TJC issued fourth POFMA order in 2024 for alleged falsehoods on executions

The Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), a group advocating against the death penalty, has been issued its fourth correction direction this year under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA).

The order pertains to posts made on 20 November on TJC’s Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and X accounts. Two activists, Kokila Annamalai and Rocky Howe, were listed as collaborators on the Instagram post.

The Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) announced on 26 November that the posts allegedly contained false statements.

According to MHA, these posts falsely claimed that three prisoners—Rosman Abdullah, Roslan Bakar, and Pausi Jefridin—were executed without regard for their intellectual and psychosocial disabilities.

The ministry further alleged that the claims misrepresented the legal processes involved in their sentencing.

The correction directions were issued by Josephine Teo, Minister for Digital Development and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs.

This marked a departure from the typical practice of such directions being issued by Minister for Home Affairs and Law K Shanmugam.

Shanmugam has issued POFMA directions on 20 separate occasions, while Teo has done so on four occasions, including this instance. According to the Singapore Gazette, as of 26 November, Shanmugam is not on official leave during this period.

Government denies claims of unfair execution process

According to the government’s Factually website, the allegations made in TJC’s posts are inaccurate.

It stated that the three prisoners had raised arguments regarding their mental disabilities during post-appeal applications for re-sentencing, but the court dismissed these claims after considering the evidence presented.

The MHA asserted that the prisoners were afforded full legal due process and that their executions were scheduled only after all appeals and clemency applications were exhausted. The ministry further attributed the prolonged 14-year duration on death row to numerous legal proceedings initiated by the prisoners after their initial sentencing in 2011.

The MHA stated that the judicial process for death row cases is, in its view, robust and fair. According to the MHA, all claims of mental disabilities raised by the prisoners were thoroughly reviewed and dismissed by the courts.

TJC has not yet responded publicly to the latest correction directions, and as of 8 pm on 26 November, TJC had not yet posted the required correction notices.

This latest POFMA order is the fourth issued to TJC this year, bringing the total to five, with the first issued in August 2023.

Previous orders, including those in August and October, alleged similar false statements about death row prisoners and related legal processes.

Activist under investigation for defying POFMA order

Separately, Annamalai, who was named as a collaborator on the Instagram post, is under investigation for allegedly defying a POFMA correction order issued on 5 October 2024. That direction required her to add a correction notice to her posts about the legal processes for death row inmates.

The MHA claimed that Annamalai falsely alleged the Government arbitrarily schedules and stays executions without regard for due legal process and does not bear the legal burden of proving drug trafficking charges.

In response, Annamalai defended her decision to disobey the order, stating publicly that the correction direction constituted an unlawful overreach of ministerial powers.

She argued that her posts, which addressed the execution of Azwan bin Bohari, were expressions of opinion rather than falsehoods. Annamalai also accused Shanmugam of abusing his authority to suppress dissent and control public discourse on the death penalty.

Her statement sparked public solidarity, with 33 individuals, including activists and workers, collectively reposting her original statement under the hashtag #idefypofma on 22 October 2024.

Rather than issuing individual correction directions to these reposts, Shanmugam directed Meta to issue a targeted correction notice.

This required the platform to alert users who had seen the reposts and link them to the government’s Factually article for clarification.