing to prosecute the matter, is “consistent with how LFL has conducted itself so far”.

In January, the group filed a motion in the Kuala Lumpur High Court against Mr Shanmugam, who is also Singapore's law minister. 

This came after the office administering Singapore’s anti-fake-news law, the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma), issued a correction order to LFL under Mr Shanmugam’s name over an article alleging that brutal execution methods took place at Changi Prison. 

LFL adviser N Surendran, a former Member of Parliament from Malaysia’s previous Pakatan Harapan government, accused Pofma of stifling his group’s free speech across the border.

However, Malaysia’s High Court struck out the case on Sept 21 after LFL failed to serve the papers on Mr Shanmugam. It also did not renew its papers and allowed them to expire for reasons that LFL did not make known, MHA said.

LFL had falsely alleged that whenever the rope broke during a hanging, Singapore prison officers were instructed to "pull the rope around the neck of the prisoner towards him" and "kick the back of the neck of the prisoner with great force in order to break it".

In January, LFL’s website was blocked in Singapore, as the group did not comply with the correction order.

MHA said: “LFL made sensational allegations against the Singapore Prison Service and the treatment of prisoners, and promised to put forward evidence. But nothing was put forward to substantiate its wild and completely untrue allegations.

“LFL’s legal action was baseless, and that is shown by the fact it has now decided not to continue the legal action.” 

Similar correction directives were imposed on freelance journalist Kirsten Han, sociopolitical site The Online Citizen and news portal Yahoo Singapore for publishing posts that contained the falsehoods. 

A Singapore High Court judge in February dismissed The Online Citizen’s appeal against the order. The case is now before the Court of Appeal.