Curtailing Free Expression, Opinion and Information Online in Southeast Asia offences.577 Newer laws suffer from the same limitation of vague, overbroad provisions. Singapore’s AJPA lowers the threshold for scandalizing the judiciary to mere “risk” of undermining public confidence in the judiciary, when the common law threshold of “real risk” had already shown to be wide enough to allow for persecution of individuals expressing disfavoured views, while its POFMA allows for nearly any form of communication – written, visual, audio or otherwise – to be targeted and classified as a criminally liable “false statement of fact”. The Philippines’ AFC Bill similarly includes overbroad definitions of “fake news”, without setting out clear tests for what constitute “false” or “misleading” information – as did Malaysia’s AFNA before its repeal. This absence of guiding principles prevents people – including the authorities themselves - from being able to ascertain with certainty what information is or is not criminally liable. Meanwhile, Vietnam’s LOCS and Thailand’s Cybersecurity Act fail to clarify that “national security” and “public order” must be interpreted to include protections for fundamental rights and freedoms and leave these terms vague and open to wide interpretation – even when these justifications underpin the entire framework and implementation of cybersecurity measures detailed under the laws. These laws, again, allow for and facilitate executive overreach. iii. Severe penalties A third commonality that is clear is that penalties provided for under the laws are neither necessary nor proportionate towards their purported objectives, reflecting a targeted, punitive intent to penalize and silence critical dissent. Defamation is criminalized in Thailand, Myanmar, Indonesia, Singapore and Philippines, in contravention of international human rights law and standards. Thus, crucially, the UN Human Rights Committee clarified in the case of Alexander Adonis that the Philippines had violated the ICCPR in imposing criminal sanctions against the journalist, and noted that Philippines was “under an obligation to take steps to prevent similar violations occurring in the future, including by reviewing the relevant libel legislation”.578 The Philippine government, however, did not take such preventive steps and in fact worsened the capacity of its domestic laws to 577 See Section IV (iv). 578 CCPR/C/103/D/1815/2008, para 10. 147