Due to its failure to comply with the recent correction directive issued by the Singapore government, Malaysian online media MalaysiaNow has been ordered to be blocked by the Singapore authorities.
The Ministry of Communications and Information (MCI) and the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) of Singapore issued a joint statement on the 17th, stating that MCI Minister Josephine Teo instructed the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) to issue a blocking directive, requiring internet service providers to prohibit Singapore users from accessing the MalaysiaNow website.
Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam, who is also Second Minister for Home Affairs, separately instructed the Office for the Prevention of Online Falsehoods and Manipulation (POFMA Office) to issue targeted correction directions to Meta, the parent company of Facebook; LinkedIn; and X platform, to convey correction notifications to Singapore users who have accessed or are about to access the relevant posts.
On the 15th, the Ministry of Home Affairs announced that MalaysiaNow's relevant report on the Malaysian national drug trafficker death row convict Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam contained five inaccuracies, including claims that Nagaenthran's death sentence disregarded the rule of law, and questioning the Singapore court's decision not to issue a "Certificate of Substantive Assistance".
The MCI and MHA stated that the authorities noticed MalaysiaNow had issued a statement refusing to attach the correction notice, and criticized the Singapore government's approach to clarifying online misinformation.
The authorities pointed out that the correction directive required MalaysiaNow to list the false statements and facts separately, without deleting the original text, allowing Singapore readers to view both versions and make their own judgment.
Despite multiple reminders from the authorities for MalaysiaNow to comply with the correction directive, it still failed to do so. The statement said such conduct is not the action of any media organization with journalistic integrity and responsibility.
In 2014, Malaysian national Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam was arrested in Singapore for trafficking 51.84 grams of diamorphine (heroin) into the country. He was sentenced to death by the Singapore High Court on May 2, 2017, and failed in his appeal on February 9, 2018. Subsequently, between 2019 and 2025, he made 11 further applications, seven of which were joint applications with other death row inmates, and submitted six clemency appeals to the President, all of which were ultimately rejected. His final application was dismissed on October 7, 2023, and he was executed on October 8, 2023.