All Singapore Stuff published an article on 8 April saying that a policeman stepped on a suspect’s face after arresting him. In the article titled, “netizen ask if police needed to step on suspect’s face after handcuffing him“, ASS included a video of the incident, but did not mention when the incident happened.
The incident is not a recent one, but happened in 2015 and ASS reported it back then as well. In the article titled, ‘I want to complain this Traffic Police!‘ dated 15 May 2015, ASS suggested that the traffic police was acting in a thuggish manner.
In another article titled titled ‘Traffic Police step on man because he resist arrest and tried to escape‘ dated 15 May 2015, it quoted an unidentified eyewitness saying:
“I was there, this joker was drunk driving, knocked down a motorcyclist and tried to drive off, but too bad it was red light and a taxi was in front of his car. He then rammed his car to the taxi 3-4 time, but he could not get away. He tried to run away by foot, but were stopped by passerby. He tried to bribe us with $15k into letting him go. When the TP arrived, he was taken in, but resisted arrest, that’s why he was pinned down.”
Minister of Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam named ASS in Parliament earlier this month for publishing fake news. The Minister said: “They can cause harm to innocent Singaporeans; they can cause unnecessary alarm to the public; emergency resources may be diverted from legitimate emergencies and the reputation of honest Singapore businesses may be unfairly damaged.”
Saying that his Ministry is “seriously considering” how to combat such falsehoods, he stressed that current laws are “ineffective to stem the circulation of falsehoods, given how quickly they go viral today.”
“They can cause harm to innocent Singaporeans; they can cause unnecessary alarm to the public; emergency resources may be diverted from legitimate emergencies and the reputation of honest Singapore businesses may be unfairly damaged…Even when the articles are not totally fake, they are highly misleading, and the whole purpose is to pervade falsehoods and mislead the public” – Mr K Shanmugam
He assured Parliament that he is not concerned with “trivial, factual inaccuracies, but with falsehoods that can cause real harm.”