Singapore — Lawyer M Ravi has announced he will be representing Iris Koh, the founder of “Healing the Divide” on a pro bono basis as she takes the Singapore government to court for violating her human rights.
In a Facebook post on Nov 13, Mr Ravi said he had been instructed by Ms Koh to “commence judicial review proceedings.”
Mr Ravi highlighted he is also representing similar litigants to “restrain the state from further human rights violations via the Covid-19 inhumane, life-threatening, degrading and oppressive measures that violate our fundamental guarantees to the right to life and liberty under Article 9 and various other articles of the constitution (sic).”
He was citing Article 9 of the Singapore Constitution about fundamental liberties.
One of its clauses notes, “No person shall be deprived of his life or personal liberty save in accordance with the law.”
Earlier this month, Ms Koh and the group was called out by the Ministry of Health (MOH), noting it “adopts an anti-vaccination stance and claims to warn people about the dangers of vaccination.”
“MOH notes that Iris Koh’s channel has a history of posting and sharing content that perpetuates falsehoods and misleading information about Covid-19 and vaccines,” said MOH.
In response to MOH, Ms Koh said they were not anti-vaxxers but “intelligent vaxxers.”
“For the record, we are not Anti-Vaxxers. We have many people who are vaccinated who are in our group. They are in our group because they have either suffered from injuries after taking the vaccines, or have loved ones who died after taking the vaccine. Some are even Super-Vaxxers!” she said.
In fact, we see ourselves as intelligent vaxxers, said Ms Koh.
Videos from Ms Koh’s YouTube channel were removed due to violations of the platform’s Community Guidelines.
MOH said it welcomed the removal of the videos from YouTube.
Meanwhile, Ms Koh presented questions for MOH in her statement. She asked if YouTube was the final arbitrator of truth and if MOH aligned itself with the platform, which is a United States for-profit company.
Ms Koh also asked for clarification on which parts of her town hall event content were considered misinformation.
In his post, Mr Ravi said he had known Ms Koh as a friend for more than 20 years.
“For the record, I’m doing this pro bono for the people of Singapore whom I dearly love and for humanity as a whole here and elsewhere,” he added. /TISG
Read related: “We’re intelligent vaxxers, not anti-vaxxers” — ‘Healing the Divide’ founder responds to MOH
“We’re intelligent vaxxers, not anti-vaxxers” — ‘Healing the Divide’ founder responds to MOH