I'm amused to see that American/Aussie extreme right wing "sovereign citizen" argument was tried on by a woman in Singapore recently:
A woman who made headlines for her behaviour during the trial of a fellow anti-masker was convicted by a court for charges of her own - for refusing to attend police investigations or turn up in court, and for spitting at police officers.
Lee Hui Yin, now known as Tarchandi Tan after changing her name last year, was convicted of five charges on Jul 10.
In a judgment made available on Saturday (Jul 15), District Judge Kow Keng Siong laid out the reasons for convicting the 53-year-old woman.
Tan had repeatedly defied orders to go to a police station for investigations and to attend court. This was related to investigations over an incident on Aug 18, 2021.
Tan had attended the trial of Briton Benjamin Glynn that day. When the trial was ongoing, she allegedly said "this is ridiculous kangaroo court" and directed a comment at District Judge Eddy Tham, saying "I do not respect the judge".
Glynn was given six weeks' jail in August 2021 for his offences which included not wearing a mask, and deported.
Singapore would have to be about the third last country in the world where "sovereign citizen" style argument would work - after China and Russia.
She sent an email on the eve of the court mention to several individuals including the police officer on her case, stating that she was a "sovereign individual" and not amenable to any law or obligation unless she had voluntarily consented to them.
She also said she could be said to have committed a crime only if she had "wilfully harmed or violated someone or someone's property without (that person's) consent".
She said she did not agree to be investigated since the incidents occurred over a year ago.
The judge did deal with this issue in no uncertain terms (and rightly so):
Judge Kow said the sovereign individual argument "is clearly misconceived".
"In my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that proponents and peddlers of the sovereign individual argument can be held criminally liable if they contravene the law," he said.
He said this argument has its roots in the United States. US proponents believe that the US Federal Government has no inherent power over individual citizens of the various states without their individual consent.
"To justify this belief, its proponents rely on various arguments centred around, among others, the Fourteenth and Sixteenth Amendments to the US Constitution, the Takings Clause of the Fifth Amendment, the US Uniform Commercial Code, as well as conspiracy theories that involve the US government and the US Federal Reserve Bank," said Judge Kow.
He said this argument has been "unequivocally and routinely rejected" by courts in the US and other common law jurisdictions.
"The accused has failed to provide any credible legal argument to show why the sovereign individual argument - which is based on the US Constitution and conspiracy theories and has been rejected in other jurisdictions - is applicable in Singapore," said Judge Kow.
"Under our system of government, parliament makes laws that all persons in Singapore must obey, the executive can exercise coercive powers provided by statutes, and the judiciary is the sole body empowered to make binding interpretations on the scope of these laws and powers. The sovereign individual argument ignores this legal position – a position that has been established for almost six decades since Singapore's independence and has never been in doubt."
He said that the practical effect of the sovereign individual argument is that its proponents are "above the law and can pick and choose what laws they want to obey and to enforce".
The poor woman might have an excuse for holding a nonsense belief, though:
He added that he had considered whether Tan's belief that she was sovereign suggests that the charges were caused or contributed by a mental disorder.
She was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2012, and has been a patient at the Institute of Mental Health since 2003.
Well, you do have to be nuts to take it seriously, I guess...
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