Following the order issued by the Media Development Authority (MDA) for sensationalist socio-political site The Real Singapore (TRS) to cease all operations on May 3, the FreeMyInternet collective have issued a statement expressing their "complete and utter disappointment" over the MDA's decision.
In the statement issued by the movement — founded by a collective of bloggers against the licensing requirements imposed by the government — the group calls for the MDA to immediately revoke their order as well as becoming transparent in their processes and standards as a regulatory body.
Reproduced on The Online Citizen, the statement continues to insist that the action carried out by the MDA is disproportionate, and that TRS deserves due process prior to its closure.
The fact that the closure of TRS takes place on World Press Freedom Day is not lost on the FreeMyInternet group. "This is an affront to an international movement championed by the United Nations," they wrote. "Shutting anyone down for disagreeable content, by anyone’s standard much less that of a regulator that has been inconsistent in its standards, is a trigger happy approach that reeks of blatant censorship and does not speak well of Singapore as a democratic country."
The FreeMyInternet movement was founded as a response to MDA's licensing requirement issued in 2013, which requires online news site to put up a bond of $50,000 and comply within 24 hours to remove content found to breach content standards — which is often believed to be a new way the government can conduct censorship online.
Photo: Free My Internet Facebook page
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