The New Paper reported on Feb. 17, 2015 that two of the three people responsible for The Real Singapore website have been arrested for sedition.

The Singapore Police Force (SPF) confirmed the arrest of a Singaporean, 26 and an Australian woman, 22, "for posting remarks online that could promote ill-will and hostility among the different races in Singapore".

They were arrested on Feb. 6 under the Sedition Act and investigations are ongoing.

The police said they had received reports on Feb. 5 regarding an "insensitive article" that had been posted online.

The arrest comes two days after a Feb. 4 article published by the TRS duo embellished an account of events posted by a witness of an incident during the recent Thaipusam festival, where three Singaporean men being arrested on Feb 3.

The TRS article claimed a Filipino family had sparked an exchange, which led to the men's arrests.

But no Filipino family was involved.

The original witness also denied the involvement of a Filipino family.

The Real Singapore responds

However, the response TRS provided on their own website with regards to the arrests appears to contradict what has been reported in the mainstream media and confirmed by the police:

One of the Editors who is involved in running The Real Singapore has been called up for Investigation by the Police along with about 4 others in relation to an article about the Thaipusam Incident.

​Some time in the future, we will be publishing a full story and explain clearly everything that we can share. This may also include how we work and who is behind the website but currently, as investigations are ongoing, such a full response would be inappropriate.

In fact, there appears to already be a bit of misinformation as very little information has actually been shared with the media.

This lack of information has resulted in some misleading articles being published in the mainstream media in regard to this issue including a Channel News Asia article which suggested that the arrest (on 6th Feb) was made after an MHA statement warning the public about making comments about the Thaipusam Incident (statement made on 14 Feb):

Also, only 1 Editor behind the website has been brought in for investigation. It is understood that she is currently cooperating fully with the police.

Meanwhile, the rest of us will continue to run the website with minimal interruption and hope to receive your support.

Again, we'd like to wish our readers a happy lunar new year!

Online buzz

Hardware Zone forum latched on to the news the moment it was reported and is abuzz with speculation as to who could be the duo involved.

The news was met with cheers from some quarters, such as those leaving comments on TNP's Facebook page of the news:

The identity of people running TRS is not completely anonymous as there have been previous blog postings drawing links that allegedly reveal their names and pictures.

We will update this story with any new developments.

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