Tag: Singaporeans

Singapore Silat Banking On Dark Horses For More Medals

The Republic’s pencak silat athletes have never won more than three gold medals at any SEA Games and competing on home ground will not be much of an advantage when Singapore hosts the biennial event from June 5 to June 16, said Singapore Silat Federation (SSF) chief executive officer Sheik Alau’ddin Yacoob Marican.

Traditional powerhouses Indonesia and Malaysia have always dominated the sport, but with Vietnam fighting the two countries for supremacy since 2005, winning medals, let alone gold, has become difficult, he added.

When the silat competition starts on June 10 at the Singapore Expo, Sheik Alau’ddin is banking his hopes on 2013 Games gold medallist Nur Alfian Juma’en in the Class F event, and 2012 world champion Shakir Juanda in Class H.

Despite the stiff competition, he said there are “dark horses” in his seven-man and six-woman squad capable of springing a surprise or two.

They include Class E fighter Sheik Ferdous, Iqbal Abdul Rahman in the artistic singles event for men and the women artistic team.

“Although I am not expecting more than two golds from Nur Alfian and Shakir, anything can happen when the home crowd get behind our athletes,” said Sheik Alau’ddin.

“Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam will dominate silat here, but emotions run high when friends and families are shouting and cheering on our guys and girls. When this happens, it can push them to perform beyond themselves. So while I am realistic about our chances, I am not writing off the possibility of getting more than two gold medals.”

Keeping focus and following instructions are two areas Nur Alfian needs to strengthen if he is to defend his Games gold medal. These weak spots unravelled in January at Phuket where he failed to get past the Class F quarter-final of the World Pencak Silat Championship.

Said the 18-year-old: “I did not follow the game plan of my coaches because I was too eager to get the points. This allowed my opponent to take me down several times.

“By the time I came to my senses and was able to score points, it was not enough to win the match.”

To help the host team put on a good showing for the competition, the SSF hired two Indonesian coaches, Muhammad Fiqri and Muhammad Hamdi, in April last year to sharpen their techniques.

Fiqri said they have been pushing the athletes to use more of what they have in their armoury when they step onto the mat to do battle.

“For example, although they know how to use the scissors technique to bring down an opponent, many have not been using this as much as they should,” he added.

“They also tend to use the same style and this makes them predictable. So what Hamdi and I have been doing is to get them to train a lot more in other areas so that they will have more weapons to use next month.”

Although Nurul Suhailah has not been mentioned as one of the medal hopefuls, the 19-year-old is hoping to make an impact in her second attempt at the Games after returning home empty-handed from Myanmar two years ago.

“I am going for gold, no matter what,” she said defiantly. “We are competing in Singapore and my family and friends are coming to watch me. Although there is pressure to do well in front of them, this is good pressure because it will push me to win something.”

Source: www.todayonline.com

May 4, 2015
126 Home Team Officers Deployed For Largest Overseas Deployment In Nepal

One hundred and twenty six Home Team officers are focusing their efforts on the Gorkha district in Nepal – the Republic’s largest deployment for an overseas relief operation.

In a Facebook post on Sunday (May 3), Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean said the Home Team contingent consisted of 60 officers from the Singapore Civil Defence Force and 66 officers from the Singapore Police Force. There are also Gurkha officers – 30 of whom reached Nepal on Sunday with more relief supplies.

Singapore Police Force officers loading supplies bound for Pokhara, Nepal. (Photo: Teo Chee Hean’s Facebook page)

Gorkha is close to the epicentre of the earthquake, which occurred between Pokhara and Kathmandu, said Mr Teo. Because road connections are also damaged, personnel and supplies are airlifted to Gorkha via helicopters.

The Ministry of Home Affairs added that because ground operations are moving into the recovery phase, the base of operations has been shifted from Kathmandu to Pokhara. The focus is to provide humanitarian aid, such as medical assistance and distribution of basic food items to the affected population.

A map illustrating Singapore’s deployment in Nepal. (Image: Ministry of Home Affairs)

“Our contingent is staging out of Pokhara (Nepal’s second largest city), to reach Gorkha district by helo. Our officers are familiar with this area and the local communities, as a good number of our Gurkha Contingent officers come from this region,” he said in the post.

Last week’s earthquake in Nepal has killed more than 7,000 people, with officials expecting the death toll to rise further.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

May 4, 2015
The Real Singapore Shuts Down On World Press Freedom Day

As of Sunday (May 3 2015), The Real Singapore (TRS) has been taken down.

