Two jailed for 'sedition' on internet

A court yesterday sentenced two ethnic Chinese to prison for posting racist remarks about ethnic Malays on the internet.

It is considered a landmark case underscoring the government's attempts to regulate online expression and crack down on racial intolerance.

Animal shelter worker Benjamin Koh Song Huat, 27, was jailed for one month, while unemployed Nicholas Lim Yew, 25, was sentenced to a nominal one day behind bars and fined the maximum S$5,000 ($23,000) for racist comments against the minority Malay community.

Lim posted disparaging comments about Malays and Islam on an internet forum for dog lovers in a discussion about whether taxis should refuse to carry uncaged pets out of consideration for Muslims, whose religion considers dogs unclean.

In his online journal, Koh had advocated desecrating Islam's holy site of Mecca.

Lim and Koh stood in the docks with their heads bowed as they pleaded guilty to charges of committing acts "which had seditious tendencies to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races and classes".

The two cases represented the first time Singaporeans had been prosecuted and convicted for racist expression under the Sedition Act, which is a colonial-era law used by the British to combat a communist insurgency.