SINGAPORE - An application by the Transformative Justice Collective to cancel the correction direction issued to the group on May 19 under the fake news law has been turned down.

The application was rejected by the Minister for Communications and Information and Second Minister for Home Affairs Josephine Teo, said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Tuesday.

The advocacy group had made false statements about the capital sentence meted out to convicted drug trafficker Tangaraju Suppiah in a Facebook post on April 23.

On May 19, the group was ordered under the Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act (Pofma) to insert a correction notice at the top of its Facebook post to state that it contained a false statement of fact and to include a link to the factually correct article.

The group was also directed to make a new Facebook post about the correction notice.

“The conditions for issuing the correction direction are satisfied, and the application did not disclose any grounds to the contrary,” said the MHA statement, which added that the group has been notified of the rejection.

Several activists and a website, including freelance journalist Kirsten Han and The Online Citizen Asia, were also asked to put up corrections over articles and social media posts by them containing false statements about the execution of Tangaraju.

Tangaraju, 46, a Singaporean, was hanged on April 26, 2023, after being convicted in 2018 of abetting the trafficking of 1,017.9g of cannabis, an amount that was more than twice the capital threshold.

Anti-death penalty activists had campaigned against his hanging, claiming in online articles, interviews and social media posts that he had been convicted unfairly, allegations that the MHA refuted.