Singapore’s High Court upheld an appeal on April 30, overturning the acquittal of three pro-Palestine activists, charged in June 2025, under the nefarious Public Order Act, for leading a procession to deliver letters in solidarity with the Palestinian people to the Prime Minister’s office. They were each fined S$3000 (A$3257).
As previously reported in Green Left, the three activists from Singapore’s Letters for Palestine campaign — Sobikun Mossammad Nahar, Amirah Siti Mohamed Asrori and Kokila Annamalai Parvathi — were acquitted last October of violating the POA.
The three were among a group of 70 people, some carrying umbrellas decorated with watermelon designs, who walked to the PM’s office along a route that was apparently within a prohibited area.
As reported in the Online Citizen, the acquittals were overturned on the grounds that the district court judge had erred in law by failing to apply the relevant legal test correctly. “Justice See determined that the trio ought reasonably to have made the appropriate enquiries, which would have enabled them to come to know of the applicable prohibition order covering the route they had taken.”
Speaking outside the court following the appeal, Annamalai said “This case ultimately turned on a technicality. Ultimately, even when we were acquitted in a lower court, it was on a technicality about whether we should have read the particular prohibited order. In that sense, it can be a distraction.
“What really matters is that the Public Order Act is itself a gross violation of our right to assemble, our right to expression. The case points out how weak our constitutional protections are. No POA case that has been brought before has succeeded on a constitutional argument.
“That should concern all Singaporeans, because we think that the constitution is the highest law of the land and it protects us. But how strong is it really, when it allows the parliament to make any and all laws that restrict our constitutional rights?
“The thing we need to keep our focus on is the genocide in Palestine, which has spread to Lebanon and other countries in West Asia. The actions of the US war machine and Israel need to continue to be questioned and scrutinised and protested against.
“Right now I am thinking about the 70 people who went on that walk and what that day meant to all of us. And that is something the state cannot take away.”
Annamalai, who is also an anti-death penalty activist, is also facing court on May 14 over her refusal two-and-a-half years ago to comply with a government order under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), to issue a “correction” to an online post she and the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) made about the 2024 execution of Azwan bin Bohari.
Amnesty International, CIVICUS, Human Rights Watch and the South African Human Rights Association have called on Singapore to immediately drop the charges against Annamalai.
Singaporean government officials faced international criticism over the country’s death penalty and restrictions on freedom of expression at a United Nations meeting in Geneva, on May 12. As reported in the Online Citizen, recommendations delivered by 147 countries to Singapore, “covered a wide range of issues, including calls to abolish the death penalty, repeal the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA), extend anti-discrimination protections to LGBT+ persons, strengthen the rights of migrant domestic workers, and establish a national human rights institution.”