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This is how journalism that picks up a narrative from govt sources and other media end up misrepresenting reality to readers. This says charges are for “protests against the death penalty” which, w/o context, paints a diff picture from what actually happened. www.independent.co.uk/asia/southea...

independent.co.ukSingapore actors charged over protests against death penaltySingapore retains the death penalty for murder, certain drug-trafficking offences, and serious firearms offences

The charges are now framed as being about “protests” because the charges under the Public Order Act are about “public assemblies”. But the Public Order Act is so broad that a huge range of action can be deemed “public assembly” even if we wouldn’t ordinarily see it as such.

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The “protest against the death penalty” that Neo Swee Lin and Lim Kay Siu (and others, including myself) have been charged for was this: we went to court to support a friend who’d been charged. Afterwards, we stood outside the courthouse and someone snapped some photos. Then we left. That’s it.

The average reasonable person would *not* define this as a “public assembly” or “protest”. But when media outlets pick up on the state’s language and narrative without describing what actually happened, it gives people a very different impression of the situation.

This is how the media fails the people. I don’t think it’s happening out of malice (most of the time, anyway). It’s happening ‘cos newsrooms are being downsized, journos are losing their jobs, bosses expect more stories to be produced with less. Under such pressure, shortcuts are taken.

The authorities seem to have latched on to the T-shirts to argue that it turns this into an assembly for the cause of death penalty abolition. But is it reasonable that that is all it takes? If I went to lunch with friends and we were strolling in a mall wearing these shirts, is that a protest, too?

The Public Order Act also says that an “assembly” can actually even be made up of just one person. So if I wore that T-shirt and walked around in public alone could that also be an illegal protest under the Public Order Act? The law is broad to the point of absurdity.