Lee Hsien Yang, the brother of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, asked a question that may have been on many people’s minds after hearing about two activists whose t-shirts were confiscated by the police last week.
On Friday (June 24) Kirsten Han and Rocky Howe were questioned by the police for two offences. Both activists were wearing different shirts with anti-death penalty slogans during the process.
Ms Han wrote in a Facebook post that “the police claim that we have committed another offence of ‘illegal procession’, because we walked from the market across the street to the police station this morning.”
Lee Hsien Yang went on to share her post and asked, “So two people walking across the street wearing (different) T-shirts with anti-death penalty slogans constitutes an ‘illegal procession’?”
The police have issued a statement, however, that said that the Attorney-General’s Chambers had reviewed the facts and advised that “Ms Han and Mr Howe did not commit any offences, by reason of the T-shirts they wore.”
In her post, Ms Han wrote that Ms Soh Lung Teo, who had been waiting for her and Mr Howe, bought them t-shirts at the market so that they could surrender their shirts to the police.
She wrote in her post that the two offences she and Mr Howe were originally questioned about had been for having “hung out outside Changi Prison” with two other people when the night before Abdul Kahar bin Othman was executed on March 30, and for having taken pictures outside the jail a few nights before the hanging of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam on April 27.
She added that she had agreed to surrender her phone, but when one of the officers, a member of the cybercrimes response team, also asked her to turn over access to her accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as to desist from using these platforms until the investigation is over.
“As a journalist with a responsibility towards the people I am in contact with, as well as serious concerns about privacy and digital security, I was not comfortable and not prepared to surrender my passwords. So I refused,” Ms Han wrote, adding that she could be made to pay a penalty of up to S$5,000, serve a 6-month jail sentence or both, as her refusal falls under “Section 39(3) of the Criminal Procedure Code—to do with obstruction.”
“So in a nutshell, this morning I walked into the police station to be investigated for two incidents/‘offences’, and might have walked out of it with double the number of problems,” she added.
The Singapore Police Force released a statement on June 26 concerning the questioning of Ms Han and Mr Howe last Friday, saying that the t-shirts were relevant to their investigation.
The police added that they had been advised by the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) to investigate if the two activists had committed any further offences.
“In response to specific media queries, the police can confirm that the AGC, having reviewed the facts, has advised that Ms Han and Mr Howe did not commit any offences, by reason of the T-shirts they wore, when they came for the police interview,” The Straits Times quotes the police as saying.
/TISG
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