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Singapore website ordered to suspend for seditious articles

Xinhua, May 4, 2015 Adjust font size:

After being ordered by the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA) to disable access to its website and social media accounts, one of the editors of the website "The Real Singapore (TRS)" was given approval to leave Singapore to Austradia on Monday to visit his father who suffered a stroke recently.

TRS website was operated by 26-year-old Singaporean Yang Kaiheng and 22-year-old Australian lady Ai Takagi, who were believed to be a couple. They were charged earlier in Mid-April with seven counts of publishing seditious articles on TRS and the TRS Facebook page. The articles on their website were said to have been deliberately fabricated articles and falsely attributed them to innocent parties. It has also inserted falsehoods in articles that were either plagiarised from local news sources or sent in by contributors so as to make the articles more inflammatory, MDA said in a press release on Sunday.

Therefore, the MDA has suspended the statutory class licence for the duo to operate the website and other related computer on- line services such as the TRS Facebook Page, Twitter Page and mobile applications.

"The MDA believes this editorial strategy of deceiving readers and doctoring articles was an attempt to increase traffic to TRS, and thus boost advertising revenue. In so doing, TRS, including its two foreign editors, were seeking to make profit at the expense of Singapore's public interest and national harmony," the release said.

One day after the suspension, Yang was given approval by the court for an application to visit his father from Monday to May 17 in Australia on condition of an additional bail of 40,000 Singapore dollars (30,303 U.S. dollars) submission of his complete travel itinerary, local media Channel NewsAsia reported.

Apart from the seven sedition charges, the couple also face an eighth charge under the Penal Code for failing to produce documents to a police officer from the Criminal Investigation Department. Endi