Singapore — The self-described “intelligent vaxxer” group Healing the Divide announced on its website that it is suing Singapore Press Holdings over what it claims are false statements made in its flagship newspaper, The Straits Times.
“We have started legal proceedings against SPH,” reads the announcement from the group led by Ms Iris Goh.
Al though the statement above says “We have started legal proceedings against SPH”, the group itself is not the plaintiff, who is described only as a member of the group.
It is believed that the plaintiff is a well-to-do businesswoman.
The group said: “One of the members of our community is the Plaintiff for this lawsuit.
“We will be conducting an interview with her in due course so that she can share more about why she was willing to stand up to be one of our Plaintiffs.”
Healing the Divide asserts that the “false statements” were made by the newspaper’s senior health correspondent Salma Khalik in an commentary on Aug 7.
These are the statements to which the group objects:
“Only fair to protect vulnerable in S‘pore against Covid-19 spread by unvaccinated people.”
“People who are not vaccinated face a much higher risk of getting infected and spreading the disease.”
SPH owns The Straits Times.
Healing the Divide was called out by the Ministry of Health earlier this week. MOH pointed out that YouTube had removed some of the content from the group’s channel which was determined to have violated YouTube’s community guidelines.
MOH said: “Healing the Divide adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination.”
It added that the group’s YouTube channel had a history of posting and sharing content that perpetuates falsehoods and misleading information about COVID-19 and vaccines.
The ministry welcomed the takedown of the group’s content and also pointed out that Ms Koh’s Facebook account had been suspended more than once.
Shortly after MOH published its statement, “Healing the Divide” took to its website to respond.
Ms Koh wrote that contrary to what MOH had written, the group is not anti-vaccination and that there are many who are vaccinated within the group.
“In fact, we see ourselves as intelligent vaxxers,” she added.
The takedown does not seem to cause the group to lose steam. Ms Koh wrote in her announcement: “Over the past month, we have spent many hours working together with our lawyers and legal research team to put together the legal arguments and evidence required for our lawsuit.”
As to why it had decided to sue SPH, she wrote that “As (it is) the main source of information in this country, we feel that they have both a legal and moral obligation to present the facts regarding COVID-19 and the pandemic and we would like to hold them to account.”
She said the application was filed under Section 15 of the Protection from Harassment Act and that the pre-trial conference is set for the end of November.
In response, SPH told media website Coconuts, “We have received the legal notice. We believe that there is no basis for the application. We stand by our report and will defend this rigorously.” /TISG
“We’re intelligent vaxxers, not anti-vaxxers” — ‘Healing the Divide’ founder responds to MOH