Singapore — Ms Iris Koh, who leads the group Healing the Divide, wondered if asking questions is a crime after the Health Ministry reported the group to the police for allegedly instigating parents to go to paediatric vaccination centres and overwhelm the staff with questions.
In a Jan 5 Facebook post, MOH said this would “greatly disrupt operations at our paediatric vaccination centres, and amounts to an instigation of harassment of the medical staff.”
“It is a very serious matter, and MOH has therefore made a police report,” it added.
In response, Ms Koh has made a police report of her own.
In a blog post on Jan 6, she asked, “Is it a crime to ask questions?”
“Just when I thought things can’t get much worse here in Singapore, it did. Yesterday, MOH announced that it has made a police report against Healing the Divide group over plans to ‘disrupt operations’ at COVID-19 paediatric vaccination centres.”
She then proceeded to deny MOH’s allegations and demanded proof from the ministry that she had “exhorted parents through a message on their Telegram channel on Dec 27 2021, to visit the paediatric vaccination centres to overwhelm on-site medical staff with questions”.
“I have since filed a police report against MOH’s false police report,” Ms Koh added.
She then posted the message she had sent over Telegram on Dec 27 so that people can judge for themselves “whether it is to ‘disrupt operations’ at COVID-19 Paediatric vaccination centres.”
Ms Koh explained that she had asked parents to schedule appointments at paediatric vaccination centres to have their questions and concerns answered, and claimed that the MOH has not been answering parents’ “important questions and concerns.”
“During the recent seminar by MOH on 18th Dec, parents reported to me that they have asked many questions, but they were not answered. I have also asked many questions myself, but there were no answers! Not only that, our questions were not shown to the public. Why the lack of transparency in handling our questions?” she added.
Ms Koh reiterated her claim that she is not an “anti-vaxxer” but an “intelligent vaxxer.”
“Intelligent people ask questions. Smart Parents ask questions. Smart Parents do their research, they compare data, they ask some important questions. I would be interested to see if our Police Force will view the asking of questions as ILLEGAL. I’m sorry for being an intelligent vaxxer. Apparently now it is a crime to ask people to ask questions,” she wrote (italics hers.)
Healing the Divide first made the news early last November when MOH issued a statement that content from the group had been removed from YouTube.
The ministry wrote then that the group “adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination.”
The ministry added that its YouTube channel “has a history of posting and sharing content that perpetuates falsehoods and misleading information about COVID-19 and vaccines”.
MOH also warned that the government will not hesitate to take “action against those who put the public’s health and well-being at risk by spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and vaccines”. /TISG
Read also: MOH reports ‘Healing the Divide’ to police for urging parents to disrupt vaccination of kids