Blogger Roy Ngerng used foreign organisations to put pressure on the Courts, Senior Counsel Davinder Singh – acting on behalf of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong – asserted on Friday (Jul 3), the final day of a hearing to assess the amount of damages has to pay Mr Lee for defaming him by alleging the misappropriation of CPF funds.
He cited two letters that Roy Ngerng had submitted to the Supreme Court. One is from the International Commission of Jurists, a human rights non-governmental organization based in Switzerland. The other is from the Centre for International Law, a human rights group based in the Philippines.
“You used these foreign organisations to suggest to this court that if it were to award high damages it would run afoul of international human rights law, it would be generating an atmosphere of intimidation and would be a form of judicial harassment,” Mr Singh said. Mr Singh added that Mr Ngerng was also suggesting that if the court were to award damages, it would be “denying” the right of freedom to expression or “impairing” it.
In response, Justice Lee Sieu Kin, who is presiding over the proceedings, stressed that he does not feel any pressure from external parties.
Mr Singh also said the 34-year-old blogger was not being truthful to the court. For example, the blogger had sent emails regarding the takedown of his blogpost to 82 journalists’ email addresses, instead of the claimed 52, said Mr Singh.
The lawyer also said that at the time of the incident, the blog homepage – where posts could be read in full – had ten times the pageviews of the blog article itself. But when Mr Singh and his team asked for information on homepage views, they were not provided by Mr Ngerng.
The blogger argued that the popularity of a post should be measured by the article’s pageviews, and not the homepage, which contains other articles.
The Senior Counsel also put forth that in Mr Ngerng’s ambitions to publish factual information, he did not publish the Prime Minister’s rejection to his out-of-court offer for S$5,000. In defence, Mr Ngerng said that Mr Lee’s response to the offer being “derisory” was already reported by the media.
LEGAL COSTS
Mr Ngerng said he was seeking financial help as his savings and the donations have dwindled since the case went to court. About S$110,000 was donated by the public.
Mr Ngerng, who said he now lives off his parents, told the court that S$70,000 had been paid to lawyer M Ravi, while S$36,000 was used to pay Mr Lee’s lawyers in costs for the summary judgment as well as the Queen’s Counsel application.
The remaining money was used to pay Mr Ngerng’s third lawyer George Hwang, but the blogger received an additional £5,000 (S$10,500) from London-based human rights organisation Media Legal Defence Initiative (MLDI) to fund the case. Mr Ngerng said MLDI and another London-based organisation, Article 19, assisted in legal advice.
But when the blogger told the court that all the donations had been spent, the Senior Counsel said that knowing his means were limited, Mr Ngerng should not have aggravated the offence with follow-up blogposts.
“As you were incurring these expenses and filing fees, you were aware that if you continued to aggravate the injury, there was a risk that the damages could be increased,” the Drew & Napier lawyer said. “The sensible thing to do was to stop aggravating.”
Mr Singh noted that after receiving the letter of demand from Mr Lee’s lawyers, Mr Ngerng immediately offered damages “to get away on the cheap”, yet continued aggravating the offence with his subsequent actions.
“He is continuing to attack the plaintiff (Mr Lee) for improper motives,” he told the court.
Mr Singh also highlighted a blogpost that Mr Ngerng had written the day before the assessment of damages hearing, saying that he was going to court and that “we have to fight back and take a stand”.
Mr Ngerng said, despite the blogpost’s headline mentioning the damages hearing, the post was also about teenage blogger Amos Yee who was involved in another court case, and could thus not be seen as aggravating the defamation case.
“Over the past few days, you have heaped accusations about me of far from being sincere, despite how sincere I’m trying to show (I am),” he said to Mr Singh.
The case was adjourned at 3pm, with written submissions due Aug 31. As Mr Ngerng will be away for the next two weeks for reservist, Justice Lee gave him an additional six weeks after that to make his written submissions.
Source: www.channelnewsasia.com
