TRS trial: Yang said he co-ran the site in new evidence

by Wan Ting Koh

THE trial of The Real Singapore (TRS) co-founder Yang Kaiheng resumed today – its fifth day – with the prosecution calling to the stand a new witness. New evidence that, they say, shows Yang Kaiheng’s alleged active involvement in the running of the socio-political site, was also submitted.

Yang, 27, faces seven counts under the Sedition Act for seditious posts, published on TRS and its Facebook page, which were targeted to promote ill-will and hostility between Singaporeans and foreigners from the Philippines, India, and China. His wife, Ai Takagi, who was also involved in the website, was found guilty of four charges of sedition and sentenced to 10 months’ jail last month. Yang has denied the charges, claiming his involvement only lasted a month in 2012. He told the police that he was involved only in the advertising aspects of the site’s operations.

This morning, the court heard that the new witness, undergraduate K Sudesh Durai, 26, was contacted by the investigation officer of the case, DSP Roy Lim, on Sunday (April 3) to give his statement “for the purposes of the investigation against one Yang Kai Heng”. Mr Durai, who is studying at Nanyang Technological University, is Yang’s former schoolmate and floorball teammate from Yishun Junior College, whom he reconnected with via Facebook in January 2012.

The ninth witness to be called to the stand by the prosecution, Mr Durai gave some 13 new pieces of evidence including Whatsapp chat logs, Facebook conversations, and a chain of emails, all of which took place between himself and Yang. Two videos of Yang and Takagi introducing their business ventures were also shown in court.

Partnership

Yang and Mr Durai purportedly collaborated over a project called Acreet, a giveaway site, and Yang later asked Mr Durai for his help with TRS. In one Whatsapp conversation, Yang had asked Mr Durai for ideas of merchandise TRS could sell, offering the first 10 per cent, and then 20 per cent of profits should the idea come to fruition. This was because Yang’s previous idea to sell T-shirts with slogans was disappointing as only 5,000 had been sold. Yang told Mr Durai that if he “can think of something simple that 500,000 people will buy and go viral, then we can earn our first pot of gold from my website”. Yang later asked Mr Durai to focus on Acreet instead.

Deputy Public Prosecutor Sheryl Janet George also submitted Facebook messages detailing Yang’s conversation with Mr Durai in October 2012. In it, Yang told Mr Durai that the site The Real Singapore has “traffic and people” and has “50K singaporeans [sic] reading it every day”. The user also told Mr Durai to go to the website “alexa.com” and “type in TheRealSingapore.com”, which would show that “we are the top 200 sites in Singapore… even higher than OnlineCitizen”.

Through Facebook, Yang also told Mr Durai that he earns $4,000 to $5,000 from his website but later said that “I wan earn more. I wan buy car [and] bungalow”.

Later in the same thread of messages, Yang also told Mr Durai “I will do my part putting banner on TRS ads I am thinking stirring a news [sic] stirring s**t wat [sic] u think”

However it emerged in an April 2013 Whatsapp chat log that the relationship between the two soured when Yang backed out of the Acreet project due to some disagreements over the website’s concept. Mr Durai asked for the Acreet domain to be transferred to him as he had named it, but Yang refused, saying “no thanks bye bye go sue me then…don’t bother me anymore thanks”. He also added some Hokkien expletives.

 

Self-introduction as founder-operator of site

Other evidence submitted by the prosecution included Yang’s application to participate in a start-up competition between December 2012 and January 2013. He joined this competition with three others: Takagi, Mr Durai, and a Yash Kumar. In his application for the competition and specifically in the section “tell us briefly about you”, Yang wrote: “I have also, together with Ai Takagi, started and continue to run an online news media site http://ift.tt/1eoZ8ZH from which advertising revenue is gained.”

Yang also sent an introductory video of himself to Mr Durai during that period. In the video shown in court, Yang refers to having two business ventures and goes on to refer to the second as an “online news site”, that has been “the most successful so far” and “one of the top 100 sites, traffic-wise in Singapore”.

Court resumes tomorrow afternoon.

 

Featured Image by Natassya Diana.

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The post TRS trial: Yang said he co-ran the site in new evidence appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Wan Ting Koh