Two weeks after losing a defamation suit filed by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Singapore news portal The Online Citizen’s website and social media operating licences were on Tuesday suspended by the government’s regulator.
The Infocom Media Development Authority (IMDA) said the measures were required after The Online Citizen “failed to verify a donor and to clarify discrepancies in its foreign advertising revenue in its 2019 declaration,” after a warning was issued in May and with a final deadline expiring on Monday.
According to the IMDA, websites discussing politics “are required to be transparent about their sources of funding,” which is needed “to ensure that there is no foreign influence in domestic politics.”
The Online Citizen’s lawyer said on Monday that any suspension would be challenged via judicial review.
Singapore’s Home Ministry the same day tabled a “Foreign Interference (Countermeasures) Bill” in parliament, which aims to “strengthen our ability to prevent, detect and disrupt foreign interference in our domestic politics conducted through (i) hostile information campaigns (HICs) and (ii) the use of local proxies.”
Lee won 210,000 Singapore dollars (156,000 US dollars) in damages from The Online Citizen at the start of the month, after suing over a 2019 article about a high-profile dispute between Lee and his siblings about their late father Lee Kuan Yew’s house.
Lee has said he would donate the award to a local charity. Terry Xu, the editor of The Online Citizen, said on Monday that he had raised donations amounting to almost 90 per cent of the damages due to the premier.
