Terry Xu’s application to cancel Pofma correction order rejected: MHA

SINGAPORE – The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Monday said that Home Affairs Minister K. Shanmugam has rejected an application by Mr Terry Xu to cancel the correction direction issued to him on May 7 under the fake news law.

Mr Xu, the publisher of website The Online Citizen Asia (TOCA), had on April 30

posted false allegations against the police

concerning an incident in Yishun Avenue 5 in May 2021, when police officers responded to a report about

an elderly woman who looked lost and was not wearing a mask.

On May 7, TOCA and Mr Xu were ordered under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) to post corrections to an online article and social media posts about the incident.

MHA said in a statement: “The conditions for issuing the correction direction were satisfied, and the application did not disclose any grounds to the contrary.”

It added: “After having carefully considered the application, the Minister for Home Affairs has decided to reject it. Xu has been notified of the rejection.”

Mr Xu had been issued a direction which requires him to insert a correction notice at the top of his Facebook post, stating that the post contains false statements, together with a link to the article on the Government’s Factually website which sets out the correct facts. He was also directed to post the correction notice as a new post on his Facebook page.

Mr Shanmugam had instructed the Pofma Office to issue correction directions to Mr Xu and TOCA.

The orders were in relation to Mr Xu’s Facebook post on April 30, TOCA’s article on its website on May 2, and TOCA’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn posts on May 2 that referenced the TOCA article.

The allegations were similar to those in articles in 2021 on the incident by the now-defunct The Online Citizen (TOC), which was issued a correction direction in May 2021 for publishing falsehoods. TOC then appealed in court to set aside the order, but

the appeal was dismissed by the High Court in 2022.

TOC had alleged that police officers were taunting and reprimanding the woman for not wearing a mask then, which coincided with the initial stage of the Covid-19 pandemic in Singapore.

In its statement on the Factually website, MHA said the allegations made by Mr Xu and TOCA that the authorities had misrepresented the facts could lead to erosion of public trust in the Singapore Police Force.

The police had said then: “Despite the Government’s clarifications and the High Court’s clear findings on the matter, Xu has persisted in making false allegations pertaining to the case. These allegations are wholly unfounded.

“Police resources are better used to deter and solve crimes, and to assist members of the public, especially vulnerable members like the elderly woman, rather than to address such baseless allegations over and over again.”