Earlier today, The Online Citizen released yet another statement on their Facebook page. However, this one was “To clarify on the investigation of TOC in regard to the alleged criminal defamation”.
In their post, they wrote, “On 18 Sept this year, the Infocomm Media Development Authority issued a takedown order to TOC on the offending post on the website under section 16(1) of the Broadcasting Act and compelled it to remove the post from public view within six hours. TOC compiled with the order. The post was published as a letter from a irregular contributor”.
On their Facebook post, TOC also explained their stance with regards to letters sent in by members of the public. They wrote, “Our stance is that the member of public can adopt a position that the government is corrupted based on his or her personal opinion”.
As for tampering with the constitution, any amendment to the constitution can be seen as tampering. Such as the changes to the Elected Presidency for a particular agenda, particularly when it goes against public opinion.”
They continued, “We only do spelling edits. If there are any allegations which involve undisclosed facts or claims, we will check with the authorities or individual involved. Or if the whole article is problematic, as in subject topic being borderline illegal or illegal, such as contempt of court, criminal defamation and etc, we will not publish the article unless we can seek further information with the author using the given contact number or email”.
The post also stated that two desktop computers, two mobile phones, three laptops, two tablets, three hard disks and other storage devices were seized by the police with a court order on Tuesday morning. Terry Xu, their editor, was at the Cantonment Police Complex from around 3.30pm to around 11.30pm.
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obbana@theindependent.sg