S’porean rapper Subhas Nair starts 6-week jail term for attempting to promote ill-will between racial & religious groups

Singaporean rapper Subhas Nair started his six-week prison sentence on Feb. 5, The Straits Times reported.

In 2023, Subhas was found guilty on all four counts of attempting to promote ill-will between racial and religious groups online about remarks he made between July 2019 and March 2021.

He was sentenced to six weeks' jail.

According to the judgement published on Feb. 5, the High Court dismissed Subhas's appeal over his sentence and conviction over the four charges of trying to promote ill-will between racial and religious groups online.

The four charges

2019 rap video with Preetipls

On Jul. 29, 2019, Subhas released a video with his sister, Preetipls, which was a remix of Iggy Azalea's song, "F*ck It Up".

The video included lyrics that "singled out the Chinese" community and was published on both of their Facebook pages.

Subhas was given a two-year conditional warning for this offence.

He said the video was created in response to a "brownface" ad by Nets' E-Pay service.

However, the district judge noted:

"[Subhas] claimed that his intention was to call out the incident of “brown face” in the Advertisement. However, nothing in the lyrics addressed the Advertisement that [he] found offensive, or admonished those who were responsible for its production."

Jul. 25, 2020, remarks responding to video made by two Christians

About a year later, Subhas put up a message on Instagram, responding to a video made by the founder of City Revival Church, Jaime Wong, and a social media influencer, Joanna Theng, in which they linked the gay pride movement to Satan.

Subhas wrote, "If two Malay Muslims made a video promoting Islam and saying the kind of hateful things these Chinese Christians said, ISD would have been at the door before they even hit 'upload'."

Theng and Wong eventually apologised on their own Instagram accounts and took down the video on Jul. 25, 2020, three days after uploading it on Jul. 22, 2020.

Subhas removed his remarks from Instagram on Nov. 2, 2020.

Oct. 15, 2020 remarks

The next incident pertained to an interview with Chan Jia Xing in the media.

Chan was initially charged with the murder of another man at Orchard Towers in 2019.

This charge was withdrawn and replaced with consorting with a co-accused, who had a foldable Kerambit knife in his possession.

This later charge was then withdrawn, and Chan was given a conditional warning and a discharge not amounting to an acquittal by the State Courts.

Subhas responded to the interview by writing on Instagram that "calling out racism and Chinese privilege" equalled a two-year conditional warning and "smear campaign" by the media, while "actually conspiring to murder an Indian man" equalled "half the sentence" and being asked about the sex of his baby.

These remarks were also removed on Nov. 2, 2020.

In addition to promoting feelings of ill will between people of different races, the district judge noted, "Further, [Subhas] chose to advance the false narrative that Chan had conspired to murder an Indian man, despite knowing that Chan had not done so."

March 2021 performance

The latest incident involved a stage play he had put up on Mar. 11, 2021.

During the performance, Subhas produced a hand-drawn image of his aforementioned Instagram post about the interview with Chan.

According to Subhas, he had attempted to obtain the approval of the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) before using the Display in his performance.

As IMDA was silent on whether he was permitted to do so, he was under the impression that it was permitted.

The district judge noted:

"When seeking approval, [Subhas] had only included screenshots of the Second Post, and not the Display itself. Hence, it was disingenuous of [Subhas] to say that since the IMDA had not said that he could not use the Display, he was entitled to use it."

Sentence not disproportionate

According to the judgement by Justice Hoo Sheau Peng, she agreed with the district judge that Subhas had knowingly tried to promote feelings of ill will on all four counts.

Hoo noted that Nair had shown an apparent disregard for the law as he had been given a conditional warning for his rap video on Aug. 14, 2019, but still went ahead with the first and second posts in 2020 and the 2021 performance.

Under such circumstances, Hoo said that a sentence of three weeks' imprisonment for each charge is "not manifestly excessive" and that a global sentence of six weeks' imprisonment is also "not disproportionate or crushing."

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Top photos via video screengrab & subhasmusic/Instagram