Clarifications regarding Minister K Shanmugam's comments in Parliament on 4 October 2021

On 7 October 2021, The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) issued letters to nine persons, namely Lim Tean, Andrew Loh, Kirsten Han, Martyn See, Julie O’Connor, Jolovan Wham, Kokila Annamalai, Lynn Lee and Facebook page Wake Up Singapore for having published false posts which misrepresented what the Minister for Home Affairs and Law, Mr K Shanmugam, had said in Parliament on 4 October 2021. The posts suggested that Minister Shanmugam had said, in Parliament, that the Rule of Law does not operate in Singapore.

These statements by the nine persons are false. The Minister had repeatedly affirmed, in Parliament, the importance of the Rule of Law for Singapore and the Government’s strong and continued commitment to the Rule of Law. He had said there are some countries around the world where the Rule of Law is a concept for lawyers, but does not operate in the real world, and their societies live in utter misery. He used this as a contrast to how the Rule of Law is applied in Singapore.

MHA issued letters to these nine persons requiring them to correct the false statements and apologise.

Eight of the nine persons have since apologised for what they did and/or issued clarifications.

Only Mr Jolovan Wham has not published the clarifications. He has been issued a POFMA Correction Direction today.

An earlier version of this statement had stated that eight of the nine persons had corrected their posts. It has since come to our attention that this is inaccurate, as one of the eight persons did not change her original post.