Amos Yee – The boy versus the State

Amos Yee was charged for 3 counts by the public prosecutor for his rant in his youtube video. The third charge has now been stood down but not necessarily withdrawn. The first charge is for posting obscenity, an offence against the law and not necessarily that someone has been hurt. Of course there will be people who felt offended by it, but without stretching the imagination too far to say that someone may also be offended when it rains or the sun rises too early or too late. The second charge of offending a religion, very subjective, some people would claim to be offended while the church would to say it was alright and forgiven.

The third charge would be the family members of the dead person to feel offended and there is a clear relationship between the offended and the people abused or ridiculed. Can a non related person or the public claimed to be offended too and seek the court to judge against the boy? For the moment this not an issue as it has since been set aside.

The situation now is that this boy is being charged by the State and produced in court with hands handcuffed and legs shackled like a very serious criminal. And the boy is being defended by 3 lawyers on a pro bono basis. And that was it. It is now a matter between the boy and the State.

Roy Ngerng, a friend of the boy, tried to internationalise his plight by writing to the Pope in the Vatican and several bodies in the UN. Not sure if he had addressed his mail to Ban Ki Moon, the Secretary General. And not sure if he has sent any mail to Obama, the President of the USA who always climbed to the top of the mountain to yell human rights violation and claimed to be the defender of human rights in all corners of the earth. Maybe this case is not an issue of human rights, just a legal issue, not even political.

There has been silence in the western front. No Pope, no UN, no Obama. No one seems to be interested in the affair of this boy or his well being. In the domestic front, no politician, not even from the ruling party, except maybe the SDP, has stood up to say something about this case. So it is not a political issue too.

The case as it stood is a straight forward case of a boy against the State on a matter of law, a trepassing of the State. No amount of internationalisation or politicisation would turn this simple and trivial case into anything else but a simple matter for the court to decide. The case is so simple that no one would dare to use it as an excuse to flog for their cause or to cry crocodile tears. The only tears that would be shed would be the tears of the boy’s parents. No, the brave boy would stand tall, would not shed a tear, not even when he was hit by a 49 year old man outside the court.

There are some noises from the lunatic fringe but just noise and nothing more to have any impact on this case. The world and world news too have scant little interest in this case. No do gooder, bleeding heart socialist, or conscience stricken western journalist would even give it a second look.

It is the boy against the State. Or it is the boy and his parents and the 3 lawyers versus the State. No drumming in Hong Lim Park other than the little murmurs that were hardly heard in the alternative media. It is the day the world and conscience turn their backs, to look the other way, not wanting to know there is a boy called Amos Yee.