2nd Pofma order issued to activist group in August over false statements on treatment of death row prisoners

SINGAPORE — A Singapore-based activist group urging abolition of the death penalty has been issued its second correction order in August over false statements about the treatment of death row prisoners here.

On Aug 11, Minister for Home Affairs K. Shanmugam instructed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office to issue a correction order to Transformative Justice Collective for social media posts on Aug 6.

This comes after the group was issued an order on Aug 8 under Singapore's fake news law concerning posts on a Singaporean who was executed on Aug 2.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Aug 11 said professional networking platform LinkedIn also has to put up a correction notice on a post on its platform by self-styled whistle-blower Julie O'Connor, who shared the group's Aug 6 claims.

MHA said the Pofma direction was made to address two false statements of fact in the Aug 6 social media posts concerning executions in Singapore, which could erode public trust in the Government and the judiciary.

First, the group had falsely claimed that the executions of two Singaporean death row prisoners on Aug 2 and Aug 7 were scheduled without regard for due legal process.

Second, the group and LinkedIn user had falsely claimed that the state uses capital punishment to arbitrarily decide whether people live or die.

The Aug 6 posts by the activist group claimed that the state had denied both men the opportunity to see through ongoing legal proceedings that they were involved in.

MHA said Singapore's criminal justice system requires every accused person facing a capital charge to go through a full trial.

In its Aug 8 statement, the ministry said an execution will be scheduled only when prisoners on death row have exhausted all rights of appeal and the clemency process.

MHA had detailed the Aug 2 prisoner's case history in its earlier statement. This included how three of his review applications had been dismissed.

Laying out the case history of the prisoner who was executed on Aug 7, MHA said the Singaporean was arrested on Oct 24, 2017, and convicted over having 35.85g of diamorphine, or pure heroin, for the purpose of trafficking.

This is more than two times the threshold to warrant the death penalty, and would have been sufficient to feed the addictions of about 430 abusers for a week, it added.

The man underwent trial in the High Court in 2019 and 2021, before being sentenced to death on Aug 10, 2021.

On May 11, 2022, the Court of Appeal dismissed his appeal against his conviction and sentence.

His application for clemency was denied by then President Halimah Yacob on Oct 14, 2022, and again on Nov 22, 2022, when another clemency petition was submitted on his behalf.

He then filed a legal review application, which was dismissed on Feb 28, 2023.

Another legal application, which the man filed jointly with other death row prisoners, was dismissed in March 2024. The Court of Appeal found that this application was an abuse of the court's process, noted MHA.

On July 31, the man was given notice that his execution was scheduled for Aug 7. At the time, he had one pending civil appeal, which was made together with other death row prisoners.

On Aug 5, he filed a notice to withdraw the civil appeal, which the court accepted on the same day. 

Hence, there were no ongoing legal proceedings involving the prisoner when his execution was carried out on Aug 7, MHA added.

Transformative Justice Collective had also claimed in its posts that the death penalty has "never been about justice or the safety and well-being of Singaporeans, but about demonstrating state power so extensive that it can control whether people live or die".

Outlining the legal foundations and processes for those sentenced to the death penalty here, MHA said Singapore's laws are not made arbitrarily, nor are they enforced arbitrarily.

"All persons in Singapore are subject to the law. If they choose to traffic drugs in Singapore, they will face the penalty according to the law. This penalty is the death sentence if they traffic drugs in quantities above the capital sentence threshold," MHA said.

With the Pofma order, the group is required to carry correction notices alongside its Facebook, Instagram and X posts on Aug 6.

In 2023, the group had also been required to insert a correction notice for another social media post about the death penalty, and failed in its application against the order.

This article was first published in The Straits Times. Permission required for reproduction.