Currently, Section 298 reads:

Uttering words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person.

298. Whoever, with deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of any person, utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person, or makes any gesture in the sight of that person, or places any object in the sight of that person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.

The new draft is as follows with inserted words in a darker shade. It also includes a whole new section, 298A:

Uttering words, etc., with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person.

298. Whoever, with deliberate intention of wounding the religious or racial feelings of any person, utters any word or makes any sound in the hearing of that person, or makes any gesture in the sight of that person, or places any object in the sight of that person, or causes any matter however represented to be seen or heard by that person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or with both.

Promoting enmity between different groups on ground of religion or race, and doing acts prejudicial to maintenance of harmony

298A. Whoever ––

(a) by words, either spoken or written, or by signs or by visible representations or otherwise, promotes or attempts to promote, on grounds of religion or race, disharmony or feelings of enmity, hatred or ill-will between different religious or racial groups or communities; or

(b) commits any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious or racial groups or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquility,

shall be punished with imprisonment which may extend to 3 years, or with fine, or with both.

 
In the Consultation Paper, the government explained its reason for these changes thus:

Arising from the case of the racist bloggers who were charged under the Sedition Act, we propose amending the Penal Code to provide another option to the Sedition Act, to charge such offenders in future cases. [The Ministry of Home Affairs] recommends expanding the scope of s.298 on "Uttering words, etc with deliberate intent to wound the religious feelings of any person" to cover the wounding of racial feelings as well.

In the Explanatory Note, the government explained why, although the Sedition Act already provided for this offence, they still wanted the Penal Code revised to cover it:

2. Offences Relating to Race and Religion

Sedition Act

The Sedition Act carries a very high signature. The proposed amendment provides for an alternative to handle such cases. Having a different option under the Penal Code will provide prosecutors with greater discretion to charge the offence under the most appropriate legislation and provision. This is because the circumstances of different cases differ. The range of punishment in these alternative provisions also differs. Hence, the Public Prosecutor, after examining the facts of the case, can decide the most appropriate statute to charge the offender. This approach is not uncommon as there are other examples Road Traffic Act or Penal Code; Employment of Foreign Workers’ Act or Immigration Act etc.

Most Singaporeans would recall the "racist bloggers" cases. Three young men (2 in one case and the third in a separate case) were charged last year under the Sedition Act, a law which criminalises any "act, speech, words, publication" that has a "seditious tendency".

A "seditious tendency" is further defined as that which would "promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races or classes of the population of Singapore." [1]

What started them off was a letter to the press in July the same year from a Malay woman asking why taxi companies did not demand that pet dogs be caged when transported in their vehicles. She said, "dogs may drool on the seats or dirty them with their paws", and that exposing Muslim passengers to possible contact with their saliva would violate their religious beliefs.

Pet lovers Lim and Koh got incensed and went totally overboard in ranting about Islam in their blogs and an online forum.

A month later, in October 2005, the third blogger was charged. 17-year-old Gan Huai Shi was likewise accused of making inflammatory remarks against Malays and Muslims over the internet. Pleading guilty, he was given a probationary sentence by the judge.

His defence lawyer told the court that Gan's feelings of ill will towards the Malay community could be traced to the death of his younger brother when he was only seven years old. His month-old brother had breathing difficulties and needed to be taken to the hospital in a taxi, but a Malay couple refused to let them go first despite his mother's pleas. By the time the family got to the hospital, his brother was already dead. His mother was subsequently diagnosed with post-natal depression.

Why were they charged under the Sedition Act? It appears that the prosecution felt that their rants were directed towards Malays rather than Muslims -– I don't know how they came to this conclusion myself, because I thought otherwise -– and thus the only option available to them was to use the Sedition Act, since that law clearly mentions that it's an offence to ""promote feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races."

The Penal Code's existing section 298 leaves out "race", and only speaks of "wounding the religious feelings" of others.

Now, it seems, the government wants to close this gap, by adding "racial feelings" to the Penal Code's section 298.

Some Singaporeans have speculated that the expansion of Section 298 and the addition of Section 298A might have been prompted by the saga of the Prophet Mohammad cartoons [2], though no mention of this was made in either the Consultation Paper or the Explanatory Notes. While the cartoon controversy didn't become an issue locally, the authorities might not have felt confident that if it did, the existing Section 298 of the Penal Code would be applicable.

The existing phrasing of Section 298 refers to words, sounds, gesture or objects. Would a cartoon be any of these?

Thus, you would notice that the new Section 298A speaks of spoken and written words as well as "signs or by visible representations or otherwise" -– conceivably including cartoons, symbols and the like.

Its second part, which criminalises "any act which is prejudicial to the maintenance of harmony between different religious or racial groups or communities, and which disturbs or is likely to disturb the public tranquility", is even broader. Its applicability is not based on any enumerated kinds of actions, but on the effect of whatever action the accused has taken.

This is where Singaporeans with an interest in civil liberties should become concerned. Is it too sweeping? How does this relate to the constitutional protection for freedom of expression?

You might argue that it is in the nature of legislation that it cannot be too precise; if it did it might be terribly unwieldy. In practice, much must depend on prosecutorial discretion and good judicial judgement. Indeed that is so, but then the question arises: in the Singapore context, how much faith do people have in prosecutorial discretion and judicial independence?

Do we have faith that political considerations would not influence the process?

At the same time, it's too narrow. Why is the law only interested in hate speech that is directed at racial and religious groups? What about hate speech directed at other groups, e.g. foreign labour, women, or HIV-positive persons?

I would have preferred the law to refer to

such words or acts that deliberately intend to promote enmity, hatred and ill-will, or incite injury towards any class of persons identifiable by one or more characteristics in common, such as race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, gender, sexual orientation, physical or medical condition.

If tomorrow, some cleric starts calling all scantily-clad women prostitutes deserving of rape, or all those who have had an abortion murderers deserving of assassination, are we going to run back to the drawing board to design another band-aid in our Penal Code?

How many trips are we going to make to the supermarket?

* * * * *

The above examples indicate another conceptual problem. Very often, it is those who claim the righteousness of their own religion who initiate an attack on other groups of people. The incident with the Mufti of Australia [3] -- the one who referred to women without headscarves as "uncovered meat" -- must have come to readers' minds by now, while I'd add that hate campaigns against gays and lesbians are often sustained by church groups.

If something like this is legal in Singapore, shouldn't the reverse message be legal? Would such a sign be covered by our proposed law? The protestor could argue that the "enemy of Islam" is not a racial or religious group, and thus Sections 298 and 298A would not apply to him.

In such cases, attacks on a religion are more of a counter-punch, when the target group or its allies defends itself.