“Iris Koh and her husband Raymond Ng Kai Hoe have been ordered to pay S$12,000 (US$9,338) in costs to the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) after failing to mount a judicial review against the authority.”
Activist Iris Koh and her husband Raymond Ng Kai Hoe have been ordered to pay S$12,000 in costs to the Health Sciences Authority (HSA) after failing to mount a judicial review against the authority. The court found that the couple’s application was an abuse of process and granted HSA’s bid for the case to be struck out entirely, a spokesperson for the Attorney-General’s Chambers (AGC) told CNA in a statement on Wednesday.
Koh, who has changed her Chinese name from Shu Cii to Hsiao Pei, is the founder of Healing the Divide, a group with a known stance against COVID-19 vaccination. The 48-year-old Singaporean and her husband had filed an application for a judicial review, a process where the High Court exercises its supervisory function over a public body.
Their aim was to get a mandatory order for HSA to investigate and prosecute entities using celebrities to advertise vaccination, according to the AGC spokesperson. In response, AGC acted on behalf of HSA and filed an application to have the case struck out.
After ordering that the application be struck out in its entirety, the judge also ordered Koh and her husband to pay HSA a total of S$12,000 in costs. They are for the striking out application as well as two other applications the couple had brought.
In a Facebook post after the hearing, Koh asked for support to pay the costs of S$12,000. She wrote that the case was struck out “based on the issue of standing” and that the judge said the couple was “unable to adequately address the point about ‘special damages'”.
“Despite this setback, we’ve learned a great deal from this experience about the complexities of pursuing a judicial review,” wrote Koh. “This knowledge will be invaluable as we consider future actions to uphold public rights.”
Koh and her husband have mounted several cases against people or entities for things like alleged defamation or breach of contract, according to a check of the public hearing list on Wednesday.
Separately, Koh faces 15 charges and is due back in court in October for a criminal case disclosure conference. The charges against her include conspiracy, instigation, and organizing a public assembly related to the government’s COVID-19 vaccination programme.
