S'pore blocks East Asia Forum website for refusal to comply with Pofma order
Online academic platform East Asia Forum has been blocked in Singapore after it did not comply with a correction direction issued by the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) Office on Jan 22.
The Pofma Office had directed the Australia-based platform to put up a correction notice on an article, titled “Singapore’s new prime minister entangled in old politics”, that it said contained false statements on Singapore’s governance.
Written by Associate Professor Michael Barr from Flinders University’s College of Business, Government and Law, the article covered topics such as the handling of the 38 Oxley Road dispute and the trial of Workers’ Party chief Pritam Singh.
The correction direction had “required the facts to be displayed along with the falsehoods, enabling end users in Singapore to read both versions and make their own judgments”, said the Ministry of Digital Development and Information (MDDI) and the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in a joint statement on Jan 24.
But East Asia Forum had not complied despite three reminders to do so, they said.
As a result, MDDI directed the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to issue access blocking orders. These orders require internet access service providers to disable access for end users in Singapore to the platform’s website, where the falsehoods are communicated.
As East Asia Forum did not carry the correction notice in its Facebook, LinkedIn and X posts linking to the article, the Pofma Office also issued a targeted correction direction to Facebook owner Meta Platforms, LinkedIn and X, at the instruction of Minister in the Prime Minister’s Office Indranee Rajah.
This direction requires the platforms to communicate a correction notice to all users in Singapore who had accessed or will access the posts.
If East Asia Forum subsequently complies with the full requirements of the correction direction, the orders to block access to its website will be cancelled, said MDDI and PMO.
On Jan 23, East Asia Forum put up a correction notice at the bottom of the article in question. However, it also stated its disagreement with the falsehoods identified, saying that “all of its articles are double-blind peer-reviewed by leading experts and fact-checked in the editing process”.
“We respectfully disagree with this Pofma direction and its threat to block access to the East Asia Forum site in Singapore is not consistent with free and civilised disagreement,” it said in an editorial note, adding that it would continue to engage the Pofma Office in “good faith and hope to resolve this issue”.
It had said that three of the four claims in the Pofma direction are not based on Prof Barr’s words as they are written.
“Rather, it attributes words to Barr and then bases its notice of ‘correction’ on false allegations,” it said.
The fourth claim relates to a part of the article where Prof Barr states that Singapore has “a complete absence of any laws or conventions requiring political office-holders to declare their financial interests, assets or conflicts of interest”.
But the PMO said that rules under the 2005 Code of Conduct for Ministers require ministers to declare financial interests and assets, and there are also rules on the acceptance of gifts, and conflicts of interest.
East Asia Forum said in its response: “(Prof) Barr has now inserted the word ‘publicly’ before ‘declare’ as a correction. This is sufficient to remove the inaccuracy in the article.”
It added: “The way to resolve such disagreements of interpretation is to raise them and have them freely aired for all to judge, not under the threat of coercive and dubious deployment of state power.”
MDDI and PMO said the Pofma Office had reminded East Asia Forum at 6pm on Jan 23 that the deadline to comply had passed, and that it could submit an application to vary the correction direction by 4pm the next day if it needed more time.
It noted that the platform did not reply or submit such an application.
The website was last blocked in September 2023 following an article titled “A spate of scandals strikes Singapore” by National University of Singapore Assistant Professor Chan Ying-Kit that was subsequently retracted.
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