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S$17,000 fine for couple in Singapore for sharing obscene images in group chat



The video depicts a lady wearing a top with spaghetti straps and extremely short shorts wandering outside a mall in central Singapore. She checks the area to ensure that no one can see her. Next, she takes down her top, exposing a breast to her filming partner.


The lady, Nguyen Thi Anh Thy, and her husband, Jeffrey Chue, claim that nobody witnessed them recording the video in May of 2020. A day later, Chue shared the video to a secret channel on the messaging app Telegram that he had developed primarily for persons who engage in group sex and partner swapping.


The channel's membership increased, and the video swiftly spread beyond the members to the internet.


Two years later, a judge in Singapore fined the couple $17,000 on the grounds that the film and several photographs showing Nguyen in various stages of undress breached the country's nudity and obscenity regulations. The pair was also convicted of aiding and abetting the dissemination of false information.


In Singapore, the case made news not just for its specifics, but also because it involved a sensitive subject for many Singaporeans: sex.


Singapore has long imposed numerous restrictions on conduct and expression in pursuit of conservative moral values and an exceptional record of public safety. Nonetheless, the affluent city-state has gradually relaxed some of these regulations. Early in the twenty-first century, oral sex was legalized. After years of activism and rising social acceptance of homosexuality, the government abolished the prohibition on consensual male sexual activity last year.


Singapore is hardly an exception in Asia when it comes to nudity and obscenity regulations, but it has adopted a severe position on transgressions, even in the privacy of one's own home. The government does not provide statistics on the number of individuals prosecuted on comparable allegations, however legal experts assert that such cases remain uncommon.


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