Singapore PM awarded US$156,000 in defamation suit against news website The Online Citizen
- The suit concerned false statements published in August 2019 by The Online Citizen about Lee Kuan Yew’s former home at 38 Oxley Road
- Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong intends to donate the proceeds from the case to charity, his press secretary said
Singapore’s high court ordered two bloggers to pay Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong a combined S$210,000 (US$156,000) in damages on Wednesday, over an article about the home of his late father and the city state’s modern-day founder, Lee Kuan Yew.
The premier sued writer Rubaashini Shunmuganathan and editor Xu Yuan Chen, also known as Terry Xu, over an August 2019 article on news website The Online Citizen (TOC) that included references to a Lee family disagreement about what to do with the late politician’s property at 38 Oxley Road.
In a 60-page judgment, Justice Audrey Lim found that the article was defamatory.
“This struck at the heart of Lee’s personal integrity and could severely undermine his credibility, not just personally but also as the prime minister, and call into question his fitness to govern with integrity,” Lim said in a written judgement.
Xu, a Singaporean, and Malaysian Rubaashini were ordered to pay Lee S$210,000 and S$160,000 respectively. The judge, however, asked them to jointly pay S$160,000 in damages, as the lawsuits concerned the same defamatory article.
