More than a dozen civic groups protested outside the Singapore Trade Office in Taipei yesterday, demanding the release of Amos Yee (余澎杉), a 16-year-old Singaporean dissident blogger who was last month convicted of obscenity and insulting religious feelings — for videos and images he uploaded that criticized and caricatured late Singaporean prime minister Lee Kuan Yew (李光耀) — and was on Tuesday remanded for psychiatric assessment.
On International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, groups — including the Taiwan Association for Human Rights (TAHR), the Human Rights Covenants and Conventions Watch (CCW), the Taiwan Alliance for Advancement of Youth Rights and Welfare and the Judicial Reform Foundation — and supporters gathered outside the office, Singapore’s de facto embassy in Taiwan, and called on the Singaporean government to observe the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child that it has ratified and free Yee immediately.
According to a public letter signed by Yee’s mother, Mary Toh, before Yee was remanded to the Institute of Mental Health (IMH), he was kept in a prison cell where the lights are on almost 24 hours a day; now in IMH, Yee is locked up alone with round-the-clock surveillance via a CCTV camera, in a block of the institute “where they also keep the truly mentally ill patients, and those who have committed crimes or offenses and who are also mentally unsound.”
The Straits Times, the Singaporean government’s mouthpiece, reported that a psychiatric assessment has suggested that Yee may be suffering from autism spectrum disorder, which, “unlike other psychiatric disorders, cannot be cured.”
Wu Yi-cheng (吳易澄), head of Mackay Memorial Hospital’s department of psychiatry, said the information disseminated by the Singaporean government and the media about psychiatric disorders is “different from the psychiatry treatment guidelines we’re following now,” according to which patients “recover” rather than being “cured.”
“The official propaganda might incur further misunderstanding, labels and discrimination against people with mental illnesses,” he added.
“There are two sides to the [Singaporean government’s] deployment of psychiatry in this case,” Wu said. “On the one hand it seems humane to have those with mental illness receive proper treatment and maintain that they could thereby obtain lighter sentences; however, the [medical claim] could also be subjected to political machination and lose its altruistic essence.”
The Singaporean government’s attempt to turn Yee’s dissenting remarks into those from someone with mental illness actually “rings a bell,” Wu said.
In 1989, democracy movement pioneer Deng Nan-jung (鄭南榕) set fire to himself for “100 percent freedom of speech.”
“The United Daily News, after the incident, stressed that Deng had once gone to a psychiatrist; we all know what that’s all about,” Wu said, indicating that the association with mental illness was a move to discredit Deng. “It has been practiced by many dictatorial regimes, including Nazi Germany and China.”
CCW executive board member Huang Yi-bee (黃怡碧) said Yee is the first to be found guilty under the country’s Penal Code for electronically transmitting obscene images online, “which shows that prosecution was clearly selective.”
She said the Singaporean government’s move was a breach of the human rights convention it has signed and should be denounced, and she called on Taipei to express serious concern over the case to Singapore.
“Taiwanese and politicians, many of whom have not hesitated to praise and express their admiration of the so-called Singaporean model, should ask themselves whether this is what we really want,” Huang said.
“Yee was jailed for simply uploading a video clip, telling the truth,” TAHR secretary-general Chiu E-ling (邱伊翎) said. “His rights to freedom of speech cannot be compromised because he’s a minor.”
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
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