An Today article titled "Shanmugam questions funding sources behind TOC, reiterates need for laws to curb foreign interference", was published today and local activist Kirsten Han took notice of a particular part of the article which alleged that a couple of the local activists urged Mahathir to bring democracy to Singapore. In her email to the writer of the article, Kenneth Cheng, she claimed that they only talked about the political shift in Malaysia.
In the article, the author also talked about how Kirsten Han claimed that Singapore has failed to compare with Hong Kong as we don't have 500,000 people going out on the streets in protest and hopes that she can go on New Naratif to teach Sinkies to do the same:
"Ms Han, on video, has said that Singapore has failed compared with Hong Kong, because 500,000 people don’t go on the streets to march, unlike (in) Hong Kong. And she wants to change that through classes run by New Naratif"
However, Kirsten Han has gone against that and claimed that the author has not done his fact checking as she has never said that. However, in 2016, she did give a talk about activism and civil disobedience. And in that speech, she said that
"if we use '500,000 people in the streets' as the measure of success for a country's civil society and/or a social movement, then it looks like Singapore has failed compared to Hong Kong, but actually '500,000 people in the streets' is a poor and unrealistic KPI to use to measure the state of civil society in a country."
Throughout the speech, she highlighted "legitimate, non-violent ways for people to participate, such as organizing parliamentary petitions or taking part in consultations". Also, in 2016, New Naratif did not exist yet. So how could she want to use New Naratif to teach people to go out on the streets in protest?
It seems like our 151 media has screwed up again and not did do their fact checking again. 151 media, the biggest purveyors of fake news? Wonder if her email and Tweets will help in fighting back against the 151 media. We hope so.
Update edit: Today has changed their article according to the facts from Kirsten Han. Way to go, Kirsten! Show them who's boss!
