Singapore: Self-exiled journalist Terry Xu targeted by abusive lawsuits again

The lawsuits set “troubling new ground,” said Terry Xu, editor of the socio-political online news outlet The Online Citizen (TOC). “The ministers are not suing over actual words, but over the ‘impression’ they claim my article creates,” he added. 

Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam, who is Home Affairs and Law Minister and also Coordinating Minister for National Security, and Manpower Minister Tan See Leng are suing Xu over an article published in December 2024, which pointed to a lack of transparency in Singapore’s luxury property market and referred to transactions linked to the two ministers.

The lawsuits were filed with the Singapore High Court in February 2025. In June, at the ministers’ request, the court took the step of issuing a request to the Taipei District Court, where Xu lives in self-exile, in order to serve him with legal documents. According to Xu, the lawsuits could cost him up to 600,000 Singapore dollars (about 465,000 USD) in damages and legal fees. “The authorities know they can’t stop me physically, so they’re trying to cripple me financially by weaponising defamation suits,” Xu said.

“The message is chillingly clear: no matter how accurate or well-researched your story is, if it makes ministers look bad, you will be punished,” Xu said. “That is the textbook definition of a chilling effect.” These new defamation suits against him – the third and fourth since 2021 – illustrate what he regards as “the Singaporean government’s deep intolerance of scrutiny — even when reporting is factual, legitimate, and in the public interest.”

Xu has long been the target of judicial harassment by the Singaporean authorities. In 2021, they arbitrarily revoked The Online Citizen’s licence, effectively shutting down his activities in Singapore. That same year, Xu was ordered to pay 210,000 Singapore dollars (about 160,000 USD) in damages to then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong for defamation – a case RSF described as “absurd”, since the article in question merely reported on a Facebook post by the Prime Minister’s wife. In another defamation case, Xu was convicted for publishing a letter that allegedly defamed members of the Singapore Cabinet by accusing them of corruption, and in April 2022, he served a three-week prison sentence. This crackdown drove him into self-exile in Taiwan in September 2022.

Cédric Alviani

RSF’s Asia-Pacific Bureau Director

Abusive “Correction Orders”

The new lawsuits target an article published in The Online Citizen in late 2024 that was based on an investigation by the US media outlet Bloomberg, drawing on public records. Despite this, the Singaporean government issued “correction orders” to Bloomberg and to other local media, including The Edge Singapore, The Independent Singapore, and The Online Citizen. All were forced to display notices claiming that their reports contained “false statements of fact”, under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (POFMA). Adopted in 2019, this law is worded so vaguely that it allows the government to arbitrarily censor any information it dislikes. RSF denounces this measure as a tool of state control over information.

In early January 2025, the two ministers filed lawsuits not only against Xu, but also against Bloomberg and one of its journalists. In June, the authorities further imposed on The Online Citizen the measure of a “Declared Online Location” (DOL), which prevents the outlet from generating revenue in Singapore for two years and obliges it to display warnings on its social media accounts claiming it has disseminated “multiple online falsehoods.”

While Singapore often presents itself as a model of economic development, it continues to be anything but a model when it comes to press freedom. The city-state is ranked 123rd out of 180 countries and territories in RSF’s 2025 World Press Freedom Index.