Singapore blogger Amos Yee granted asylum in US

A teenage blogger who tested the limits of free expression and good taste in Singapore has been granted asylum in the US by a judge who said that he was persecuted for his political opinions.

Amos Yee, 18, has been jailed twice in Singapore. The first occasion was prompted by a YouTube video in which he lampooned Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew days after his death in 2015, and compared the country’s late leader to Jesus, saying both were “power-hungry and malicious.”

The blogger also created an obscene image of Mr Lee, whose death prompted widespread mourning in Singapore.

On Friday US immigration judge Samuel Cole ruled that his treatment by Singapore authorities constituted “persecution on account of Yee’s political opinions”.

Mr Yee has been detained in the US since he arrived in Chicago seeking political asylum in December.

Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch, a US pressure group, said: “The fact that the US immigration judge decided for Amos, overcoming strong objections by the US Department of Homeland Security, shows a recognition of just how severely Singapore restricts freedom of expression.”

Singapore is ranked 154th out of 180 countries in the 2016 World Press Freedom Index, below Russia and Turkey. Defamation actions have been used to stifle critics of the government, human rights groups say.

In an interview with Time magazine in 2015, Singapore’s prime minister Lee Hsien Loong, son of the late Lee Kuan Yew, said the country imposed limits on free expression to safeguard social stability.

“In our society, which is multiracial and multi-religious, giving offence to another religious or ethnic group, race, language or religion, is always a very serious matter,” Mr Lee said.

Last September Mr Yee pleaded guilty at a Singapore court to charges of posting comments on the internet that were critical of Christianity and Islam. He was sentenced to six weeks in jail.

Principal District Judge Ong Hian Sun told the court: “His contemptuous and irreverent remarks have the tendency to generate social unrest and undermine the religious harmony in our society.”