Thursday, March 9, 2017

Amos Yee's closed Immigration court hearing. Why not open?

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Amos Yee the religious hate speech advocate had his asylum hearing at the Chicago Immigration court this last Tuesday March 7. What is interesting is that he and his attorney Grossman had decided to hold a closed hearing and not allow in the public! My question is why?

Asylum hearings are commonly conducted in open court and the public are allowed to attend. However in exceptional cases it is up to the asylum applicant and his lawyer to request the judge to hold a closed hearing and keep out the public. This is what Yee and his lawyer Grossman have done.

I read that Grossman had decided on this because one of the witnesses wanted to remain confidential. Even so, it wasn't necessary to keep the entire hearing confidential. They could have cleared the court for the testimony of that single witness and resumed the hearing in open court.

But this demand to keep the proceedings secret flies in the face of what Yee is claiming to stand for. If I am not mistaken, he is standing for free speech which is why he is asking for asylum. If he is indeed for free speech, then why is he afraid that the world may hear what he has to say? Is this not the height of hypocrisy and cowardliness on his part?

What he is saying is that he should be entitled to say whatever he wants to the world and not be punished, but yet in the most important court hearing of his life, he insists that no one should hear what he says. Or what his witnesses say. I am reluctant to say this but this man appears to be a fraud. Only a fraud would demand a right to free speech by insulting other religions but no free speech as to what he tells the judge in asylum proceedings.

Especially in this case with international worldwide interest in the case, the public were entitled to know what happened. This is the case of a man mocking religion by pretending to have sex with the Christian Holy book the Bible and Muslim Holy book the Koran and I heard urinating on these Holy books and taking videos and posting them on the Internet. And for the right to continue doing this, he wants asylum in the United States. A curious interesting case which the world has a right to know what happened in court. But Grossman and her client have decided that you are not allowed that privilege.

We will not know what he said about his right to insult religions, his right to insult God, his right to urinate on the Bible and the Koran, his right to yell "Fucking " at every sentence, about his right to refuse national service in Singapore.

We even do not know how many witnesses appeared and who they are, or what they said. We know that Kenneth Jeyaretnam, Singapore's opposition village clown who got I believe just 300 votes in the last elections in a constituency of several thousands and lost his deposit had flown to Chicago to give evidence in the belief that he was some sort of a world statesman. We don't know what he said either.

I think the judge would be hard pressed to give asylum to the likes of Yee because if he does so, he opens the door to every other idiot in Singapore to urinate on the Bible and the Koran, get arrested and serve 2 weeks jail and take the next flight to see Immigration Attorney Grossman to obtain asylum in the United States and also conveniently managing to avoid national service.

After which Miss Grossman could purchase her Lamborghini and open another law office exclusively to serve thousands of Singaporean asylum applicants in Chicago who have all just urinated on the Koran and the Bible, went to jail and all waiting for asylum in the US! Very convenient.

Gopalan Nair
Attorney at Law
Fremont San Francisco California
Tel: 510 491 8525
Email: nair.gopalan@yahoo.com

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I love your insights.