Police in Singapore are investigating whether a ruling party lawmaker broke a strict law barring virtually all forms of protest when he held up a placard encouraging support for local food businesses, a case that has sparked debate over the proportionality of the city-state’s broadly-defined public order legislation.
Louis Ng, a member of the People’s Action Party (PAP), posted four pictures on Facebook last June of himself with hawkers at a food center in his constituency. He held up a piece of paper that read “support them” alongside a smiley face. That act alone could be deemed an offense if found by courts to constitute an illegal public assembly.
Though freedom of speech and assembly are enshrined in Singapore’s constitution, civil liberties are significantly circumscribed in practice by the country’s Public Order Act, under which a single person demonstrating support for or opposition to a cause without a police permit can be deemed an unlawful assembly and fined up to S$5,000 (US$3,760).
The investigation into Ng drew immediate comparisons with charges leveled last November against Jolovan Wham, a civil rights campaigner who posed in public with a smiley face drawn on a cardboard sign in a show of solidarity with young climate change activists who were questioned by police last year over similar single-person protests.
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Nile Bowie is a journalist and correspondent with the Asia Times covering current affairs in Singapore and Malaysia. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.
