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Singaporean once jailed for sedition now serves up inspiration (and ramen)
- Force behind The Royal Singapore media company, Yang Kaiheng, sets aside toxicity to publicise feel-good stories of ordinary people
- Although he denies his former website, The Real Singapore, spread xenophobic views, he now vows to uplift with positive online content
Reading Time:5 minutes
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Every week, media company The Royal Singapore puts up two to three videos on its Facebook page. The content often revolves around feel-good stories of ordinary people doing upbeat things, and celebrations of grit and determination.
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There is the funeral director who conducts pro bono funeral services for elderly folks who die alone, and the hairdresser who gives free haircuts to loitering teens in her neighbourhood.
The man behind The Royal Singapore, Yang Kaiheng, 32, said he was compelled to start the media outfit because he wanted to inject more positivity into Singapore’s social media scene – a trait he finds lacking in cyberspace, where haters and trolls thrive.
It’s a laudable goal, but those who are familiar with Yang may find it hard to square his new venture with his past. In 2016, he was sentenced to eight months in prison for violating Singapore’s sedition act for a series of articles he posted on The Real Singapore, a now-defunct sociopolitical website he had started with his wife. The law criminalises the deliberate wounding of racial and religious feelings within Singapore.
The couple operated the website out of Australia, where they were both studying at the time. His Japanese-Australian wife, Ai Takagi, was sentenced to 10 months in jail for her role as the editor of the site. Both were released from prison at the end of 2016.
Yang knows well how bitter and toxic things can get in the online world. Pieces published on The Real Singapore, a crowdsourced website, were often negative, and at times sensational and provocative. Most of the articles that landed the two founders in hot water had an anti-foreigner slant, with one piece alleging that Filipino managers working in Singapore gave preferential treatment to their Filipino subordinates over Singaporeans.
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