Singapore Broadens Censorship of Online News

Anthony Chen's "Ilo Ilo" is the first Singaporean feature to win a major award at Cannes.

The Singaporean government on Tuesday introduced new measures designed to control Internet news sites that report regularly on the city-states politics and current affairs. The move has led to a wave of criticism from local media outlets and opposition political groups, which have labeled the measures regressive and harmful to the territorys already curtailed press freedoms. The regulations will initially affect 10 news sites that cover Singapore, including a site owned and operated by Yahoo and several outlets run by two local media groups with ties to the Singaporean government.

The new rules, introduced by Singapores Media Development Authority, require that the sites apply for individual licenses, which will be renewed annually. The sites will then need to pay a performance bond of about $40,000 (50,000 Singaporean dollars) and are required to remove any content deemed objectionable within 24 hours. The censorship framework is an extension of existing regulations for all Internet sites in the country, which ban any content perceived as offensive to morality, state security, public interest and social harmony.

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Many observers expect that the regulatory regime will soon be broadened to apply to additional local news sites, as the rules are loosely defined as applying to all sites that report on Singapore at least once a week and receive a minimum 50,000 unique visitors a month from within the city-state.

A government minister told local press that the MDA plans to pass laws next year to include overseas sites that report on Singapore under the new licensing requirements.

"We are not in a position to respond until we receive the actual license conditions for review," Alan Soon, Yahoo's Singapore country manager, said in a statement to the Wall Street Journal.

Alex Au, a prominent local political blogger, told the Journal that new laws will have a chilling effect on the online media," since regulators will be able to issue censorship requests without transparency or public scrutiny.

In public statements made Wednesday, opposition parties Singapore Democratic Party and National Solidarity Party called the new regulations a regressive move that will hamper the development of the local media industry.

Singapore has been run by a single party -- the Peoples Action Party -- since 1959. In the 2011 Singapore general election, the PAP won 81 of the 87 contested seats in the Singaporean parliament. Despite its repressive grip on local media, the PAP has been credited with steering the country into a period of widespread wealth and prosperity. According to a report by Boston Consulting Group last year, one in six Singaporean households have disposable private wealth of over $1 million, excluding property, businesses holdings and luxury goods.

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Singapore Broadens Censorship of Online News