Singapore court jails man for racially offensive tweets

A SINGAPORE court has jailed a man for three weeks over racially offensive tweets in April last year.

Zainal Abidin Shaiful Bahari, 35, who worked as senior executive at a software company in Singapore, pleaded guilty to two charges each of committing acts he knew were detrimental to the maintenance of racial harmony in Singapore.

A member of the public informed the police in April 2020 after seeing a tweet by the user "sharonliew86" condemning Indian immigrants about Covid-19.

Zainal, who used the pseudonym "Sharon Liew" (Chinese name), had sole control of the account.

In March 2020, he posted that "smart Chinese" women did social distancing inside the Mass Rapid Transit subway trains by not sitting next to Indians.

District judge S Jennifer Marie said race and religion were sensitive issues and offenders must realise that careless remarks can lead to social disorder.

"Further, when such remarks are published with the medium of the Internet, they have the ubiquitous reach and therefore amplify the potential and irreversible harm that could be caused to...peace and racial harmony," she said.

Marie emphasised that racial tensions increased during the pandemic and added a strong deterrent signal must be sent.

Investigation by the police revealed that Zainal, along with two other friends, set up the Twitter account in July 2018 for posting parody content.

However, he took sole control of the account and posted the offensive tweets in March and April 2020.

The prosecutor called for four weeks’ jail, while Zainal’s lawyer Sunil Sudheesan asked for three weeks.

"Our client is very sorry for this. He should have anticipated this," Sudheesan said.

The judge told Zainal the language used in his tweets were in bad taste.

"If you had really valued racial and cultural diversity, you should have appreciated all the more the need to preserve ... sensitivities given the multi-cultural fabric of Singapore," she said.