Post

Kirsten Han 韩俐颖
@kirstenhan.com

🧵 Today I was charged under Singapore's Public Order Act for “taking part in a public assembly within a prohibited area”. 3 friends were also charged for the same offence. The assembly in question? Posing for photos outside the State Courts after my friend Jolovan Wham's court mentions in Feb 2025.

Kirsten Han 韩俐颖
@kirstenhan.com

I also received a 12-month conditional warning for allegedly "taking part in a public assembly or public procession". In June 2024 I followed a group of students as they delivered letters to the Ministry of Home Affairs with feedback on the Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill (now passed into law).

2 reposts11 likes

Kirsten Han 韩俐颖
@kirstenhan.com

The students were alarmed by the ways the proposed law could be used against those speaking out about the genocide in Palestine, and asked if I’d like to follow them and write about their collective action in my newsletter. So I did, and I wrote about it here: www.wethecitizens.net/students-tel...

wethecitizens.net8 June 2024: Students tell MHA exactly what they think about a proposed racial harmony billThis week: Alarmed by what it could mean for activism and freedom of expression, about 40 students delivered their feedback on the proposed Maintenance of Racial Harmony Bill to the Ministry of Home A...
Kirsten Han 韩俐颖
@kirstenhan.com

I later learnt that The Straits Times, Singapore's main broadsheet, had photographed the students at the MRT station and outside MHA, but as far as I know, I was the only journalist identified to the students on the day, and who briefly interviewed some about what they were doing and why.

Kirsten Han 韩俐颖
@kirstenhan.com

(1) In March 2022, three friends and I lit a small number of tea lights and sat outside Changi Prison, for less than an hour, the night before Abdul Kahar bin Othman was hanged on 31 March—the first person executed in about two years.