SINGAPORE - The Online Citizen Asia (TOCA) and its publisher Terry Xu have been ordered under the fake news law to post corrections to an online article and social media posts that made false accusations against the police in a 2021 incident.
In a statement on Sunday night, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam has instructed the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office to issue Correction Directions to the two parties. The orders are in relation to Xu’s Facebook post on April 30, TOCA’s article on its website on May 2, and TOCA’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn posts on May 2 that referenced the TOCA article.
These publications made reference to the police’s bodycam footage of an incident on May 17, 2021, where police officers responded to a report about an elderly woman at Yishun Avenue 5 who looked lost and was not wearing a mask.
The allegations were similar to that in articles in 2021 on the incident by the now-defunct The Online Citizen (TOC), and it was issued a Correction Direction in May 2021 for publishing falsehoods. TOC then appealed in court to set aside the order, but the appeal was dismissed by the High Court in 2022.
TOC had alleged that police officers were taunting and reprimanding the woman for not wearing a mask then, which coincided with the initial stage of the Covid-19 pandemic here.
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