Pinoy nurse pleads guilty to sedition in Singapore

MANILA, Philippines - The 29-year-old Filipino assistant nurse who posted anti-Singaporean remarks on Facebook pleaded guilty on Wednesday to publishing seditious comments and giving false information to the police in Singapore.

Singapore-based daily broadsheet The Straits Times reported that Ed Mundsel Bello Ello, who was out on bail, was convicted of three charges in Singapore – one charge under the Sedition Act for promoting feelings of ill will and hostility and two counts of providing false information to police on Jan. 3 and 4 this year.

Ello was sacked from his job in Tan Tock Seng Hospital after his Jan. 2 Facebook post went viral online. In the post, he called Singaporeans losers in their own country and swore to take their jobs, their future, their women and evict all Singaporeans.

He said that “Filipinos are better and stronger than Stinkaporeans and we will kick out all the Singaporeans and SG will be the new Filipino state.”

The prosecution sought a 20-week imprisonment for Ello and called his remarks “xenophobic, derogatory and highly inflammatory.”

He is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 16.

The Straits Times said Ello made a police report claiming that a stranger had accessed his Facebook account and wrote those offensive comments.

He added that the stranger must have used a computer at a Lucky Plaza cybercafé where he was logged on.

Ello later confessed that he made the post under “Edz Ello” Facebook account after the police seized the cybercafé unit and his two mobile devices that were sent for forensic analysis.

In the same article, Ello’s lawyer Mark Goh was quoted as saying the “comments were intended to stir up the emotions of those who frequented sociopolitical websites, but his client ended up being alienated and ‘flamed’ by the netizens.”

Goh added, “The irony in this case was that Ed effectively shot himself in the foot” and that “a sentence of six weeks in jail was sufficient if the court decides on a custodial sentence.”

“This incident has already extracted a terrible price to both himself and his family. He alienated himself from Singaporean society... lost his job and his retired parents have lost a source of income for the family,” he said.

According to The Straits Times, the maximum penalty under the Sedition Act is a $5,000 fine and three years in jail; for giving false information to a public servant, Ello could be jailed for up to a year and fined $5,000 per charge.