新加坡政治性言論自由與誹謗之衝突:以誹謗訴訟判決為分析

The Conflict Between Freedom of Political Speech and Defamation in Singapore:Anylyses of Defamation Cases

吳銘璿(Mimg-Hsuan Wu)

指導教授 ： 陳佩修

國立暨南國際大學/人文學院/東南亞研究所/碩士(2011年)

摘要

論文摘要
新加坡政府官員對媒體和反對黨人士的誹謗訴訟，皆由新加坡官員勝訴。新加坡法律是否保障批評政府官員的言論？
本論文研究新加坡法院如何處理言論自由和政府官員名譽權的衝突，分析「Tat Lee 銀行取得設立許可證案」到「新加坡烈士徐順全案」的誹謗訴訟，以了解新加坡法律所允許批評政府官員的言論界線為何？在新加坡誹謗法下，誹謗政府官員的言論，被告若能證明言論為真實，即成立真實抗辯而免責。被告若無法證明其誹謗官員的言論為真實，亦不得主張政治性言論具公共利益為由，成立相對特權而免責。
本論文研究發現：一、新加坡誹謗法未重視政治性言論的保障，法院不保護不真實誹謗政府官員的言論，駁回英國雷洛茲特權和美國真實惡意法則，因而限制言論自由和新聞自由的發展。二、法院重視政府官員名譽的保護，批評國家領袖的誹謗言論，因侵害政治人物名譽的核心，即廉潔和正直。所以，被告需賠償巨額金額，來證明政府領導人清白。

關鍵字

新加坡誹謗法 ； 相對特權 ； 真實惡意法則 ； 雷諾茲特權

並列摘要

Abstract
The Singapore officials have sued the media and the opposition party public figures for defamation, all have won by the Singapore officials. Whether the law of Singapore does safeguard the criticism of government officials?
This thesis studied: How does the court of Singapore resolve the conflict between the freedom of speech and the right of official reputation, analyzed defamatory suits from “Lee kuan Yew v JB Jeyaretnam [1978-1979] SLR 429” to “Review Publishing Co Ltd and Another v Lee Hsien Loong and Another Appeal [2009] SGCA 46”, understood what is the legal boundary for the criticism of government officials in Singapore? Under defamation law of Singapore, if the defendant can prove that defamatory statements of government officials to be true, it will constitute truth defense to immunize the defamatory liability. If the defendant can not prove political statements that he defamed government officials to be true, the public interest is not enough to constitute qualified privilege.
This thesis research discovered: First, the defamation law of Singapore has not emphasized the importance of protecting political speech, the court does not protect untrue speech of defaming government officials, the court have rejected the Reynolds privilege and the Actual Malice Rule, thus limited the expansion of the freedom of speech and press. Second, the court has emphasized the importance of the government official reputation, any political speech involved criticism of government leaders, it eroded political figures reputation's core, the honesty and the integrity. Therefore the defendant must compensate large money for proving the honesty of government leaders.

並列關鍵字

Defamation law of Singapore ； Qualified Privilege ； Actual Malice Rule ； Reynolds Privilege

參考文獻

參考書目

書籍

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