A court in Singapore has sentenced a man to six months' jail after he uploaded a Facebook post urging people to kill the police officers who sought out Benjamin Lim for questioning as well as other incendiary posts.
According to the Straits Times, the accused, identified as Chia Choon Kiat (41) used the name 'Rambo Power' and posted a link to a Yahoo news article on the death of 14-year-old Benjamin Lim on Facebook with a comment to "take matters into our own hands''. He also revealed the identity of the identities of the policeman and wrote: "handle them ourselves. Kill them.'' The post was made between 2 and 5 February in 2016.
On 26 January Benjamin Lim (14) committed suicide shortly after he returned home from school after being questioned by the police for violating modesty of a girl.
Moreover, on 24 January, he posted on his Facebook page called "CigButtWarriors'' a message encouraging violence by targeting National Environment Agency (NEA) officers and their family members. According to Channel News Asia, Deputy Public Prosecutor Sanjiv Vaswani that he did so because he was fined by an NEA officer for disposing a cigarette butt into the drain some 10 years ago.
It was reported that the police was alerted about the Chia's postings by an article on the page of news outlet "All Singapore Stuff'' on 5 February.
The message which was written by the name 'Rambo Power' was: "When people buay lun (Hokkien for cannot endure) already... will need to take matters into our own hands. Please reveal the identity of the 5 plain clothes officers and we go handle them ourselves. Kill them."
After investigation, it was also revealed that Chia was engaged in an online hate campaign against these officers since 13 December 2015. Moreover, during the court hearing, the DPP argues that he was also not of unsound mind and knew fully well what he was doing.
However, defence lawyer Alfred Dodwell said that his client suffered from a form of "mental aberration" that causes him to hold "overvalued ideas". Dodwell also cited Chia's post made on Benjamin Lim as an example and said his client "simply got caught up and posted his thoughts in an unfiltered impulsive way", reported Channel News Asia.
Meanwhile, an Institute of Mental Health psychiatrist had stated that Chia did not suffer from any mental illness. Moreover, private psychiatrist YC Lim said he had a condition of "over valued ideas'' which could evolve into delusions, according to The Straits Times.
