Singapore kills a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys (About Sammyboyforum)

[Suharto]

Story linking sammyboy to organised crime syndicates and dengan orang atas di dalam kocek

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On July 23, 2021, an article appeared in the Tokyo-based English-language weekly Nikkei Asia Review, calling attention to the Singapore government's handling of so-called KTV lounges, alleging that decades of institutional failures in dealing with what the article called "organized crime cartels” were running what amounted to illegal brothels, which were responsible for the widespread spread of Covid-19 among the lounges’ patrons.

The result was astonishing. The story got an unheard-of 1.5 million hits from amid Singapore’s 5 million-odd population virtually from the moment it was uploaded, and far more than Nikkei had ever scored on a Singapore story, by a factor of thousands. As most Singaporeans know, the KTV lounges have been an embarrassment to strait-laced Singapore for decades, widely regarded as an unregulated hotbed not only for the coronavirus but as places where prostitution flourishes openly as authorities have long looked the other way.

The article appears to have generated absolute fury at the very top of the Singapore government, particularly in the office of law minister K Shanmugam. Singapore's answer to the story, which was written by a 28-year-old security analyst named Andy Wong Ming Jun, wasn't long in coming. Indignant articles appeared calling the Nikkei article “full of inaccuracies” and justifying the government’s control over the lounges and pointing out, among other things, that “Singapore has laws against organized crime, money laundering, and trafficking-in-persons” that keep the lounges squeaky clean.

The government apparently didn’t turn to the courts for defamation, as usual when deeply offended although officials in Singapore’s Tokyo embassy relayed a threat to throw Nikkei's entire business operations out of the country, reliable sources say, not just Nikkei Asian Review.

Wong is now in the UK, writing his master’s thesis and counting his scars, and unlikely to ever return to the city of his birth absent a political revolution. In the aftermath of the publication of the article in Nikkei Asia Review, he says, his life has been taken apart in stunning fashion, to the point where his professional and social life in Singapore have been ruined and he's been forced into exile.

According to his account, as well as news reports and court records made available to Asia Sentinel, Singapore mounted an attack on him that can only be described as unprecedented. It extended even to the consulting firm boss he was working for, who will remain unnamed, but who was blackballed from Singapore by his industry and political contacts, who “implied because they questioned his judgment in hiring a Singaporean who turned out to be a political critic.” The owner of the firm was forced by circumstances to close his consultancy and leave Singapore.

Three days after the article appeared, Wong and three others were arrested and charged in court with possessing or transmitting obscene materials through a Telegram chat group in an affair that had occurred 20 months before and seemingly gone dormant. Wong has repeatedly been identified as a ringleader of the group in state media reports and social media chatter as allegedly possessing vast amounts of porn on his iPhone and on his computer although in court documents he was identified as only a member of the chat group, which had 25,000 members.

Never mind that according to the Straits Times, 90 percent of teen boys and 47 percent of teen girls in a survey acknowledged viewing pornography. (Downloading such materials, however, is an offense.)

“I was just a normal Singapore citizen who had multiple career tracks spanning corporate services, port logistics, analyst work, and freelance journalism,” Wong wrote in a description of his ordeal which he emailed to Asia Sentinel. “Up till July 2021 I was also gainfully employed in business/political risk advisory in Singapore under a British boss, from which I've since had my ties severed due to significant compromising and blowback from my ongoing political persecution.”

Andy Wong is in company with victims of Singaporean government vindictiveness going back to four decades to the days when opposition leader Joshua B Jeyaretnam was persecuted falsely for irregularities in his party’s financial books. More recently the targets of government wrath have included citizen journalists Terry Xu and Ai Takagi, critic Roy Ngerng, cartoonist Leslie Chew, blogger Alex Au and many opposition politicians who have ended up in court facing charges and crippling fines after they called attention to alleged shortcomings in the Lion Republic.

Human rights lawyer M. Ravi was recently suspended from practice for five years for criticizing government vindictiveness against one of his clients who was on death row. He had previously also represented Alan Shadrake, who was jailed for more than five weeks in 2010 for his criticism of the death penalty in Singapore with his book Once A Jolly Hangman.

This process was described earlier at length in a 2017 Human Rights Watch report titled “Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkeys: Suppression of Free Expression and Assembly in Singapore, which said that “those who criticize the government or the judiciary, or publicly discuss race and religion, frequently find themselves facing criminal investigations and charges, or civil defamation suits and crippling damages. Peaceful public demonstrations and other assemblies are severely limited, and failure to comply with detailed restrictions on what can be said and who can participate in public gatherings frequently results in police investigations and the threat of criminal charges.”

