TRS trial: Yang’s ‘lies’ blown apart by prosecution

by Wan Ting Koh

“MY ENGLISH standard is not good enough to write a journal article. I failed GP twice in A levels and had to retake in army. I cannot write a paragraph without grammar errors. My comfortable language is Chinese.”

An oversimplification perhaps, but that in a nutshell was Yang Kaiheng’s defence when he took to the stand this morning. That, even though the 27-year-old Singaporean was the co-founder of The Real Singapore (TRS) with his wife Ai Takagi, he was not involved in its daily operations. He was not its publisher, and he certainly did not contribute or write anything for the website. It was a defence he clung to today (April 7), during his testimony in the morning, and later in the afternoon, when he was cross-examined by the prosecution.

Coming into its seventh day, the trial began this morning with Yang resuming the stand to give his testimony regarding the seven charges of sedition he faces. Dressed in a pink shirt and black pants, he was calm as he denied the charges.

His poise was broken however in the afternoon, when the prosecuting attorney tore apart his defence, by pointing out contradictions when compared against earlier statements given during his initial police interviews last year.

Here are five main takeaways from today’s hearing.

 

1. On Yang’s lies

The prosecution pointed out several instances where Yang’s testimony this morning contradicted earlier statements, seeking to show that Yang lied both to the police and to the court. This included Yang omitting that TRS was a business venture in his March 2015 statement to the police and in the agreed statement of facts produced prior to the beginning of the trial.

The Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) said that Yang had earlier said the aim of the TRS website was to “be a platform where Singaporeans could express their thoughts and voice their complainants in their day to-day life freely, anonymously, without restraint or censorship”. He had neglected to mention that TRS was a “money-making business venture” when interviewed by the police – but later said in trial that it was.

Another instance of his lies, according to the prosecution: That he had followed the 2011 General Election with Takagi and set up a Facebook page to remove Member of Parliament (MP) Tin Pei Ling, who had then been elected as a first-term MP.

DPP Kannan said Yang had not even met Takagi then, going by Whatsapp messages obtained from his phone. Yang had supposedly only met Takagi one to two months before they got together in September 2011. The 2011 elections were held in May.

Said DPP Kannan: “You wanted the court to believe that Takagi became interested in Singapore politics by following the 2011 General Elections… You gave this lie because you needed an explanation why she would progress to take over the TRS website.

“You needed the court to believe the story that an Australian girl took over TRS, a site dealing entirely with local issues.”

 

2. The Skype ID: Able_tree

According to Yang, the Skype user account Able_tree belonged to his wife who had been using it since her high school days. Takagi was behind most of the chats and Yang only used the account “out of convenience” if she happened to be on her laptop beside him. When asked if he used the Skype account to do any work, Yang replied “nothing”.

As to why the user Winterspade, a freelancer from Vietnam, referred to Able_tree as “Yang”, Yang claimed that the user saw his name on his E-lance account and hence addressed the user Able_tree by his surname. They only realised later that it was actually Takagi corresponding with them, he said. “It is not me, so it has to be my wife”, he added.

 

3. Access to website features

Throughout his testimony today, Yang maintained that he had no control or access over the various features of the TRS website, including its control panel (C-panel), its domain and the Google AdSense account. He did not have the password of the domain or the C-panel, he said. He also lacked the password and username of the Google AdSense account, even though he was the one who introduced Takagi to it, saying: “I do not require access to it. My wife is the one accessing it.”

He did however set up an E-lance account, for the purpose of sourcing “cheap and reliable freelance web developers from overseas”. That said, it was Takagi who used the account as she “was involved in the day-to-day running of the website”, Yang said.

But the prosecution pointed out that in his March 2015 statement to the police, Yang had denied any knowledge about E-lance. Deputy Public Prosecutor G Kannan said Yang’s statement to the police was a “material contradiction, a 180 degree change completely opposite” from what he said this morning.

“You lied to the police when you said you did not know E-lance,” said DPP Kannan. Yang countered by saying that his English was “not good”, so he was defensive to the police at the time and had refused to say anything that would get him into trouble.

 

4. On troubleshooting the website

When asked how adept he was at website troubleshooting, Yang claimed that his familiarity with troubleshooting was “no more than layman”. “I can tell when the website is down or when the server is slow, but I can tell no more than that other than raising the flag,” said Yang. The purpose of this testimony was to show that he could not have been involved in running the website due to his lack of know-how.

 

5. On why he claimed the website as his own

When asked why he referred to TRS as his own website in his chat logs, Yang replied that he saw no need to “disassociate himself from the website” as he “did not see the danger and risk of running a news website” at that point in time. “I took pride because I started the website” he said, repeatedly.

He also added that he took ownership of the site in his application to the startup competition as he had to “up-sell” his portfolio and “make it look nice to submit”. This was so that the team would get a higher chance of gaining the funding they were vying for.

 

Yang’s cross-examination continues tomorrow morning.

 

Featured image by Sean Chong. 

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The post TRS trial: Yang’s ‘lies’ blown apart by prosecution appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Wan Ting Koh