The Online Citizen, Singapore’s longest-running independent online news site, harried by the government and denounced in Parliament, is clearly facing a crisis. The website has run out of funds and is being operated as a one-man show by its 34-year-old editor, Terry Xu, who hasn’t been paid for four or five months, he says.
At least two other independent news websites have disappeared previously under government pressure. The original was Temasek Review, which shut down voluntarily, and the second was The Real Singapore, or TRE, whose editors Singaporean Yang Kaiheng and his Australian girlfriend Ai Takagi, were charged a year ago with seven counts of sedition and other charges for allegedly printing racially inflammatory and inaccurate stories.
“The government is intent on shutting down (TOC, as the Online Citizen is known),” said a Singapore-based lawyer. “So the first step is to harass it.”
Accordingly, in a tactic learned from the so-called “50-centers” in China, online trolls said to be aligned with the Political Action Party called “the Internet Brigade” are being paid to flame independent websites with scathing comments on critical stories. TOC is a particular target, Xu said. Full story...
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At least two other independent news websites have disappeared previously under government pressure. The original was Temasek Review, which shut down voluntarily, and the second was The Real Singapore, or TRE, whose editors Singaporean Yang Kaiheng and his Australian girlfriend Ai Takagi, were charged a year ago with seven counts of sedition and other charges for allegedly printing racially inflammatory and inaccurate stories.
“The government is intent on shutting down (TOC, as the Online Citizen is known),” said a Singapore-based lawyer. “So the first step is to harass it.”
Accordingly, in a tactic learned from the so-called “50-centers” in China, online trolls said to be aligned with the Political Action Party called “the Internet Brigade” are being paid to flame independent websites with scathing comments on critical stories. TOC is a particular target, Xu said. Full story...
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