More recently, just last week Amnesty International charged that officials are “continuing to silence human rights defenders and other critics ahead of upcoming elections, subjecting “well-known activists and critics of the government to further investigation and harassment…solely for freely expressing their views and opinions.” The prime minister Lee Hsien Loong’s ’s own brother Lee Hsien Yang and his wife, Lee Suet Fern, have been forced to leave Singapore under threat of government action after warring with Hsien Loong, as Amnesty International reported.

Wong acknowledged in his correspondence with Asia Sentinel his membership of Telegram groups directly affiliated with an online adult forum as an offshoot of his personal alternative lifestyle in the local adult community. Describing each group as numbering as many as 25,000 members in each, they ranged from general chat to people sharing adult content through Telegram/Onlyfans when he was “single and footloose.” He stated emphatically that all three groups did not deal in “illegal leaked nudes” and that strict rules had been put in place to deter such sharing or discussions in them, owing to past high-profile cases such as the “Nasi Lemak” group in October 2019.

In November of 2019, he says, police raided his home and those of three others, apparently acting on a police report from an unnamed young woman angered about their alleged organized possession and sale of “illegal nude pictures.” While the other three were administrators of these groups, he says he was just a member along with 25,000 others. His passport and electronic devices were impounded and he was bailed for S$5,000.

Things went very quiet, he says, with no progress, and subsequent devolution of the initial accusations of selling illegal pornography or being a group administrator into simple possession by the time the first interview had ended. As a direct result of his arrest and ongoing investigations, he missed work and was later forced to resign from his position as a corporate secretary.

Then Covid happened. Without a job, unable to leave Singapore because of his impounded passport, he took other jobs such as working in port logistics (for which he was featured as a positive example by Singapore state media) and freelance defense writing. He says he established a strong network with thinktank heads, industry professionals, and people within the local political establishment.

In July 2021, he wrote the offending personal post about the Singapore government's handling of the pandemic on his LinkedIn social media platform, gaining traction among local expatriates. An acquaintance and think tank associate forwarded it to Nikkei Asia Review, whose editor then asked him for permission to modify it for publication.

The article elicited a furious response in local mainstream media and even in Parliament. Nikkei was threatened with the use of Singapore’s “Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act,” commonly abbreviated as POFMA and known colloquially as the Fake News Law, and threatened with being kicked out of the country altogether. The publication stuck by the article, as Asia Sentinel has verified.

“So, what do you do when you can’t take down a message online? You destroy the person who said it. You shoot the messenger with any convenient weaponized leverage within reach That's what happened to me,” Wong said. “An immediate campaign of character assassination was initiated against me by Singaporean state media, calling my article full of falsehoods and inaccuracies. Shanmugam even went on record in the news and televised parliamentary sessions denouncing me and calling me out as a fraud with an axe to grind against the government.”

This was a sitting law minister actively interfering with public comments on an open case, despite also stating in a 2016 Law Bill that “Persons in court cases should not face prejudgment by the media or by the public, in a way which whips up sentiment and creates a real risk of interfering with their trials.”

The wheels of justice spun fast. Barely a weekend after the publication of the offending Nikkei article, the Singapore Police acted on Wong’s dormant porn possession charges. He and the three other unrelated suspects were ordered to Tanglin Division police headquarters on July 26 – three days after publication.

Two days later on July 28 he was in court to officially acknowledge charges and start the court process, more than 20 months after his initial arrest. The case had been in limbo for so long that the police had to assign a new investigating officer because the original one had been reassigned elsewhere.

Wong ended up facing a total of 11 charges relating to possession of pornography, of which the most serious three were officially proceeded on to exact the highest possible punishment, he says. There was no mention of any aggravating factors such as “illegal nudes,” nor of linkages of his private pornography possession with his membership of the Telegram groups.

Although the original charges in the press circular put out by the police didn't contain any names of the four, their names were added in and plastered all over the police news web. Wong says state media character attacks increased as he attended court to acknowledge the possession charges.

“This concerted character assassination campaign resulted in a trial by trial by media and public opinion before a trial by law in a court to defend and address my charges,” he told Asia Sentinel. “This was the ultimate intent of the government in weaponizing my dormant criminal investigation case to discredit and destroy my life, even if it was utterly irrelevant and unlinked to my article.”

