Court dismisses Iris Koh, Raymond Ng’s attempt to get former NMP to remove allegedly defamatory Facebook post

SINGAPORE: A district court on Tuesday (Dec 3) dismissed an application by Healing the Divide founder Iris Koh and her husband Raymond Ng for former Nominated Member of Parliament (NMP) Calvin Cheng to take down an allegedly defamatory Facebook post.
The unsuccessful application is part of an ongoing civil defamation suit that Ms Koh, Mr Ng and three other claimants launched against Mr Cheng over his Jun 21 Facebook post on COVID-19 vaccinations.
The other claimants are former Progress Singapore Party politician Bradley Bowyer, Bevan Tey and Chan Swee Cheong.
District Judge Chiah Kok Khun rejected the claimants’ attempt to compel Mr Cheng to remove and set to private on social media “all defamatory comments about the claimants killing people”, and to prevent him from making any further such statements.
The judge also granted an application by Mr Cheng to strike out three of the claimants – Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan – from the defamation suit.
Calling the claims made by the three “an abuse of process of the court”, the judge said there was no reference to them in the Facebook post, and they had no legal standing to be part of the suit.
In response to queries, Ms Koh and Mr Ng told CNA that they were disappointed with the outcome.
As of Tuesday evening, they said they had not read the judge’s grounds of decision and would do so before deciding whether to appeal.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Mr Cheng noted the two decisions in his favour and said he intended to pursue the costs awarded to him “to the fullest”.
The defamation suit against Mr Cheng remains before the courts, with Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer as the remaining claimants.
Mr Cheng is represented by a team of lawyers from Lee & Lee comprising Senior Counsel Tan Tee Jim, Chee Kai Hao and Poon Choon Ming, while the claimants do not have lawyers.
Ms Koh is the founder of Healing the Divide, a group known to be against COVID-19 vaccination.
She is separately set for a criminal trial on charges that include deceiving the health ministry that unvaccinated people had received their jabs and instigating the harassment of doctors at vaccination centres.
Ms Koh and Mr Ng are involved in other defamation suits against individuals such as National University of Singapore Associate Professor Ben Leong.
In their defamation suit against Mr Cheng, the couple and the other claimants argued that his Facebook post has the meaning that they “possess a malicious intent to cause death, akin to the criminal act of killing, which suggests a deliberate and premeditated act of harm”.
The post also contains the innuendo that they are “involved in actions with the intent to cause death or severe harm to individuals, thus portraying them as malevolent and dangerous individuals”, the claimants argued.
This has severely damaged their reputations by “portraying them as individuals with criminal intent, which has led to public condemnation, social ostracisation and potential professional repercussions”, they claimed.
Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer, who are named in the Jun 21 Facebook post, sought damages of S$100,000 (US$74,000) each for harm to “their reputations and emotional well-being”.
The other three claimants sought unspecified damages to be determined by the court.
The claimants also asked for a public apology and retraction of the allegedly defamatory statements by Mr Cheng.
To decide on the claimants’ interim injunction application, Judge Chiah noted he had to determine whether Mr Cheng’s statements were clearly defamatory, and whether no possible defence could apply to him.
On whether Mr Cheng’s statements were clearly defamatory, the judge considered the circumstances leading up to the Facebook post.
These included social media posts by Ms Koh and Mr Ng about Mr Cheng “promoting” COVID-19 vaccines, a statement by the People’s Power Party (PPP) on vaccine-related injuries, and a statement by the health ministry rebutting PPP’s statement.
The PPP statement was issued by opposition politician Goh Meng Seng, who was named alongside Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer in Mr Cheng’s alleged defamatory Facebook post.
This context was set out in Mr Cheng’s Facebook post, which included references to PPP’s statement and the health ministry’s statement.
The judge noted Mr Cheng’s argument that the meaning of his Facebook post was that Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer were “literally” putting the lives of people who believe their anti-vaccination claims at risk of death from COVID-19.
The judge found that the Facebook post could indeed contain this meaning put forth by Mr Cheng, that Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer “should be stopped from advising the public not to take vaccines”.
“It follows from the foregoing that in my view, it cannot be said that the alleged defamatory statements are clearly defamatory,” said Judge Chiah.
The application for interlocutory injunction sought by the claimants failed on that basis. The judge went on to consider whether Mr Cheng had any possible defences.
Mr Cheng argued that his Facebook post was to repel the public attack against him by Ms Koh and Mr Bowyer in their social media posts, which hurt his reputation and integrity.
The judge agreed with Mr Cheng that he could have the defence of right-of-reply privilege, as well as the defence of fair comment on matters of public interest.
Judge Chiah further found that there was no evidence that Mr Cheng intended to repeat the allegedly defamatory statements or threatened to do so, which is a condition for granting the claimants’ injunction application.
The claimants’ application therefore “fails on all fronts” and is “wholly misconceived”, the judge said in dismissing it.
Mr Cheng made a separate application to strike out Ms Koh’s husband Mr Ng, as well as Mr Tey and Mr Chan from the defamation suit.
The three claimants argued that they had legal standing to sue Mr Cheng for defamation as they claimed they were included when he used the terms “these people” and “bunch of clowns” in his Jun 21 Facebook post.
With these words, Mr Cheng drew “a clear association with individuals who had been part of the public discourse around COVID-19 vaccines”, which included the three of them, they argued.
But Judge Chiah agreed with Mr Cheng that the three men are neither explicitly nor implicitly referred to in the Facebook post.
The size of the group referred to in the statements mattered, said the judge, and the claimants did not clearly define the membership of the “bunch of clowns”.
For example, if “bunch of clowns” referred to the subscribers of Healing the Divide’s Telegram channel, then membership of this group would exceed 4,000.
If “bunch of clowns” referred to people who opposed and refused vaccinations, then by Ms Koh’s own reckoning, the membership would number 60,000, the judge said.
Judge Chiah therefore found that the “bunch of clowns” group was “large and indeterminate”, and that the three claimants had not shown that this group could be understood to refer to them.
The phrase “bunch of clowns” was a generalisation and a reasonable reader would not understand it to refer to Mr Ng, Mr Tey and Mr Chan, the judge added.
He therefore struck out their claims of defamation against Mr Cheng.
Judge Chiah also ordered the claimants to pay Mr Cheng costs of S$8,000 and S$2,500 for their unsuccessful injunction application and his successful striking-out application respectively.