Singapore Court Wants Teenage Blogger Held for Psychiatric Review - The New York Times

To borrow a sentiment from my esteemed co-host,  "That's a pretty weak god you got there that can't take a little teasing from a 16 year old."

A Singapore court ruled on Tuesday that a teenage blogger who was convicted of obscenity and insulting religious feelings after he posted a video criticizing the late leader Lee Kuan Yew this year should be held for two weeks pending a psychiatric examination.

The teenager, Amos Yee, drew international attention when he was arrested for posting the video shortly after Mr. Lee, the founding father of modern Singapore, died on March 23.

The case has highlighted Singapore’s strict limits on speech and has drawn criticism from human rights groups, which said the treatment of the 16-year-old, including more than a month in detention and the possibility of at least 18 months in reformative training, was unduly harsh.

In Singapore, offenders under 21 can be sentenced to reformative training, in which they are housed separately from adult inmates and given “a structured environment of discipline,” according to the Singapore prosecutor’s office.

It is not prison, but it is “akin to detention and usually applied to juvenile offenders involved in serious crimes,” according to the office of the United Nations’ human rights agency.
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Human Rights Watch has called on Singapore to exonerate and free Mr. Yee.

Likewise, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Southeast Asia said on Tuesday that it was concerned about Mr. Yee’s physical and mental health in detention. It called for his immediate release, saying that “the criminal sanctions considered in this case seem disproportionate and inappropriate in terms of the international protections for freedom of expression and opinion.”

Singapore Court Wants Teenage Blogger Held for Psychiatric Review - The New York Times