He says that as a direct result, he was subjected to targeted harassment and personal attacks on various local social media forums, he says, with some disclosing his publicly-available court dates in case potential troublemakers wished to turn up and harass him.

“The whole country and media reports painted me as some sort of ringleader running a Telegram group involved in transmitting and selling illegally leaked nudes and general porn.” But he didn’t and hadn’t. While there were public claims and repeated media reports that he had possessed more than 2,000 videos and 1,400 photos on his smartphone, there were only 119 videos on his impounded laptop.

His three co-accused were sentenced in December 2021 and the following month, leaving him to twist in the wind amid continuing social media furor and press reports.

In fact, in the end, the attorney general said the office had no intention of adding anything about transmission to possession of porn charges, and they would only be asking for a fine and no prison time. But, he says “this didn’t stop them from attempting to put me behind bars, for after the three other individuals linked to my case were sentenced to jail time, the deputy prosecutor was still communicating to my lawyer stating that his superiors had ordered “one final look” at my case to see if there was any justification to put me in prison.”

When his lawyer tried to raise this point in his defense statement, the deputy public prosecutor sought a hearing against the lawyer to discredit him in the eyes of the judge. His request was ultimately denied

He says the government set out to “weaponize my ‘porn possession’ charges although there were no links to any of the Telegram groups he was a member of, as attested to by the public prosecutor’s own statement of fact. Nonetheless, prosecutors asked for a "double fine" for his two video possession charges, with a maximum fine S$20,000 each. With another S$2,500 charge for possessing porn pictures on his phone for a total of S$42,500.

“I have been effectively publicly and professionally silenced and societally outcasted in Singapore,” he says. “I was robbed of any chance to defend myself in the open and say whatever the media and Shanmugam had reported about me was false and wrong. This was in large part due to obfuscation and stonewalling by the police and attorney general’s chambers towards my lawyer’s protestations as to who was responsible for the erroneous press circular put out about my case. As long as it was not changed, state media could then have their smokescreen to claim objective factual reportage of my case even before final sentencing.”

His lawyer, he says, “strongly advised me not to defend myself in public about my Nikkei article or my case till we have more legal clarity out of concerns about further state aggravation and trial by media over my unrelated article muddying my legal case and we had to somehow play dumb and pretend that my case is going to be tried and handled in a vacuum independent of external circumstances and political interference. Not that it worked in the end.”

Shortly before Wong was convicted and sentenced, Singaporean state media released a documentary indirectly corroborating and confirming his Nikkei Asia Review article on YouTube titled “Sing City: What Drives Singapore's Underground KTV Industry?”

Source: https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/singa...-scare-monkeys

[Suharto]

Kerajaan Singapura issue POFMA, because rahsia kerajaan singapura bocor
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SINGAPORE: A correction direction under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA) has been issued to online publication Asia Sentinel, over statements made on the aftermath of an opinion piece by Andy Wong Min Jun in Nikkei Asia.

Under the POFMA order, California-registered Asia Sentinel is required to carry a correction notice alongside a May 24 article titled Singapore kills a Chicken to Scare the Monkeys, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in a press release on Friday (May 26).


The article was written by editor John Berthelsen, who interviewed Wong, the author of a 2021 commentary criticising Singapore's handling of KTV lounges amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Berthelsen wrote that Wong had been "forced into exile" after, and drew parallels between his situation and that of others like lawyer M Ravi and Lee Hsien Yang, the brother of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

MHA on Friday said that Asia Sentinel's article contained several falsehoods.

These include claiming that Mr Ravi was suspended from practising law for five years because he had criticised the Singapore government, and that Mr Lee Hsien Yang and his wife Mrs Lee Suet Fern were forced to leave Singapore because government action was threatened against them for "warring" with Mr Lee Hsien Loong.

Another false statement was that the Singapore government, in the aftermath of Wong's piece, had threatened to end Nikkei's business operations in the country, said MHA.


The ministry reiterated that Wong's Nikkei article contained "many factual inaccuracies".

"Nikkei Asia published the Ministry of Home Affairs’ response as a letter to the editor (Singapore says commentary on KTV outbreak is full of inaccuracies) on July 29, 2021. At no point did the Singapore government threaten to end Nikkei’s operations in Singapore," it said in the press release.


