Singaporeans might be familiar with lawyer M Ravi for representing convicts on death row.
However, these are not the only types of clients he has.
He revealed that he now represents the founder of Healing The Divide, a group that has been described as “anti-vaccination”.
They are starting legal proceedings against the Government over Covid-19 measures.
In a Facebook post on Saturday (13 Nov), Mr Ravi said his new client is Ms Iris Koh, a musician, songwriter and music director from Singapore.
The duo are, in fact, old friends, as he said he’s known her for more than 20 years.
Thus, he’s providing his services to her pro bono, i.e. for free.
He’s doing this for the people of Singapore, whom he loves, and for humanity as a whole.
Why does Ms Koh need a lawyer?
According to Mr Ravi, she and “similar litigants” are commencing judicial review proceedings against the state.
Judicial review is when the judiciary, i.e. the courts, decides whether laws enacted by the Government are in accordance with the Constitution.
The proceedings will accuse the state of “human rights violations via the Covid-19 inhumane, life-threatening, degrading and oppressive measures that violate our fundamental guarantees to right to life and liberty under Article 9 and various other articles of the constitution”.
Article 9 of the Singapore Constitution, which deals with fundamental liberties, states:
Basically, they’re alleging that some Covid-19 measures we have deprive us of this right to life and liberty.
He didn’t elaborate on what these measures were.
Those who might not have heard of Ms Koh should know that she’s the founder of Healing The Divide group.
She also operates a YouTube channel flagged by the Ministry of Health (MOH) for posting misleading vaccine information.
In a press statement on Sunday (7 Nov), MOH said the channel has a history of posting and sharing content perpetuating falsehoods.
YouTube has already removed content from Ms Koh’s channel for violating their community guidelines.
However, Ms Koh responded to MOH’s claims, saying that her community is not composed of anti-vaxxers, as they claimed.
She added that many vaccinated people are part of the group, and they’d allegedly had injuries or had a loved one pass away following vaccination.
Ms Koh also noted that others are in the group due to worries over being fired or having children who may not graduate if they don’t take the vaccine.
Thus, she described them as “intelligent vaxxers”.
In Ms Koh’s response, she also said Healing The Divide reserves the right to take legal action for “potential defamatory remarks” made in the MOH press release.
It wasn’t certain who would take her case at the time.
Now, it’s evident that she’s found free legal counsel in Mr Ravi.
While representing death-row convicts is customary for Mr Ravi now, Healing The Divide might be 1 of his more unusual clients.
Should the upcoming legal proceedings go ahead, they might also be the 1st in Singapore over Covid-19 measures.
After all, some may question how we’re handling the pandemic and have misgivings about vaccines. But nobody has challenged this in court yet.
We’ll be awaiting more developments in this curious case.
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Featured images from Ravi MRavi on Facebook and YouTube.
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