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TikTok has taken down the clip of Singapore-born comedian Jocelyn Chia's controversial jokes about Malaysia.
The various clips spliced together of Chia's stand-up routine at the Comedy Cellar Club in New York, showed the comedian putting Malaysia on blast, and brazenly joking about the disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 on Mar. 8, 2014.
masuk Malaysia curi petrol 95..buat malu je x mampu beli minyak dlm negara sendiri. pic.twitter.com/lwwnDCb6f0
— MALAYSIA MOST VIRAL (@MALAYSIAVIRALLL) June 7, 2023
Chia's joke drew criticisms from the public and fellow comedians.
It also resulted in Singapore's Minister for Foreign Affairs Vivian Balakrishnan apologising to Malaysians and Vanu Gopala Menon, the Singapore High Commissioner to Malaysia, issuing a statement distancing Singapore from the joke and emphasising that Chia is no longer a Singaporean.
The ill-received joke was said to fall under the hate speech category on the TikTok platform.
A TikTok spokesperson told Sinar Daily that Chia's video had breached community guidelines and depicted discriminatory content.
"TikTok is a diverse and inclusive community that does not tolerate discrimination. We do not allow content that contains hate speech or that involves hateful behaviour, thus we have removed it from our platform."
Despite the backlash, Chia later uploaded the video on TikTok herself, captioning it, "The funniest part was after my set the host asked the Malaysian how they got to NYC and they replied Singapore Airlines."
This video was subsequently deleted by the platform.
Mothership has reached out to TikTok for comment.
The saga
All images via @jocelynchiacomedy/TikTok