Edz Ello sentenced to 4 months in prison: justified?

I have had a lot of hits on an old article I wrote on the whole Edz Ello case, then I realized, aha he has been sentenced, that's why there's the renewed interest in this case. For those of you who have not followed this case, Ed Mundsel Bello Ello, a Filipino working in Singapore, has been jailed four months for making "disparaging comments about Singaporeans" and two counts of providing false information to the police. I'd like to do a follow up to this case.

Singaporean justice is under the spotlight again

I actually felt sorry for Ello. After all, he's incredibly stupid. Where do I begin? Look, the guy can't even spell words like "loosers" and "disators" - his original posts were in broken English. In posting those remarks, he thought he was going to insult Singaporeans but most are going to laugh at just how bad his English is. But then again, if you were to go to any forum type website frequented by Singaporeans (like HWZ's EDMW) then you will find no shortage of people insulting each other using seditious language as well. What Ello did is really no different from what a lot of Singaporeans are doing. Should Ello be allowed to get away with his actions in the name of free speech? Maybe not - but one should always calculate the predicted outcome of one's actions before doing anything; I suspect that Ello was probably just letting off some steam as he was clearly frustrated, but is this the right avenue for him to do so? No.

That is why I think one should be careful about the way one uses social media - I don't mean that we should censor ourselves, rather we should be more mindful about the people we interact with online. What Ello did was wrong on so many levels - perhaps he succeeded in venting some anger in posting those remarks about Singaporeans in the first place, but is he likely to find a sympathetic audience who will agree with his points? No, he isn't - it is only going to lead to a massive backlash that will further contribute to his frustration. Perhaps he could have found a more sympathetic audience, like amongst fellow Pinoys in Singapore, he may have been able to find the empathy. After all, you have to ask yourself: what is the purpose of social media? I say the key purpose is to have a constructive, even enjoyable experience online - what Ello did, in courting controversy, led to four months jail. Need I state the obvious? That's neither constructive nor enjoyable - he had so little to gain and everything to lose in posting those hateful statements.

What kind of social media experience do you want?

However, is it necessary to sentence him to jail for any period? I don't think so. I believe that jail should be reserved for keeping dangerous characters off the streets, so that ordinary folks will not have to worry about their safety. So it should be reserved for dangerous criminals who have harmed others (be it physically or financially), it should keep those who are a genuine threat to the well being of others off the streets. Is he a dangerous man? No. In my opinion, Ello is guilty of sheer stupidity. Is that a crime enough to lock him up for four months? Can the cost of the investigation, the court case and jailing him ever be justified? I don't think so, for the simple reason: if you are going to lock up Ello for spouting stupid bullshit online, then you have to go through each and every one of those Singaporean forums and arrest every single person for spouting any seditious remarks online. Ello is undoubtedly stupid - but is it necessary to punish him so harshly for being stupid? I don't think so - the punishment doesn't fit the crime in this case.

I'm afraid stupidity per se, isn't a crime - I'm not defending Ello per se, I'm calling him stupid. He's an idiot. Oh gosh, he is remarkably, incredibly stupid. But his stupidity does not render him a menace to society. the judge should have had enough common sense to have realized that and have given him a fine (and canceled his work permit, thus effectively deporting him from Singapore). That would have sufficed. But no, there seems to be a certain vengeful desire on the part of Singaporeans to jail him, But wait a minute, in sentencing Ello, judge Shanmugan said "Ello's inflammatory comments had the potential to harm relations between Singaporeans and Filipinos in Singapore, and might already have affected many in the community adversely."Fair enough, but what about the many Singaporeans who posted anti-Filipino racist remarks in light of this case then? Surely if Ello is jailed for what he said, then by the same token, you need to arrest each and every single one of these Singaporeans who responded with racist remarks as well? When will the police arrest all those other offenders then? Oh the double standards - that is why I am saying that Ello really shouldn't have been treated so harshly, because you are merely opening a can of worms in doing so.

Has the law responded appropriately in this case?

This is a poor reflection of the state of the Singaporean justice system. Amos Yee had already been a victim of this kind of mob justice and the justice system reacted to the backlash, seemingly to appease an angry mob, baying for Amos Yee's blood - the same thing seems to have happened in the case of Ello. In the case of Amos Yee, you're dealing with someone quite different here - he is a precocious teenager desperate for attention. Unlike Ello, Amos Yee is extremely intelligent and would go to great lengths to get the kind of attention he craves (including going to jail), but in both cases, there is little justification for jailing either of them. Judge Shanmugan agreed with the prosecution that the peace and harmony of a cosmopolitan society such as Singapore's is held together by mutual respect and understanding, and that the unity of the society had been the foundation of its success and progress in the last 50 years. "It is therefore imperative for this court to send a clear and unequivocal signal that such offence, if made out, will be met with the full brunt of the law in the form of a deterrent sentence,'' he added.

If you wanted to promote peace and harmony in Singapore, the way to go about it is to approach it from a positive, constructive manner: such as by holding campaigns, festivals and activities for Singaporeans to get to learn about the different cultures, religions and languages that form part of Singaporean society. In a recent post, I lamented the way so many Singaporeans are woefully ignorant of the cultures, religions and languages of their fellow Singaporeans. Surely education is the answer to this problem - even if you punish people like Ello who are supposedly saying seditious things online, you are still not fixing the root of the problem. During the Ebola epidemic, trying to punish anyone guilty of doing something that may spread the virus isn't going to be half as effective as educating the public about how they can protect themselves from the virus. Can a deterrent sentence achieve this? What are you trying to achieve at the end of the day? What is your objective and what is the best way for you to achieve that?

If ignorance is the problem, education is the solution.

This is nothing new I'm afraid, before the cases of Edz Ello and Amos Yee, you would remember the PRC scholar Sun Xu who said that there were more dogs than humans in Singapore as well as the Lai Shimun case. How effective are these punishments in terms of changing society's behaviour and attitude? Has the 殺一儆百 approach worked in terms of making an example of these 'offenders'? I'm afraid not. Amos Yee is now a free man and has gone right back to making controversial Youtube videos, except now, he's getting a lot more hits than before. Going to jail has only made Amos more determined than ever before. And judging by what I am seeing on those Singaporean forums like HWZ's EDMW, there seems to be no fear of breaking any laws by the users there when it comes to making racist remarks. Regardless of the good intentions of the judges who have passed deterrent sentences, it has not translated to a change in attitudes in Singapore. Perhaps a much more effective method would be to have an education campaign about acting responsibly online, educating Singaporeans that nothing they say online is ever truly anonymous and that they should really think twice before posting anything offensive as there may be very serious consequences indeed.

So there you go, that's it from me on this topic. How do you feel about Ello spending the next four months in jail? What can be achieved from imprisoning someone like him? Please leave your comments below - many thanks for reading!