Singapore government rejects activist group's request to cancel correction direction

On May 30, the Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs, Josephine Teo, rejected an application from an activist group to cancel or vary a correction direction issued to it under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act POFMA.

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

The conditions for issuing the correction direction are satisfied, and the application did not disclose any grounds to the contrary, the ministry of Communications and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs said on May 30. TJC has been informed of the rejection. TJC said on its Facebook page on Apr 23 that it posted the false statement of fact.

The amendment to the TJC Facebook post on May 19 required the group to insert a warning at the top of the post, claiming that the post contained a false statement of fact, along with a link to a factual article which sets out the correct facts.

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

The Toca co-founder of TOC, Andrew Loh, lawyer M Ravi, and activist Kirsten Han were also removed from the list.

In a statement earlier this month, MHA said their social media posts and articles included 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.