Shanmugam not
filing police report over 'inaccurate, seditious' Facebook
post
SINGAPORE: Law Minister K Shanmugam said on Saturday (Aug 29) he
has decided not to file a police report against independent scholar
and social activist Sangeetha Thanapal.
This followed his talk earlier this week at a Singapore Press
Club forum, where he spoke on the issue of integration in the
Malaysian education system.
Mr Shanmugam said he reached out to Ms Sangeetha on Facebook at
11pm on Friday and met her on Saturday, when she apologised for
what she wrote. Ms Sangeetha had also apologised in a Facebook
comment.
Mr Shanmugam, who is also the Foreign Affairs Minister, said he
decided not to file a police report on grounds that Ms Sangeetha
did not have the intention to cause ill-will between races in
Singapore.
Ms Sangeetha had written in a Facebook post addressed to Mr
Shanmugam: "Who are you, an Indian, to be deciding what is that
acceptable enough way to be Malay-Muslim?" She also suggested that
Mr Shanmugam had "no problems with Chinese people becoming 'more
Chinese'."
The post was shared more than 2,400 times before it was hidden
from public view after 9pm.
"She unfortunately twisted what I had said and suggested that I
was an 'Islamophobic bigot who thinks Malay-Muslims are a threat',"
Mr Shanmugam wrote in a Facebook post on Friday evening. "What Ms
Thanapal wrote is inaccurate and seditious, and attributes to me
sentiments that I do not hold and have never held," he stated.
- CNA/dl
