The Online Citizen hired foreign writers to write negative articles on Singapore: Shanmugam
Minister warns of foreign interference through online news sites, questions secret funding
Online news sites with anonymous writers can easily be used as tools to advance foreign interests, Home Affairs and Law Minister K. Shanmugam warned yesterday.
Calling out socio-political website The Online Citizen (TOC) for hiring foreigners to write "almost exclusively negative articles", Mr Shanmugam accused it of publishing inflammatory pieces that seek to fracture social cohesion.
Speaking at a conference on foreign interference tactics and countermeasures at the Parkroyal on Beach Road hotel, he highlighted two articles written by a Malaysian woman named Rubaashini Shunmuganathan who, based on "publicly available sources", lives in Shah Alam, Selangor.
One of the articles is at the centre of a defamation lawsuit brought by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong against the site's chief editor Terry Xu.
"I am not commenting on the legal merits of the article, since it is the subject of a lawsuit, only that a foreigner, staying in Malaysia, writes these things for a Singapore site to target a Singapore audience," Mr Shanmugam said.
"Who controls her? Who pays her? What is her purpose? All these are legitimate questions. Most readers would just assume this was by a genuine Singaporean contributor."
Court documents alleged that the article contained "false and baseless" statements that disparaged and impugned Mr Lee and his office.
OVERSEAS ADMINISTRATORS
This included a reference to a Facebook post by Mr Lee's sister, Dr Lee Wei Ling, alleging Mr Lee had misled his late father, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, into thinking the Government had gazetted their family house in Oxley Road.
Mr Shanmugam noted that only five of the 14 TOC administrators were located in Singapore. Of the nine based overseas, four were in Malaysia while two were in Indonesia.
"We don't know who they are," he said, during the conference organised by Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies.
Mr Shanmugam said the media has been a key node for foreign states to exert influence - whether through secret funding and control, or having agents use the cover of journalists.
This was the case here in the 1970s, he added, citing The Eastern Sun, which worked with a news agency of communist China, and The Singapore Herald, which took money from foreign sources and pushed an anti-Government line.
Media outlets here, both local and foreign, do hire foreigners, but the assumption is they will have some ethics, though this can also be exploited, he said.
But such media are subject to frameworks that regulate how they behave. In comparison, some online sites have no interest in socio-political stability.
In addition to the civil suit, Mr Xu is also facing a criminal defamation charge for an article claiming the Government's highest officers are corrupt and the Constitution had been tampered with.
In response to Mr Shanmugam's comments, Mr Xu said in a TOC article yesterday that all articles published on the site are directed and subsequently approved by him.
Written by a "Kathleen. F", the article quotes him as saying: "To the best of my recollection, there is no law against hiring person of foreign nationality and TOC has not used nor received any foreign funding."
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