'Full of inaccuracies': MHA rebuts Nikkei Asia article criticising Government's handling of KTVs amid COVID-19

Shanmugam questions motive of Nikkei Asia writer who criticised Government handling of KTVs

Author of Nikkei Asia article about KTV COVID-19 cluster fined for having obscene videos, photos
On Mr Ravi's suspension, which was applied in March, MHA said this was because the Court of Three Judges had found that his various allegations against the Attorney-General, Deputy Attorney-General, prosecutors and the Law Society, had "recklessly and baselessly undermined" the pillars of Singapore’s legal system.

On Mr Lee Hsien Yang and his wife, the ministry said the pair left Singapore after the police engaged them for an investigation.

They had declined to attend a police interview in July 2022 relating to lying in judicial proceedings about the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew's will.


This police investigation has nothing to do with “warring with Lee Hsien Loong”, said MHA.

A check by CNA showed that as of 11.30pm on Friday, Asia Sentinel had yet to put up a correction notice.

FINED OVER OBSCENE MATERIAL

Wong's Nikkei piece in 2021 drew a point-by-point rebuttal from MHA then, with Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam later weighing in days later in a Facebook post and calling it "little more than a work of fiction".

The minister added that it contained "several falsehoods" about the government's approach towards KTV operations and immigration policies.

Mr Shanmugam also then mentioned that Wong was "ironically" charged for possessing obscene material, and questioned if the criminal investigation against him was the reason for his diatribe based on falsehoods.


In April last year, Wong was fined S$42,000 for possessing more than 4,200 obscene videos and photos.

He was a member of a Telegram chat group linked to Sammy Boy Forum, a sexually explicit local forum. Investigations against him and others started in November 2019.

Four members of that group, including Wong, were charged and sentenced for possessing obscene material.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sing...nikkei-3517651

This forum is famous one again

[Suharto]

Quotes from our most esteemed forumer

Originally Posted by AlejandroSosa

Problem is you have the police in singapore making up alot of false stories.

Abit on my background, i graduated from NUS and am called to the bar in singapore and am a senior partner in a law practice here, although i have now migrated to australia, but in the past i used to practice law in singapore.

There have also been instances where i suspect the police might be in the pocket of rival syndicate members because it seems weird to me why certain syndicate members are raided constantly while others can continue their illicit businesses with impunity, i even know of a police man in singapore where he says to me he cannot even go to holiday in JB, thailand or indonesia as "rivals" will take him out there, i asked him what he meant? He said sometimes certain policemen were part of the cliques themselves. Now this is not uncommon and there have a few of such cases as well where members of the police were gang members themselves (see news articles below)

What he says matches what the Asian Sentinel article that is posted on May 24 said (Source: https://sbfsg.net/showthread.php?t=906368&page=7)

Originally Posted by AsiaSentinel

an article appeared in the Tokyo-based English-language weekly Nikkei Asia Review, calling attention to the Singapore government's handling of so-called KTV lounges, alleging that decades of institutional failures in dealing with what the article called "organized crime cartels” were running what amounted to illegal brothels, which were responsible for the widespread spread of Covid-19 among the lounges’ patrons.

Source: https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/singa...-scare-monkeys

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Bapak now want to ask siapa polisi yang makan tak cukup

Malam tidur jangan lupa kunci pintu

[Angmolover]

So what the Fcuk has this got to do with a sex forum? Are you illiterate or brain dead? This forum is called Adult Discussion about Sex. Which part of this are you confused about?

[Suharto]

Originally Posted by Angmolover

So what the Fcuk has this got to do with a sex forum?

See bolded part below

Originally Posted by Suharto

In April last year, Wong was fined S$42,000 for possessing more than 4,200 obscene videos and photos.

He was a member of a Telegram chat group linked to Sammy Boy Forum, a sexually explicit local forum. Investigations against him and others started in November 2019.

Four members of that group, including Wong, were charged and sentenced for possessing obscene material.

Source: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/sing...nikkei-3517651

Originally Posted by Angmolover

Are you illiterate or brain dead?

Bapak have a feeling you must be another gay singaporean man that is jealous about the manhood of indonesian men

Below is some hunky indonesia videos of men for you so you can have an erection

[Angmolover]

Originally Posted by Suharto

See bolded part below






Bapak have a feeling you must be another gay singaporean man that is jealous about the manhood of indonesian men

Below is some hunky indonesia videos of men for you so you can have an erection

Hahahah, you are a comedian. Indonesian women cannot find the "manhood" of an Indonesian male, its so fucking small. that is why Singapore men have to go to Batam to fuck them all the time.

