An online user named Edmund Zhong has been slapped with a 12-month conditional warning after he expressed his desire to throw an egg at Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam in a Facebook comment in March last year.
The 21-year-old Singaporean’s comment was found on a CNA Facebook post about the controversy revolving around then-Australian Senator Fraser Anning’s comments on the Christchurch shootings on 15 March 2019 that killed 50 people and injured more than a dozen.
In a police statement on Wednesday (11 March), the authority revealed that their investigations have been concluded and an advisory has also be given to a 48-year-old local man who replied to Zhong’s comment, telling him where Mr Shanmugam could be at an upcoming Meet-the-People session.
In the CNA article, it wrote about how the right-wing Australian senator, who was highly criticised for blaming the terrorist attacks on Muslim, was hit on the back of his head with an egg by a young man at a Melbourne event on 16 March last year.
“I wanna do that to K. Shanmugam. I swear,” commented Zhong, based on the screenshot of the comment thread that can be seen on socio-political website The Independent.
In response to Zhong’s comment, another user said: “I will supply the egg.”
User Louis Ng said: “Go on.”
Following the initial comment, on 26 March last year, then a full-time national serviceman in the army, he said: “I posted it just as a joke, based on the news on the Australian senator…I just commented to draw a link to our local context, and then another guy just added fuel to the fire. I don’t even know the guy at all.”
He continued, “To be honest, I don’t feel much regret. I feel it’s a matter of freedom of speech, and that we have a right to voice such opinions.”
In the same statement on Wednesday, the police also revealed that Zhong had also other drug-related offences before.
In 2017, he was apprehended for consuming and possessing cannabis and drug-taking utensils. Due to this, he was sentenced to 12 months’ detention in the Singapore Armed Forces’ Detention Barracks, and completed his sentence in 2018.
Just a year after that, he abused new psychoactive substances, which resulted in him being convicted for drug offences and is currently serving a three-year jail term.
The police said they view such threats seriously and even cited an incident that happened in 2018 at a Meet-the-People session. The police explained that during the session, a man with a history of drug abuse grabbed GRC MP Tan Wu Meng by the neck in a chokehold, hit his head against a wall, and jerked him into a kneeling position on the floor before punching and kicking him.
The man was later jailed for three months.
