The Progress Singapore Party (PSP) has expelled a member for publishing an offensive Facebook post against religion that caused an uproar on social media.
The expulsion was announced on Saturday (March 21), according to channelnewsasia.com. It followed an admission by the member, Mr Chan Jan Lin, that he had put up the post.
The police had disclosed on Friday that they were looking into an offensive post on the NUS Atheist Society Facebook page. The post hinted at replacing toilet paper with the Bible and the Quran should the need arise.
The PSP had on Saturday (March 21) initially published a statement on its Facebook page of its decision to suspend Mr Chan “pending internal investigations for actions made in his personal capacity”. It stressed that it was not connected with the NUS Atheist Society page. It later issued another statement that it had expelled Mr Chan him for those actions.
The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) announced on Friday that it took action after receiving numerous complaints regarding a “religiously offensive post” on the Facebook page of the NUS Atheist Society.
Also on Friday, Minister for Law and Home Affairs K Shanmugam had criticised the disrespect conveyed by Mr Chan’s post. “Very offensive to Muslims, Christians,” he wrote. “We take a serious view of these types of statements.”
Mr Shanmugam said that, due to the efforts of the police and The Infocomm Media Development Authority, Facebook had made the controversial post unavailable.
“We highlighted how such offensive remarks have no place in multi-racial and multi-religious Singapore,” he wrote. “(Facebook) looked at it and has disabled access to the post.”
https://www.facebook.com/k.shanmugam.page/photos/a.205299239516614/2898629483516896/?type=3&theater
Also on Friday, the National University of Singapore (NUS) had taken to Facebook to stress its non-affiliation with the online page on which Mr Chan had published his post.
“The contents posted by the NUS Atheist Society do not represent the views, opinions and position of the University,” it wrote. “We will continue pressing Facebook to get the group to drop all references to NUS.”
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In its statement on Saturday on the expulsion of Mr Chan, the PSP had highlighted its high regard for Singapore’s racial and religious diversity.
“The party highly values the multi-racial and multi-religious society that is Singapore, and will not tolerate any of its members showing disrespect to any religion.” /TISG