Dorothy Chan Hien Leng said her colleagues and former colleagues who had received her tracts over the years were still her friends and encouraged her ‘to be brave and fight on’.
Fucking bitch, that's because those friends and colleagues of yours are christians. Try handling the tract to me and see what happens? You certainly won't get encouraging words from me. Go to hell bitch.
2 comments:
Couple on Trial for Seditious Pamphlets
‘20,000 tracts mailed over 7 years’
By Elena Chong
7 April 2009
A woman on trial with her husband for sedition had sent out some 20,000 publications to members of the public from 2000 until their arrest in January last year, a district court heard yesterday.
Over the seven years, Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 45, an associate director of UBS, had ordered more than 20,000 tracts online from the American publisher, Chick Publications.
Before 2000, she had bought them from bookstores in Singapore.
Yesterday, the court heard she had also mailed tracts to 20 of her Muslim colleagues over the past 20 years.
Asked by Deputy Public Prosecutor Anandan Bala if the purpose of her exercise was to convert her Muslim colleagues, she replied: ‘I am sowing the gospel seed, but it is God that converts.’
She and her husband, SingTel technical officer Ong Kian Cheong, 50, are accused of distributing seditious and objectionable publications to three Muslims in Singapore between October and December 2007 as well as possessing 11 seditious titles of comic tracts at their Maplewoods condominium on Jan 30 last year.
The prosecution alleges that the comic style booklets, The Little Bride and Who is Allah?, mailed to two men, were seditious and had the tendency to promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between Christians and Muslims in Singapore.
The Christian couple also allegedly distributed The Little Bride to Madam Farhati Ahmad earlier that year, which could have fanned feelings of enmity, hatred, ill-will or hostility between the two religious groups.
Under cross-examination, Chan denied that she did not hand the tracts out directly as she knew their contents could cause her problems.
DPP Bala said: ‘You don’t want a direct confrontation between yourself and the recipient to turn ugly?’
Disagreeing, Chan said: ‘Why would I send out something that is contrary to the effect that I would want the recipient to have? I would like the recipient to know the truth of the gospel and come to the saving knowledge.’
When the DPP put to her that not everyone who received the tracts would take very kindly to the content or her method of evangelising, she disagreed.
She said her colleagues and former colleagues who had received her tracts over the years were still her friends and encouraged her ‘to be brave and fight on’.
He also suggested another reason why she chose to remain anonymous by mailing the tracts out instead of distributing them openly - so that she would not be arrested.
Again, Chan denied this.
The hearing continues today.
Christian couple Ong Kian Cheong and Dorothy Chan Hien Leng are each accused of two charges of distributing seditious publications to two Muslims and one of distributing an objectionable publication to a woman in 2007.
The couple, who attended Berean Christian Church at the time, also face a charge of possessing seditious tracts at their Maplewoods condominium on Jan 30 last year, the day they were arrested.
Among the 11 seditious title tracts found were: Who is Allah? The Pilgrimage, Allah Had No Son, Are Roman Catholics Christians? Why is Mary Crying? and The Little Bride.
Sedition laws are meant to ensure racial and religious harmony, and this is the first time such a case has gone to trial.
The couple’s defence is that they thought it was safe to distribute those tracts as they were sold openly in Christian bookstores in Singapore.
The prosecution asserts that they knew the contents of the 11 publications. They also knew or had reason to believe that the contents had a seditious tendency to promote feelings of ill-will, hostility between Christians and non-Christians in Singapore.
If convicted for sedition, they each face a fine of up to $5,000 and/or a jail term of up to three years on each charge.
The maximum penalty under the Undesirable Publications Act is a fine of up to $5,000 and a jail term of up to 12 months. Possession is punishable with a fine of up to $2,000 and/or a jail term of up to 18 months.
Post a Comment