Ambassador-at-Large at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bilahari Kausikan, has alleged that an American friend has commented that Amos Yee – who has been identified as deserving of asylum in the United States of America – is obscure and that nobody outside Singapore cares about him:
An American friend’s comment on Amos:“Bilahari Kausikan He is already obscure. He has never been anything but obscure…
Posted by Bilahari Kausikan on Wednesday, 27 September 2017
Yee sought political asylum in the US after he was jailed twice in Singapore for his inflammatory comments in videos he published on Youtube criticising Christianity. He also criticised other religious groups, and late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew in his videos.
As his asylum application was being processed, Yee was incarcerated at a Chicago detention centre for several months where he is believed to have been bullied by another inmate, placed in solitary confinement, and placed on suicide watch at different points in time.
This is not the first time Bilahari has mocked Yee.
The former MFA permanent secretary previously made fun of a claim made on Yee’s Facebook page that the Singapore Government was behind the teenager’s continued detention in the US.
Referring to the Facebook post that alleged, “We can only suspect interference by the Singaporean government as there would be no other legitimate reason for Amos to be detained for so long after being granted asylum by the court,” Bilahari said:
“[The] SG government has such great influence with the US government??? I did not know we were so powerful!”
Bilahari then accused “[those] who encouraged the boy to seek asylum” in the US for “making use of the boy and their family for their own anti-government agenda from the very beginning.”
“In fact the well-being of the boy and his family were probably the least of their considerations if this was ever a consideration in the first place. I feel sorry for the family who have been cynically manipulated.”
He, however, did not provide any evidence of his allegations.
Bilahari appeared to pick on Yee even before, in January this year, when he urged the US to “please” take him.
Meanwhile, Yee recently told American reporters that he has “plans for more videos, much of it criticising the Singapore government.”
He added that he may broaden his scope of criticism to criticise the US government as well.
https://theindependent.sg.sg/amos-yee-is-deserving-of-asylum-us-board-of-immigration-appeal-rules/