Pregnant Japanese/Australian jailed for 10 months over online comments

A pregnant Australian woman has been jailed in Singapore for inciting “vitriol and hatred” against foreigners in Singapore.

23-year-old Ai Takagi is the woman behind the popular blog The Real Singapore, which was shut down last year.

Under Singapore’s sedition laws it is an offence to promote hostility between different races or classes in the multiracial society, which is mainly ethnic Chinese with large Malay and Indian minorities.

But critics say sedition laws, which date back to the British colonial era, can be used to clamp down on free speech

Prosecutors said that Takagi made up stories to garner hundreds of thousands of dollars in online advertising.

District Judge Salina Ishak said a strong sentence was needed because Takagi was inciting “vitriol and hatred” against all foreigners in Singapore.

Takagi, who is eight weeks pregnant with her first child, read an apology in court before the sentence was handed down.

“Before this case started, I was not fully aware of the level of sensitivity needed when dealing with topics related to racial and religious issues in Singapore,” she said in court.

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