Jolovan Wham, a civil rights activist, was fined $8,000 on 15 February for organising an illegal public assembly on an MRT train in 2017.
He pleaded guilty to holding a public assembly without a permit to commemorate the 30th anniversary of Operation Spectrum.
Operation Spectrum was an operation in 1987 that saw 22 people arrested and detained without trial under the Internal Security Act, which the government calls the “Marxist conspiracy” to “subvert the existing system of government and to seize power in Singapore.”
Wham paid only $2,500 for refusing to sign a police statement relating to the case.
Wham chose to serve the default jail term of 22 days for his other offence, just like what he did for a previous similar conviction.
Wham told reporters that he did so in order to “protest against a system which criminlaises a non-violent, peaceful assembly.
Image sources: Jolovan Wham on Twitter