Singapore / Asia

The Committee to Protect Journalists and a group of Southeast Asian lawmakers have called for the “active engagement” of the regional bloc ASEAN in protecting press freedom and the formation of an inter-parliamentary alliance to safeguard media rights in the region, which includes some of the worst offenders of press freedom. As governments escalate efforts…

New York, January 10, 2025— Singapore Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng and Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam should withdraw threats of legal action against media outlets over their public interest reporting, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday. “The threats of legal action by Singapore ministers against media outlets, as well as…

Bangkok, September 3, 2021 – The Committee to Protect Journalists today expressed alarm at the Singapore High Court’s ruling awarding Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong more than US$156,500 in damages in defamation suits against bloggers Terry Xu and Rubaashini Shunmuganathan. The High Court on September 1 ruled that Xu, chief editor of The Online Citizen news blog,…

Governments all over the world have been considering cellphone surveillance to help track and contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Bangkok, September 3, 2019 — Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong should drop his legal threat against news website The Online Citizen and cease his government’s long-running legal harassment of independent media, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

Bangkok, May 9, 2019 — The Committee to Protect Journalists today condemned the Singapore parliament’s passage of legislation that could be used to stifle reporting and the dissemination of news, and called for the punitive measure’s immediate repeal.

Bangkok, April 2, 2019 — The Committee to Protect Journalists called today on the Singapore parliament to reject legislation that would force online platforms to take down or amend news or information authorities deem as false.

On November 20, 2018, five police officers seized a desktop computer, mobile devices, and laptops from the Singapore home of Terry Xu, chief editor of the independent news website The Online Citizen, according to news reports. Xu was summoned to the city-state’s Cantonment Complex at 3pm that day, where authorities interrogated him for over eight…

Bangkok, February 28, 2018–Draft anti-terrorism legislation under consideration in Singapore would imperil press freedom by banning journalists from covering terror attacks, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

At least 81 journalists are imprisoned in Turkey, all of them facing anti-state charges, in the wake of an unprecedented crackdown that has included the shuttering of more than 100 news outlets. The 259 journalists in jail worldwide is the highest number recorded since 1990. A CPJ special report by Elana Beiser