While the election is ongoing and the social medias are abuzzed with many disenchanted youth venting all kinds of dissatisfaction on the leaders and country, some Asian countries took freedom of expression to the other extreme by charging a 16-year-old boy to court for producing an expletive laden YouTube video.
16-year-old Amos Yee was recently charged to court for satirizing the city’s state founding father, the late Mr Lee Kuan Yew who just passed away last week and now lying in state at Parliament House for the public to pay their last respect. In an 8-minute video titled “Lee Kuan Yew is finally dead”, Yee celebrated the death of Singapore’s founding father, calling him a “horrible person”.
He also compared the late leader with Jesus calling both “power hungry and malicious” in the Republic where very little expression of criticism against the leaders is tolerated.
Singapore has the reputation of police official trawling and weeding out social media to apprehend any person who dare to criticize the leaders of the ruling party, People Progressive Party (PPP) that has been in power for almost half a century. The boy also challenged the present Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong who is the son of the late Lee Kuan Yew to sue him. He is currently on a $20,000 or N2.8 million bail and face up to 3 years in jail if found guilty.