Singapore: Jolovan Wham charged for holding up a smiley face signal

To the informal observer, it’s only a picture of a person holding up a smiley face – a picture used a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of instances a day in messages internationally to say “completely satisfied”.

However this smiley face on a Singaporean avenue is completely different. This smiley face has landed the person holding it in courtroom, probably costing him 1000’s of {dollars} in fines.

And regardless of the dangers, this smiley face has additionally impressed a wave of smiley faces in assist.

So what precisely about this explicit smiley face has upset authorities in one of many world’s wealthiest and most superior nations?

Properly, it has much less to do with the smiley face, and extra to do with the person holding it.

Jolovan Wham is a civil rights activist who has made a reputation for himself in recent times drawing consideration to the difficulty of freedom of speech – or slightly, as he would argue, the shortage of it – in Singapore.

The picture was the newest in a protracted line of incidents involving Mr Wham which have upset the federal government.

Final yr, it was for inviting the distinguished Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong to hitch in a convention through Skype.

On one other event, he held a candlelit vigil for a Malaysian man executed for drug trafficking, whereas a silent protest on a prepare additionally positioned him within the authorities’ sights.

To an outsider, conscious of the protests convulsing the streets of Thailand and Hong Kong, all of it appears slightly tame.

However Singapore has exceedingly strict guidelines on public meeting and imposes tight restrictions on freedom of speech and the media.

It requires a police allow for any meeting in a public place linked to a trigger or in demonstration of a view. The federal government defends its public meeting legal guidelines as obligatory to take care of order and security.

However Mr Wham hardly ever will get a allow. In consequence, he was already in hassle for the Skype session, the vigil and the prepare protest when he took the picture in March.

For a begin, Mr Wham argues it was not a protest. In courtroom on Monday, he pleaded not-guilty to unlawful public meeting.

He was, he says, simply displaying assist for 2 younger local weather activists who had been summoned by police for questioning.

One had carried a placard saying “SG (Singapore) is healthier than oil” in the identical spot Mr Wham’s picture was taken in. The opposite – an 18-year-old faculty scholar – had posted pictures of herself holding indicators urging local weather motion exterior the workplace of US oil big ExxonMobil.

Their actions had been much like these of Greta Thunberg, the local weather activist who has been praised world wide for her quiet, decided stand in opposition to local weather change.

Each ended up being questioned by police and having their telephones seized – a response Mr Wham denounced as a violation of Singapore’s dedication to free speech.

However his picture, he says, is just not a protest.

Officers have taken a distinct view.

“The Audio system’ Nook is the right avenue for Singaporeans to specific their views on points that concern them, and to permit Singaporeans to conduct assemblies with out the necessity for a allow, topic to sure situations being met,” police mentioned in a press release about Mr Wham’s fees.

If discovered responsible, he might be fined as much as S$5,000 (US$3,700; £2,800). He has additionally been charged in relation to a different alleged protest in 2018.

The Audio system’ Nook – established in 2000 and loosely modelled on the one in London’s Hyde Park – is at present closed below Covid-19 restrictions as a part of Singapore’s tight and largely profitable measures to regulate the pandemic.

Sure: in actual fact, he has already served two temporary sentences this yr.

The primary one-week stint in March got here when he selected jail as an alternative of paying a wonderful after he was convicted of “scandalising the judiciary” on social media. Mr Wham had shared a publish on Fb evaluating the judiciary in Malaysia to Singapore.

A number of months later he spent one other 10 days in jail after he was convicted of violating the Public Order Act with the Joshua Wong convention.

It was, he says, value it.

“Singapore is just not this open and worldwide and cosmopolitan metropolis that it likes to current itself as,” he instructed the BBC. “It is solely fashionable by way of its look, however extremely illiberal with regards to individuals simply expressing themselves.”

And regardless of the highly-controlled island state being largely profitable in stamping out public dissent, two years in the past Singaporean artist Seelan Palay spent a fortnight in jail after a efficiency he staged was deemed a one-man protest that violated the Public Order Act.

He had walked solo to Singapore’s parliament, holding a mirror, to commemorate the detention of the nation’s as soon as longest-held political prisoner.

What’s extra, others have began to point out Mr Wham their assist. He has had 200 individuals ship him smiley faces.

Some have even been courageous sufficient to publish their very own smiley face selfies, utilizing the hashtag #smileinsolidarity.

Fearing the regulation, some have shared pictures with out revealing their identification. Others have written on to Mr Wham. “I’ve obtained many messages of assist,” he says. “However individuals are afraid of expressing themselves. They write to me privately.”

There have been detractors too, he provides, however the activist thinks “it is not true that Singaporeans are proud of the established order”.

“There are people who find themselves dissatisfied with these legal guidelines.”

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, mentioned the case in opposition to Mr Wham was an “absurd prosecution”.

“Singapore’s authorities ought to develop up and recognise it must have a nationwide dialog about what its individuals need within the twenty first Century, and that requires respecting individuals’s civil and political rights,” he mentioned.

Reporting by Preeti Jha.