The Media Development Authority (MDA) has suspended the editors’ license to operate the site, with instructions not to post new articles on the site and to take down the site by 8pm. The website was subsequently taken down at 7pm, leaving the message: “The Real Singapore has been ordered to disable access to all our online services by the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore.”

The editors behind TRS, 26-year-old Singaporean Yang Kaiheng, and his 22-year-old Australian girlfriend, Ai Takagi, were charged in April with seven counts of sedition and one of failing to produce documents to a police officer.

“The foreign editors were responsible for several articles that sought to incite anti-foreigner sentiments in Singapore,” MDA said. “TRS, including its two foreign editors, were seeking to make profit at the expense of Singapore’s public interest and national harmony.”

The TRS Facebook page, which had garnered more that 400,000 likes, has also been shut down.

Local’s reactions to the site’s takedown are varied. Some people are happy that the MDA has suspended the activities of a website known for triggering material and plaigarism. According to a report by the Straits Times, MDA explained that TRS had published material that is objectionable on the grounds of public interest, public order and national harmony. It is the first time that MDA has suspended the license of a site’s editors.

Other locals opposed the move, citing a restriction for freedom of speech. The timing also made the move ironic, since May 3 is also World Press Freedom Day, a day set aside by the United Nations to promote and protect press freedom worldwide.

However, it is important to note that this year’s World Press Freedom Day is alsodedicated to the need for “quality journalism”, or reporting that is accurate and independent, which makes the timing for this move especially apt, considering with accusations against TRS for plagiarism and fabricated content in what seems to be an attempt to increase the site’s traffic.

But whether or not you agree with the MDA’s move, it still means that there are 400,000 followers still hungry for Singapore gossip. There’s still STOMP, I guess.

Source: https://vulcanpost.com

May 4, 2015
The Real Singapore Taken Down After MDA Suspends Editors’ Licence

Socio-political website The Real Singapore (TRS) was shut down by its editors yesterday, after the Media Development Authority (MDA) suspended their licence to operate the site and ordered them to take it offline.

Explaining this unprecedented step, the MDA said yesterday that TRS had published material that is “objectionable on the grounds of public interest, public order and national harmony”.

Noting that at least two out of TRS’ three known editors are foreigners, the agency added that the site “sought to incite anti-foreigner sentiments in Singapore” and to “make profit at the expense of Singapore’s public interest and national harmony”.

The move comes a month after two of the editors behind TRS – Singaporean student Yang Kaiheng, 26, and his Australian girlfriend Ai Takagi, 22 – were charged with sedition for publishing articles that allegedly promoted ill will and hostility between different races or classes here.

A third editor, Melanie Tan, who is believed to be Malaysian, was not included in the charges.

At a media briefing yesterday, MDA said TRS “deliberately fabricated articles and falsely attributed them to innocent parties”, in what the agency believes was an attempt to raise the site’s traffic – and thus its advertising dollars.

It also noted that TRS inserted falsehoods in articles so as to make them more inflammatory.

Previous police investigations found that TRS articles targeted Filipinos and Chinese and Indian nationals, among others.

Assistant Professor Liew Kai Khiun, who teaches communications at the Nanyang Technological University, said MDA’s unusual move should serve as a warning about “how vulnerable Singapore can be to external forces through the porous cyberspace”.

“It must have been alarming for the authorities and Singaporeans to discover the extent of foreign involvement in a website that has been accused of amplifying social tensions in Singapore,” he told The Straits Times.

Yesterday, MDA ordered Yang and Takagi not to post any new articles with immediate effect, and to take down the TRS website and all its online channels – including its social media pages – by 8pm. They did so an hour before the deadline.

If they had not done so, they could have been subject to a maximum fine of $200,000 and/or jailed for up to three years.

MDA also instructed Yang and Takagi not to resume online operations under any other name.

They have been given until May 11 to provide information on TRS’ operations, such as its finances, and to submit arguments as to why their licence to operate the site should not be cancelled.

Failure to provide the information could result in a fine of as much as $5,000 each and/or jail time of up to a year.

If their licence is cancelled, Yang and Takagi will not be allowed to operate the website permanently. MDA will also be able to take other actions, including blocking access to the site.

But they can appeal against the suspension and potential cancellation of the licence by writing to Communications and Information Minister Yaacob Ibrahim.

Even as the site was taken down last night, several links were circulated online of what appeared to be clones of the site. An MDA spokesman said the agency is looking into the matter.

Former Nominated MP Calvin Cheng, who has campaigned for TRS to be shut down, said MDA’s move is not an affront to freedom of speech.

