A 27-year-old Singaporean today went on trial for uploading seditious posts targeting foreigners including Indians to "maliciously exploit racial and xenophobic faultlines".
Yang Kaiheng faces seven counts under the Sedition Act by posting on The Real Singapore (TRS) website, a socio-political website.
He is accused of using the website to "maliciously exploit racial and xenophobic faultlines" via seven seditious posts, which targeted foreigners from the Philippines, India and China, Channel News Asia reported.
Yang's eight-week pregnant wife Ai Takagi was sentenced to 10 months' jail term last Wednesday after pleading guilty to four counts of sedition.
An Australian citizen of Japanese origin, Takagi, 23, was the editor of TRS.
The prosecution charged that the pair's anti-foreigner posts aimed to stir controversy and secure a larger internet following, which translated into higher advertising revenue for Yang and Takagi.
The prosecution's first witness was Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Roy Lim who investigated the couple after a police report was made against the website.
After his arrest, Yang admitted to "some involvement" in setting up TRS, including handling the blog's Facebook page and advertising on the website, Lim said.
Yang's lawyer Choo Zheng Xi said that while Takagi had "authored, uploaded and edited" the seditious posts, Yang had nothing to do with it.
Instead, Yang's involvement in TRS was "fleeting and ad-hoc", he said.
The prosecution said it will aim to show that Yang's involvement was in fact "continued, sustained and intimate", and that the website was jointly run by Yang and Takagi.
Deputy Public Prosecutor G Kannan previously accused Yang of being "patently motivated by commercial greed", pointing to financial documents showing TRS earned Australian dollars 474,594 (SGD 492,500) between December 2013 and April 2015.
The prosecution is expected to call at least five more witnesses to the stand and Takagi is expected to testify in her husband's defence.
If found guilty, Yang could be jailed for up to three years and fined up to SGD 5,000.
