14 DAY TRIAL // Singaporeans know that they should not badmouth their government, irrespective of the circumstances.
However, a teenager had the courage to post a YouTube video in which he expressed his happiness at the death of Lee Kwan Yew, the country’s founder and prime Minister.
The video is actually titled “Lee Kuan Yew is Finally Dead” and the teenager portrays him as a horrible person and an awful leader, criticizing his ways of dealing with criticism. He argues that the defunct leader would go against anyone who dared speak ill of him, regardless if it was a citizen or even the international press.
He calls Kuan Yew a dictator who had been hiding behind a mask while claiming to be a democrat. The teenager also accuses the former leader of organizing elections to persuade the world that his people could express their free will, when in fact he was in control of everything.
The boy is in for a severe punishment
Despite that fact that the video clearly shows a young man ranting on what he believes to be a corrupt system, the authorities thought otherwise.
The boy is facing criminal charges and risks a penalty of around three years in jail and a fine of thousands of dollars. All this just because he decided to go online to express his beliefs, allegedly breaking a law from Penal Code Section 298 which forbids “the uttering of words that might hurt the religious feelings of any person,” Tech Dirt reports.
He was also accused of cyberbullying, but after watching the video, people are wondering if it is indeed a case of online abuse or if they are in fact trying to punish him for revealing the sad reality behind the country’s portrayal in the media.
Even if he might have chosen a not-so-suitable way of showing his relief that the country had been freed from the control of a cruel leader, the punishment that the teenager is subjected to seems a bit too harsh for having revealed his opinions.
