Singapore: Man jailed for three weeks for racially offensive tweets, slurs against Indians

A 35-year old senior executive at a software company in Singapore, who made racially offensive tweets, including slurs to Indians, was jailed for three weeks on June 8. According to PTI, Zainal Abidin Shaiful Bahari, a Malay, had condemned Indian immigrants about COVID-19 last year. He had pleaded guilty to two charges each of committing acts he knew were prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different racial groups in Singapore. 

Zainal’s lawyers claimed that he was “not a racist” and that he was taking over a “parody account” and “overstepped the mark” while “trying to be funny”. However, District Judge S Jennifer Marie said that race and religion are sensitive issues and would-be offenders must realise that careless remarks have the potential to cause social disorder. She added that racial tensions have been heightened by the continued pandemic and a strong deterrent signal must be sent.

Judge Marie said, “When such remarks are published with the medium of the Internet, they have the ubiquitous reach and therefore amplify the potential and irreversible harm that could be caused to…peace and racial harmony”. 

Back in 2020, a member of the public called the police after seeing a tweet by the user ‘sharonliew86’ condemning Indian immigrants about COVID-19. Zainal used the pseudonym “Sharon Liew” (Chinese name) and he had sole control of the account. He had even posted that “smart Chinese” women have done social distancing inside the Mass Rapid Transit subway by not wanting to sit next to Indians. 

Zainal was identified and police investigations revealed that he had set up the Twitter account in July 2018 with two other friends. The account was meant to be a parody account and had more than 5,000 followers, but the posts by Zainal’s two friends stopped from early 2019. Zainal took sole control of the account and posted the offensive tweets in March and April 2020. 

'Really not acceptable' 

Following the incident, the prosecutor called for four weeks’ jail, however, Zainal’s lawyer Sunil Sudheesan asked instead for three weeks’ jail, saying that every action by his client must be viewed “in the proper context”. Sudheesan even said that his client is not a racist and he is married to a Chinese woman and has racially diverse friends. Further, the lawyer added that everyone who followed the account knew it was a parody, and things could have become inflamed when people who did not know the intention of certain tweets forwarded them.

“Our client is very sorry for this. He should have anticipated this,” Sudheesan said. 

The prosecutor then responded saying, “This was not parody, this was not satirical behaviour, this was simply the actions of an online troll who was provoking others…This is really not acceptable”. 

The Judge told Zainal that the language used in his tweets were in bad taste. Judge Marie jailed him for three weeks. She said, “If you had really valued racial and cultural diversity, you should have appreciated all the more the need to preserve … sensitivities given the multi-cultural fabric of Singapore”. 

(With inputs from PTI)