“This is not how freedom of speech is practised in Singapore, nor is it the type that most Singaporeans value,” he said.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

May 4, 2015
Unprecedented Orders Issued To The Real Singapore To Shut Down

In an unprecedented move on Sunday, the Media Development Authority (MDA) of Singapore ordered a website to shut itself down within six hours of the ultimatum being issued.

The MDA said, in a briefing to the mainstream media, that The Real Singapore (TRS) website had published content which it found “objectionable on the grounds of public interest, public order and national harmony.”

The government agency had thus revoked the statutory class license, an automatic license granted to all websites operating in Singapore, to TRS’ editors, namely Ai Takagi and Yang Kaiheng.

The revocation applies to all online platforms which are run by TRS, including its Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“The MDA is satisfied that Takagi and Yang have contravened the Internet Code of Practice (ICOP),” the MDA said in a press statement. “They have published prohibited material as defined by the Code to be objectionable on the grounds of public interest, public order and national harmony.”

The agency added that TRS had “deliberately fabricated articles and falsely attributed them to innocent parties.”

“TRS has also inserted falsehoods in articles that were either plagiarised from local news sources or sent in by contributors so as to make the articles more inflammatory,” the MDA added, without specifying which articles it was referring to.

It also noted that “[at] least two out of TRS’s three known editors are believed to be foreigners.”

It said Takagi is Australian, while another editor Melanie Tan is believed to be Malaysian.

“The foreign editors were responsible for several articles that sought to incite anti-foreigner sentiments in Singapore,” the MDA said.

Apparently, part of the reasons for MDA actions was TRS’ “editorial strategy of deceiving readers and doctoring articles” which the MDA said “was an attempt to increase traffic to TRS, and thus boost advertising revenue.”

“In so doing, TRS, including its two foreign editors, were seeking to make profit at the expense of Singapore’s public interest and national harmony.”

Explaining why the MDA had not taken action against the website earlier, the government watchdog said the editors were operating outside of Singapore’s jurisdiction then.

“However, since December, the two of them have been running their operations from Singapore, bringing them within the jurisdiction of the Broadcasting Act,” the MDA said.

The agency said it also noted that Takagi and Yang are being charged with seven counts of sedition for content they had published on their website; that they have also been charged with refusing to comply with written orders to produce documents considered by the police investigator to be necessary for the investigation; they have also refused to disclose how much advertising revenue they have been collecting; and that TRS has “continued to publish material that contravenes the ICOP even after Takagi and Yang were charged.”

The ICOP refers to the Internet Code of Practice.

Takagi and Yang are also not to resume operations under any other name.

“They have also been given seven days to provide information relating to TRS’s operations and to make representations as to why their class licence should not be cancelled,” added the MDA.

Non compliance with these could lead to further fines and jail time for the duo.

The two editors have also been given till 11 May to file arguments with the authorities on why their licence to operate the website should not be revoked.

If the authorities uphold the revocation of their licence after their appeal, Takagi and Yang will not be allowed to operate the website permanently.

MDA could also block access to the site.

However, the two editors could lodge an appeal with the Minister of Communications and Information, Yaacob Ibrahim, to continue to operate TRS.

It is unclear if the editors will file such an appeal.

MDA’s action against TRS is the latest in a series of cases involving bloggers and netizens whom the government has taken action against, the most recent of which were the cases of 16-year old Amos Yee, blogger Roy Ngerng, activist Alex Au and this website (The Online Citizen) for various (alleged) offences.

In 2013, following amendments to Internet regulations here, Dr Yaacob had assured the public that the MDA’s “licensing regime was still light touch regulation”.

The amendments were slammed by many, including activists, for curbing free speech in Singapore.

“We want the online community to understand that this is not an attempt to clamp down on anybody,” Dr Yaacob said then. “I think the best way is for people to see, after the licences are issued, whether the activists are indeed limited in their public discourse.

“I expect that the sites will continue to operate as before. In fact, I hope that the activists who are making this far-fetched claim will be honest enough to admit it when the time comes.”

In an interview with the BBC on the new regulations, Dr Yaacob said, “As long as they [the public] go onto online news sites to read the news, I think it is important for us to make sure that they read the right things.”

MDA’s actions against TRS have also raised questions about its wide-ranging powers.

Blogger Ravi Philemon said, “The real hard question should be not whether a certain website must be shut-down or not, but whether a statutory board should have so much power to arbitrarily act in the manner that they did.”

Source: www.theonlinecitizen.com

May 4, 2015