“Respect cultural differences!” – Like the ones that throw people in jail for “insulting” the local religion or head of state? Let’s not respect those, shall we?

A teenage blogger has been handed a prison sentence after he was found guilty by a Singapore court of “wounding religious feelings”.

Amos Yee, 17, will spend six weeks in jail for deliberately posting videos and comments critical of Christianity and Islam.

Judge Ong Hian Sun told the court that Yee’s actions could “generate social unrest”.

Any actions could generate social unrest. It’s neither possible nor desirable to write the laws in such a way that they rule out all possibility of social unrest. Christianity and Islam themselves could cause social unrest, and they often do.

Also, it seems very far-fetched that one teenager’s videos and comments could cause social unrest. On the one hand the principle is wrong and on the other hand the factual claim seems extremely weak.

Singapore has thrown Yee into jail before for the same footling reason.

Yee was jailed for four weeks in 2015 for criticising Christians, and was accused of insulting Lee Kuan Yew after he posted a video online in which he likened the late Singaporean leader to Jesus Christ.

Such actions are considered a serious crime in a country which takes a zero-tolerance approach towards insults of race and religion.

In other words a country with no respect for freedom of thought and expression.