Yang Kaiheng, who could have been jailed for up to three years and/or fined up to of 5,000 Singapore dollars per charge for sedition, admitted that he used his popular site to "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility" and to fan anti- foreigner sentiments in Singapore.
Yang was the owner of now-defunct sociopolitical site 'The Real Singapore' (TRS). He pleaded guilty last week to six sedition charges. His 23-year-old wife Ai Takagi was the editor of the website and was sentenced to 10 months in prison for publishing "seditious articles" intended to "provoke unwarranted hatred against foreigners" in April.
Yang's conduct, if left unchecked, "can tear our society apart," he said, adding that Yang and his wife had published at least seven seditious posts targeting foreigners here.
"All foreigners... Were fair game in the business (Yang) ran. For what? The almighty dollar," the Channel News Asia quoted Kannan as saying.
Yang, despite being aware that seditious posts were "stirring up anger and resentment in Singapore", continued to allow Takagi to publish posts dealing with race, religion and nationality, the prosecution said.
Yang had oversight of TRS and could have established "a more responsible editorial policy" but he did not. As a result, "millions of eyes were exposed to these seditious articles," Kannan said and asked the court to hold Yang responsible for the "illegal content" published on TRS.
The site was shut down by Singapore's Media Development Authority in May last year.