Singapore tightens grip on Internet content

Singapore tightens grip on Internet content

SINGAPORE (Reuters): Singapore has tightened its grip on Internet content in the run-up to the next election by ordering a current affairs portal to register as a political website.

Sintercom -- which runs chat rooms, a speaker's platform and the "Not ST" section as an alternative to the pro-government Straits Times newspaper -- has sent in the registration forms but now faces questions of how it will comply.

"We will try to hold fast to our belief and principles as much as we can as new problems crop up," the organizers said in a statement posted on the site at www.sintercom.org.

"If future problems are too numerous or too insurmountable, we could still close down Sintercom. Of course, we hope that day will never come."

Deputy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, launching the ruling People's Action Party (PAP) website last month, said new political guidelines were needed as the last election in 1997 was run under rules that pre-dated the Internet.

"Limits are necessary because, while the Internet has great potential and utility, it also has its dangers," Lee said. "On the Internet, information and disinformation are disseminated equally quickly and are not always easy to distinguish."

Lee -- who is also a brigadier general, chairman of the central bank and son of Singapore's founding father Lee Kuan Yew -- did not specify what sort of limits might be imposed.

The PAP, which has dominated parliament since Singapore's formal secession from Malaysia in 1965, is expected to call an election this year ahead of the August 2002 deadline.

In a July 9 letter, the Singapore Broadcasting Authority (SBA), which oversees all Internet content providers, knocked back an initial Sintercom appeal against the order.

"Registration of political websites is a procedural requirement and is used to emphasize the need for content providers to be responsible and transparent when engaging in the propagation, promotion or discussion of political issues relating to Singapore," the SBA wrote to Sintercom editor Tan Chong Kee.

The watchdog gave no reason for its decision, which appeared to have no connection with the new political content rules being studied by the government.

No one at the SBA was immediately available to comment on Wednesday.

Besides Sintercom, a variety of sites host forums for political chat, including Think Center (www.thinkcentre.org), the National Solidarity Party (www.nsp.org.sg) and Singaporeans for Democracy (www.gn.apc.org/sfc).

The satirical site TalkingCock.com lampoons politicians and ordinary Singaporeans without prejudice.

Organizers of Internet portals and some opposition parties have objected to the idea of new rules on political content but expressed scant surprise that the government was making the move.

"If the government is worried about the Net spreading slander faster than good things about it, it might want to do some exhaustive investigation why this is so," Sintercom said.

"Trying to prevent differing views from appearing on the Net does not fundamentally address or resolve dissent. In the long run, trying to regulate discussion of issues on the Net will do more harm than good."

Singapore typically bans or censors films, magazines and books for excessive amounts of sex, violence and drug references.

It also prevents access to a selection of Internet sites, most of them pornographic, but intent web surfers have little trouble navigating around the token roadblocks.