Singapore — In a Telegram message on Tuesday (Feb 15) Iris Koh, who has taken a very public stance against vaccine mandates, said she has raised over $96,000 in her crowdfunding efforts to help her with her legal costs.
Last Wednesday (Feb 8), she posted on her Facebook and YouTube accounts a weepy video with a background of soft piano music as a public appeal for donations to support her “fight for the truth”.
“I hope to raise an initial fee of one hundred thousand for legal purposes, and I hope that you can support me with this,” she said.
However, the controversial leader of Healing the Divide took the video down after one day.
Koh, who had spoken at some length about how she had been treated by the police while in remand, explained in a later post that she was told by the Attorney-General’s Chambers that her video had “some issue on mentioning some factual matters which happened in the course of investigations, so I will be removing it to comply”.
Healing the Divide claims to be made up of “intelligent vaxxers,” but the Ministry of Health issued public warnings about the group, since November of last year. The ministry said the group “adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination,” calling them out for falsehoods regarding Covid-19.
On Feb 15, over the Healing the Divide channel on Telegram, Koh provided the following update, along with a link to her donation drive update video with Chinese subtitles.
She thanked “the Chinese community for their generous support in HTD.”
“Also updates on fund raising, almost reach Liao $96016.01. I will give more detailed updates soon.”
Koh added that any of the donations that come in exceed her target would be funnelled to Healing the Divide, “first to the Boy Vs OYK suit for legal expenses to engage lawyer. Mom was up against 3 AGC when she met them on the 9th Feb.”
She had mentioned in the Feb 8 video that she would sue Health Minister Ong Ye Kung and the Government “for judicial review”, and help members of her group with employment claims against their employers.
Her husband, Mr Raymond Ng, also posted on the group’s Telegram channel on Tuesday, writing that “@iriskoh has raised about 96k SGD to date for her criminal lawsuit / proceedings.”
The leader of Healing the Divide, a group against Covid-19 vaccine mandates, was arrested and placed in police remand on Jan 23. She was released on bail on Feb 4.
Koh is currently facing two charges. On Jan 28, Koh was charged with conspiring with a doctor, Jipson Quah, to defraud the Health Ministry by having certain people certified to have received the Sinopharm vaccinations when they had not.
On Feb 4, she was charged with obstructing a police inspector from discharging her duties. She allegedly tore up a printed copy of her statement, which had been recorded on Jan 25 at the Police Cantonment Complex.
Additionally, Koh is being investigated for allegedly flooding the hotlines of some government agencies, including the MOH, as well as endeavouring to disrupt operations at paediatric vaccination centres. /TISG
Related: Iris Koh says she’s now writing a book about her experience in police custody
Iris Koh says she’s now writing a book about her experience in police custody