Amos Yee’s ‘complete disregard for others makes sentence appropriate’
Amos Yee leaves the state court on May 12, 2015. TODAY file photo
SINGAPORE — Throwing out blogger Amos Yee’s appeal against his conviction and sentence today (Oct 8), a High Court judge said four weeks’ jail was a justified sentence for the teenager, in light of his “attitude of complete disregard for others that is hardly ever seen, whether among adults or among younger persons like him”.
Although the Attorney-General’s Chambers had no quarrel with Yee’s lawyers that a one-day jail term for each of Yee’s two convictions would suffice, Justice Tay Yong Kwang noted: “He openly defied directions of the court and made sure people on the Internet know about his bravado in giving no respect to absolutely anyone, whether it is the police, the court, someone who had just passed away and the people mourning him or an entire body of believers of a religion.”
In May 12, Yee was found guilty of making comments that intended to hurt the religious feelings of Christians. The comments were made in a video clip posted on his blog. His second offence was publishing an obscene image featuring the late founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
He was sentenced on July 6 but was released on the same day as he had spent 50 days in remand by then.
During today’s hearing, Yee’s lawyers argued that his client’s video posting was meant to critique the late Mr Lee’s policies, not wound the religious feelings of Christians. Yee was exercising his constitutional right to the freedom of speech in the remarks he had made, the lawyer added.
In response, Second Solicitor-General Kwek Mean Luck said the Constitution gives Parliament the power to impose restrictions on the right in the interest of public order. In any case, Yee’s “deliberate” intention in his comments, and not his “dominant” intention, was what is relevant, he said.
Similarly, Justice Tay said Yee’s remarks were done in the “noble disguise of freedom of speech”. He likened Yee’s actions — the deliberate use of vulgarities, crude language and obscene depiction to provoke reaction — to someone throwing stones at the neighbour’s windows to force the neighbour to notice him.
“This does not sound like freedom of speech at all,” Justice Tay added. “It is a licence to hate, to humiliate others and totally disregard their feelings or beliefs by using words to inflict unseen wounds.
“Three carefully crafted sentences about a subject can deliver as much venom as 30 pages of text about another subject, especially when the subjects are then linked by analogy and said to be similar.”
The judge also dismissed the argument from Yee’s lawyers that the obscene image did not explicitly depict genitalia or sexual penetration. He threw back a rhetorical question at the appellant, asking why a young man visiting his girlfriend’s family would not flash such an image to them just because he finds it funny. Moral judgment matters in deciding if an object has the tendency to deprave and corrupt, he noted.
Noting that Yee is “obviously not a person without talent”, given his command of the English language, Justice Tay said: “I hope that Mr Yee will wean himself away from his preference for crude and rude language. Real debate and rational discussion on social issues can flourish in an environment of goodwill, reasoning and civil language.”
