SINGAPORE - A police report has been made against a doctor for allegedly making comments online against Islam and Muslims.
The doctor, Dr Kho Kwang Po, was recently in the news for co-authoring an open letter calling for a halt to Singapore's Covid-19 vaccination programme for young men.
Responding to queries from The Straits Times, the police confirmed on Wednesday (June 30) that a report had been filed against Dr Kho for posts he made online. Investigations are ongoing.
Contacted on Wednesday, Dr Kho said he was unaware of the police report and declined to comment.
Screenshots of several of Dr Kho's alleged Facebook posts commenting on Muslims and Islam were circulated on several websites recently.
In a post last year, he allegedly wrote that there was much violence associated with Muslims. In a post in 2019, he questioned why the religion needed protection from criticism.
Last Saturday, Dr Kho posted an open letter on his Facebook page addressed to Professor Benjamin Ong, chairman of Singapore's expert committee on Covid-19 vaccination.
Initially signed by four other doctors, the letter noted that a 13-year-old boy in the United States had died days after he got his second dose of a Covid-19 vaccine. The letter said that the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had just begun investigations into his death from heart failure after vaccination with an mRNA vaccine.
The doctors said Singapore should stop vaccinating young people until the US CDC and organisations elsewhere have produced more robust and convincing data on the case.
Responding to the letter, the Ministry of Health (MOH) said reports about the child's death in the US did not state heart failure as a cause, as alleged in the open letter, and that the matter was still under investigation by the US authorities.
Associate Professor David Lye, a senior infectious diseases specialist from the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, also said the doctors behind the open letter were misleading and misinforming the public.
The letter was initially signed by Dr Kho; Dr Wong Wui Min, a cardiologist and heart specialist at W.M. Wong Cardiac and Medical Clinic in Gleneagles Hospital; Dr A.M. Chia; Dr L.W. Ping; and Dr I.W. Yang.
However Dr Kho posted a disclaimer on his Facebook page on Wednesday that Dr Ping neither agreed to sign off on the letter nor received its final draft.
"The contents of the letter were never his views, nor are they his professional opinion. He himself has had the mRNA vaccines and is not opposed to them," wrote Dr Kho.
The letter was said to be penned "on behalf of many concerned paediatricians, primary care physicians, specialists, surgeons and GPs".
Prof Lye also noted that three of the doctors were involved in "an infamous letter by the group of 12". He was referring to an earlier letter published by 12 doctors calling for children to be given traditional Covid-19 vaccines, such as the Sinovac one, instead of mRNA ones from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are part of Singapore's national programme.
They claimed that it was not known what side effects from these vaccines might surface 10 to 20 years down the road. This view was also debunked by Prof Lye and the expert committee.
