Former TRS editor convicted of 4 counts of sedition
Ms Ai Takagi, one of the former editors of The Real Singapore walking into the State Courts. Photo: Robin Choo/TODAY
SINGAPORE — The now-defunct sociopolitical website The Real Singapore (TRS) raked in about A$474,000 (S$489,000) in advertising revenue over 17 months from December 2013 to April 2015 and at its peak saw 3.2 million unique visitors per month.
This was the brainchild of Ai Takagi, 23, who was on Tuesday (March 8) convicted of four charges of producing and distributing seditious material on TRS, intended to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different classes of the population in Singapore.
Takagi, an Australian, consented to three similar charges and one charge of not producing documents during police investigations to be taken into consideration for her sentence.
She faces up to three years’ jail and a S$5,000 fine for each charge under the Sedition Act.
Her husband Yang Kaiheng, a 27-year-old Singaporean, is claiming trial to the same set of charges.
The prosecution’s case is that the duo published material that promoted racism and xenophobia on TRS for financial gain. They resorted to doctoring contributions from Singaporeans to sensationalise fault lines and create social divides, charged the prosecution, led by Deputy Public Prosecutor G Kannan.
A district court heard on Tuesday that Takagi, the owner and chief editor of TRS, was anxious about maintaining earnings for the site. When programmers were not able to meet her demands to fix technical glitches that affected site traffic adversely, Takagi voiced her frustration, telling them “her revenue was being significantly reduced”.
Among the seven articles Takagi published which the prosecution considered “particularly egregious” was one that falsely claimed that a Filipino family caused a dispute between the police and participants of a Thaipusam procession on Feb 3 last year.
In another instance, Takagi penned an Editor’s Note stating that TRS’ objective was to “instill fear” in companies that “favoured” foreigners over Singaporeans.
Her case has been adjourned to March 23, when the prosecution will address the court on sentencing and the defence will present its mitigation.
Before the hearing on Tuesday, an unknown man, sporting blonde hair and in a black jacket, tried to serve a writ of summons — a court document used to commence civil suits — on Yang outside the courtroom. The man threw a sheaf of papers at him, but they were not picked up, said the duo’s defence lawyer Choo Zheng Xi.
The police confirmed that a report was made and investigations are ongoing.