[Suharto]

Originally Posted by Angmolover

its so fucking small

Yes bapak agree with you most singaporean men have small cocks like yourself

Originally Posted by Angmolover

Singapore men have to go to Batam to fuck them all the time

Jangan tipu sendiri, those are all post op ladyboys in batam

This time bapak can confirm that you are a jealous gay singaporean man that is very jealous of the sexual manhood of indonesian men

[Hurricane88]

Originally Posted by Suharto

Bapak have a feeling you must be another gay singaporean man that is jealous about the manhood of indonesian men

Bapak, as a TS if you cannot accept any comment include crticisms then your thread will not be successful...

You can always ignore the comment rather than post wild allegations...or post jovial reply...

Pls ignore my post if you cannot accept my comment...

[Hurricane88]

Haha...Singapore blocked Asia Sentinal.

This is their reply

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/asia-...r-to-singapore

Need to use VPN to read...

[sammyboyfor]

Originally Posted by Hurricane88

Haha...Singapore blocked Asia Sentinal.

This is their reply

https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/asia-...r-to-singapore

Need to use VPN to read...

10 Comments

Rich Samuel
May 29

Excellent reporting AS! Keep up the good work. Singapore’s government is quite clearly party to anything but a democracy repeatedly violating the democratic process through intimidation. Karma will be maintained for PAP at some stage to the betterment of democracy and Singapore.
Like (5)
Reply

Andy Wong
Writes The Naval Pundit
Jun 2

Thank you Asia Sentinel for standing up to the SG government's bullying attempt with POFMA. The credibility of this news site and the journalists that write in it are much more ironclad and internationally recognised than any government spokesperson or journalist originating from SG state media (ranked 139 out of 180 countries by Reporters Without Frontiers in 2022, and 160 out of 180 in 2021).
Like (4)
Reply

John McVey
Writes John’s Substack
May 29

FEER déjà vu all over again
Like (2)
Reply

DragoonBald
15 hr ago

Expose the hypocrisy of this authoritarian regime.. they've had it good too long.
Like (1)
Reply

Kurt Tay
18 hr ago

Singapore government has started blocking access to AS as of 2/6/2023, but as usual they didn’t take into account of something called a “VPN”.

Thank you AS for standing up to the SG Government’s bullying and bringing light and spreading to the world on the state of press freedom in Singapore.

Singapore governing party, PAP has been using POFMA to silence any critics of PAP or its laws and regulations.

There is a saying among the younger generation of Singaporeans, “We are a first world North Korea, disguised as a democratic country”.

Thank you AS. Keep on with the excellent reporting.
Like (1)
Reply

Alex Tan
23 hr ago

There is no obligation for a publisher outside Singapore to obey censorship laws and orders from the Singapore dictatorship.

The Singapore government will start banning Singaporean Internet access to your website next. This is all they can do and for the editor, you will be arrested for POFMA offences if you stop over in Singapore.

-Alex Tan from the now defunct States Times Review.
Like (1)
Reply

Bankingonthetruth
23 hr ago

No surprises that the regime have now blocked AS in Singapore, but already citizens are saying they will get VPN and others will also share when stories are posted by AS.

The regime want to force people to believe their truth and those tactics are wearing very thin. Keep up the good work John and don't let the bastards keep you down. They may believe that they have won this fight, but they certainly haven't won the war. The dirt will keep getting exposed.
Like (1)
Reply

Salim
9 hr ago

As of today June 3 2023 6.10am there is no blockage to accessing Asia Sentinel in Singapore. Perhaps they have a change of heart.
Like
Reply

Ayden Smith
Jun 1

If you weren't fearful of their legal threats you shouldn't have posted the correction notice, right?
Like
Reply (1)

Andy Wong
Writes The Naval Pundit
Jun 2

That is just Asia Sentinel giving the SG government the courtesy of having a right to be heard.

Posting the correction notice is no indication of acceptance of the SG government's narrative and attempts at silencing Asia Sentinel with a fake news law that is unrecognised and incomprehensible to anybody outside of its borders who know even a modicum of what constitutes freedom of speech/freedom of the press.

No government gets to be the sole arbiter of what it determines to be the "truth".
Like (1)
Reply

[sammyboyfor]

No need to use VPN which can slow down your connection.

Just install https://1.1.1.1

[sammyboyfor]

Another excellent option is TOR

https://www.torproject.org/download/

Slows down the connection slightly but no need to download of configure anything once you install TOR browser. Just connect to the TOR network and you're good to go.