Wall Street Journal Editorial On Singapore

Specifically, on a Singaporean kangaroo court's anti-defamation decision last week against the Journal's sister paper, the Wall Street Journal Asia:

Our subject is free speech and the rule of law in the Southeast Asian city-state -- something on which the international press and Singapore's government have often clashed . . .

. . . the fact is that we know of no foreign publication that has ever won in a Singapore court of law. Virtually every Western publication that circulates in the city-state has faced a lawsuit, or the threat of one.

Which brings us to the ruling against us this week in Singapore's High Court. Dow Jones Publishing (Asia) was found guilty of contempt of court for two editorials and a letter to the editor published in The Wall Street Journal Asia in June and July. The Attorney General, who personally argued the contempt case against us, characterized the articles as "an attack on the courts and judiciary of Singapore inasmuch as they impugn the integrity, the impartiality and the independence of the Court."

[...]

In the second [offending] editorial, we reported on the International Bar Association's critical study of the rule of law in Singapore. This is the same outfit that held its annual conference in Singapore last year, a meeting that Mr. Lee himself touted as a sign of confidence in Singapore's courts. The Law Society of Singapore is a member of the IBA. If reporting on what such a body says is contemptuous of the judiciary, then Singapore is saying that its courts are above any public scrutiny. 

As for this week's contempt ruling, the first line of [Justice Tay Young Kwang's] decision is revealing as a standard for Singapore justice. "Words sometimes mean more than what they appear to say on the surface," he writes, going on to interpret the words as contemptuous because they had an "inherent tendency" to "scandalise the court."  [emphasis added throughout]

It should come as no surprise that Justice Tay (or should I say, Judge Hoppy) went looking for "emanations and penumbras" of defamation, and found them in spades.  I've really nothing to add, except to point out this conflict-of-interest:  The prosecutors charged that the Singaporean judiciary was being defamed, and yet who was it that sat in judgment over the case?  The judiciary itself!

A cozy arrangement, indeed.  An INSTITUTION was allegedly "defamed", and in response, an AGENT OF THAT VERY SAME INSTITUTION pretended he could IMPARTIALLY hear the case against critics of his own employer. 

Guess it never occurred to the ethically-challenged Judge Tay to recuse himself . . .

 

(Image of Justice Tay Yong Kwang from The Straits Times)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Postscript:  My previous post on Singapore's judiciary (using the International Bar Association's findings as a source) can be found here.

Comments

[A-gu]

Excellent post, as usual. Keep up the good work.

[The Foreigner]

*
*
Thanks, A-gu. There've been several times that I've wanted to leave a complimentary note at your site regarding various posts -- but I couldn't because I didn't (and still don't) have a Google account.

Consider that done now, then.