[Craz78]

Coward Singaporean wants to claim trial and Aussie wife agrees to take the blame... Smart and calculated move, they think by doing so the court will take into account she's Aussie so the sentence will be less severe... Very business mindset... After earning so much money from idiotic Singaporeans who visit their website; these CB couple most probably escape with minimum damage to enjoy their money after serving the pittance sentence by our Singapore court... Another great move by such CB people who have no morals to speak off... But what to do? Just have to suck thumb becos those stupid Singaporeans wants to degrade their own country by visiting such rubbish website to let such CB earn money.....
But for those people with no morals, this is indeed a great business.... Becos there'll always be dumb Singaporeans around with no brains to support such rubbish websites.... One such website was by another CB Singaporean who ran away to Aussie-land last year... Please support this CB Kia becos he graduate with an engineering degree from a unknown university.... But with a good business mind like these CB couple...


"The trial of the husband-and-wife team accused of sedition, over articles on a now-defunct sociopolitical website, began with an unusual turn yesterday.

Australian Ai Takagi, 23, who is charged with seven counts of sedition for articles published by The Real Singapore (TRS), told the district court she would plead guilty.

But her Singaporean husband Yang Kaiheng, 27, is denying the charges and claiming trial.



The articles posted on TRS between October 2013 and February last year are alleged to have promoted ill will and hostility between different races or classes in Singapore.

The couple also face an eighth charge, for failing to produce financial statements on the website's advertising revenue to the police.

In his opening remarks yesterday, Deputy Public Prosecutor G. Kannan said the couple "maliciously exploit(ed) racial and xenophobic faultlines" and deliberately sowed discord between Singaporeans and foreigners from the Philippines, India and China "for nothing more than their self-interest".

The couple were "wildly successful in their efforts to profit from the ill-will and hostility that they were peddling", Deputy Public Prosecutor G. Kannan said. Based on their bank statements, they earned between A$20,000 (S$20,400) and more than A$50,000 per month, he said.
Though the website purported to be the "voice of average Singaporeans", DPP Kannan said the reality was that it reflected the views of "Takagi, a foreigner who had never resided, studied or worked in Singapore, and Yang, a disgruntled Singaporean".

He said Takagi did the "outrageous" act of adopting the Malay name "Farhan" in one of the contentious articles to hide her identity as a foreigner while fostering xenophobia.

The couple, who married last October, were "wildly successful in their efforts to profit from the ill will and hostility that they were peddling", he added.

Based on their bank statements, they earned between A$20,000 (S$20,500) and more than A$50,000 a month, he said. The court was not told when these sums were earned.

To bring in more advertising revenue, the couple "quite plainly regarded accuracy, propriety and truthfulness as necessary casualties", he added.

DPP Kannan cited an article that falsely asserted a Filipino family had caused an incident between the police and participants of the Thaipusam procession last year.

He also said that TRS was jointly run by the couple, and that evidence will "show Yang's continued, sustained and intimate involvement in every aspect of the running of TRS".

But the couple's lawyer, Mr Choo Zheng Xi, said Yang was not the person behind TRS. "He will deny the distribution, the proprietorship and the writing of the articles in question," he said.

The maximum punishment under the Sedition Act is a $5,000 fine and three years' jail on each charge.

The TRS website was shut down by its editors last May, after the regulator, the Media Development Authority, suspended their licence to operate the site and ordered them to take it offline."

The prosecution is expected to call six witnesses during the trial, including five police officers, while the defence said both Takagi and Yang would testify.

Takagi will make her guilty plea in court today, while Yang's trial will proceed on Friday.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on March 08, 2016, with the headline 'Wife to plead guilty, husband to claim trial in sedition case'. Print Edition | Subscribe