Reporters Without Borders, 16 Mar 2009
Reporters Without Borders deplores high court judge Tay Yong Kwang’s decision to give the attorney-general a green light to start contempt of court proceedings against Melanie Kirkpatrick, the deputy editor of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, in connection with two editorials and an op-ed piece about the Singaporean judiciary published in the newspaper’s Asia edition in June and July 2008.
“We urge the high court to reverse this decision in order not to jeopardise the freedom of foreign journalists to express their views about the situation in Singapore,” Reporters Without Borders said. “The government’s harassment of the Wall Street Journal indicates a chronic inability to tolerate criticism and is very harmful to the country’s image.”
The high court decision was reported last weekend by the Straits Times, which quoted court documents as saying the articles “contained passages that scandalise the Singapore judiciary.”
The high court already found the Wall Street Journal in contempt of court last November in connection with the same articles, fining it 25,000 Singapore dollars (16,250 US dollars). Attorney general Walter Woon said at the time that the articles questioned the judiciary’s independence
The Singaporean government has in the past obtained damages from Bloomberg, The Economist and The International Herald Tribune.
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Singapore to Charge a WSJ Editor With Contempt - The Wall Street Journal
