The heat is on between Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and The Online Citizen (TOC) editor Mr Terry Xu.
After Mr Xu made it clear that he will not be taking down a controversial article posted on 15 Aug, PM Lee’s lawyers have decided to proceed with serving him official court documents on 5 Sep.
What this means is that PM Lee is officially suing Mr Xu.
According to TOC’s latest Facebook post, Mr Xu received a writ of summons, along with a statement of claim, at his house at 3.51pm Thursday (5 Sep).
The statement of claim apparently finds fault with a TOC article published on 15 Aug, titled “PM Lee’s wife, Ho Ching weirdly shares article on cutting ties with family members.”
Source
It also states that the article in question contained statements that are “false and baseless”, and that what was written were calculated to “disparage and impugn” PM Lee and his office.
Mr Xu now has 8 days to “enter an appearance to defend the claim by PM Lee”.
PM Lee had issued a legal letter and take down notice via the Prime Minister’s Office on Sunday (1 Sep).
However, Mr Xu has decided not to remove the allegedly ‘defamatory’ article, or publish an apology for the incident.
You can check out his letter dated 4 Sep in full here.
You can also check the same article to keep abreast of this legal saga.
Now that legal documents have been served, the next step for Mr Xu would be to consider ways to fund his legal fees. We still hope they can come to a peaceful resolution, despite this latest development.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned for further updates.
What do you think of the matter being escalated to a legal battle? Let us know in the comments below.
Featured image adapted from Fintech News SG and Human Rights Watch Malaysia on Facebook.
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