Singapore releases 16-year-old blogger jailed for obscenity News
Singapore releases 16-year-old blogger jailed for obscenity

A Singapore court on Monday released sixteen-year-old video blogger Amos Yee [YouTube profile], who had been jailed after posting images and video insulting the country’s first prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew [BBC backgrounder]. The court released Yee after sentencing him [Straits Times report] to four weeks in prison, time he had already served awaiting the sentence. Yee was found guilty [Straits Times report] of obscenity [Penal Code Article 292(a)(1)] and deliberately insulting a religious or racial group [Penal Code Article 298] in May. Human rights groups, including Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website], have criticized Yee’s arrest and called for him to be exonerated [press release], saying the country’s laws violate fundamental rights of expression.

Singapore has a history of prosecuting those critical of the government. In March, the Supreme Court of Singapore fined blogger Alex Au [JURIST report] for comments he made about an on-going challenge to the country’s anti-homosexuality laws. In January, another court ordered blogger Roy Ngerng [JURIST report] to pay Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong for legal fees incurred pursuing a defamation case against Ngerng. In 2008, a Singapore court sentenced US blogger and attorney Gopalan Nair [JURIST report] to three months in jail for insulting a judge.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, murdered by Henry II's knights

On December 29, 1170, Archbishop Thomas Becket, former Chancellor of England, was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by knights acting in the name of Henry II.

Becket and Henry had been entangled in a power struggle over, among other things, criminal jurisdiction over clergy. Read a contemporary account of the murder of Thomas Becket.

Texas attains US statehood

On December 29, 1845, Texas became the twenty-eighth state to join the United States of America when US President James K. Polk signed the Ordinance of Annexation. Texas had a complicated path to statehood because it had formerly been part of Mexico and then an independent republic. The US Congress passed the Annexation of the Republic of Texas Joint Resolution on March 1, 1845. Voters in Texas then approved the Ordinance of Annexation in October, before it was approved by the US Congress and signed into law by President Polk on this day in 1845. The US Supreme Court later ruled in Texas v. White that, despite its unique path to statehood, Texas did not have the right to secede from the union.