The Facebook account of popular and outspoken opposition politician Mr Lim Tean appears to have been killed off by Facebook early today, coincidentally as his anti-budget 2018 speech video went viral around Singapore.
In response to TOC’s query, Lim Tean who is also a lawyer, informed that his page had been working just fine, he had posted a Chinese New Year greeting on Sunday and had been checking in regularly with no issue.
Then yesterday he posted again. This time it was a 14 minute video of a speech he made about the 2018 budget. His video can be seen as anti-government as he slammed the budget’s lack of innovation success and derided them for not doing more for seniors.
Lim Tean said that by late last night the video had gone viral across Singapore with over 1000 shares and tens of thousands of views.
However, this morning when trying to log in he received a message from FaceBook informing him he needed to do a “security check” before he could gain access to his account and this was to be done by sending a security code via sms.
However, no security code was sent after a few minutes and so he tried the secondary number he has logged with Facebook. Likewise no new code arrived.
He then discovered that no-one can access his private page or public page at all, even if they are a FB friend of his or a follower.
Lim explains that he was then advised by a friend to try changing the password and using the email option as the security check. This allowed him to change his password via an email security code but once again an sms code was asked for when accessing the account.
As many FB users are aware there is no live help centre, only pre-written page helps and so it appears for now Lim Tean has effectively been killed off by Facebook.
There is a chance it could be pure coincidence but Lim Tean questions the timing and why there was no interference with his previous CNY greetings post.
When TOC asked Lim Tean what his plans are now he replied “The video is available on my YouTube channel “Tean Lim” and my supporters are posting on their FB pages the link to that. I am not the type of person to be silenced so easily. New FB pages can be made easily enough, and actually I am galvanised by this situation. My message in that video really resonated with my fellow Singaporeans, and whoever or whatever caused the video and my pages to vanish must be feeling very weak not to be able to stand the strength of a voice which speaks to the people”.
Whether the issue is a purely co-incidental technical issue or whether there really are other forces in operation will remain unknown.
