Man carrying placards at Raffles Place arrested

A 41-year-old man carrying placards at Raffles Place yesterday was arrested for allegedly staging a protest.

The placards contained messages in English and Chinese referring to the Terrex incident in November 2016, when nine Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) infantry carrier vehicles were seized by Hong Kong Customs officials. They were returned in January last year.

Singaporean Yan Jun carried the signs outside the Raffles Place MRT station at around 12pm as a crowd gathered.

One of the placards read "PM Lee and Justice Chao: resign over the Terrex conspiracy", while the other had a message directed at the Hong Kong government.

A police spokesman told The Straits Times that Mr Yan was arrested for an offence under the Public Order Act and investigations are ongoing.

The incident comes just over half a year after Mr Yan was arrested and charged with similar offences.

He had been jailed for three weeks and fined $20,000 on four counts of taking part in a public assembly without a permit and one count of disorderly behaviour.

Mr Yan had displayed placards in front of the US Embassy in Napier Road on Oct 20, 2016, demonstrating against Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and the Singapore judiciary.

Two months later, he did the same thing in front of the British High Commission in Tanglin Road.

Then on July 3 last year, outside Raffles Place MRT station, he displayed a placard calling for PM Lee to resign over the "Terrex Conspiracy" and accusing the Supreme Court of "judicial corruption".

He returned to the same spot a day later with a similar sign and shouted repeatedly through a loudhailer at the police officers who were there.