My story is actually well-documented in the local media, and, although there are segments of supporters, these count for nothing in a Muslim country. Thanks for the idea though.
you are going through a rough time right now since there is an awful possibility for you to lose your freedom and i really deeply feel sorry for you but stop generalising muslims / muslim countries. if your justice system is broken that's not because they are muslim but they try to bend the rules of qur'an.
he wasn't suggesting that he'd help him escape the country or avoid his sentence. More likely he was suggesting he could help him with his original question - how to keep his business running. Business emails are moderately sensitive, but most people don't seem to have a problem trusting google (and so the NSA) with that type of information.
Does it really matter what email provider you use if you don't use encryption? I'm not sure i understand why using gmail is any different then sending clear-text emails across the Internet to another provider.
Best thing to do would be to collect some data on your saas for the last few months, prepare it for selling, and find someone that will buy it from you and keep at it.
I have no idea how prison is where you live, but I doubt you will be able to run any kind of SaaS business from there so either fold it or sell it.
Get out of the country ASAP. Come to San Francisco. You won't go to jail here for posting pictures. Apply for asylum or whatever later, but get your butt on a plane ASAP.
Assuming you have the original, non-biometric passport, access to materials and suitable printers, plotters etc and a handful of other passports of the appropriate nationality people don't mind being "recycled", quite a while.
Even if it were easy as a pie, OP is worried about being convicted of a 'crime' which is not considered a crime in most of the developed world. So, he has a chance of being granted asylum.
Faking a passport, however, IS a very serious crime and it would be something ridiculously stupid to do.
Can't tell if srs. My grandpa got about 5K refugees into the country over his lifetime. Minnesotans are into that sort of thing. Try contacting http://www.iimn.org if you're really into this idea. They could at least say if asylum/refugee status is likely.
The downside is asylum/refugee can be somewhat political. Not sure what the USA's relationship is with Malaysia, and it may offend Singapore. It's better to be from a country nobody ever thinks about, or assumes is horrible like Somalia or Eritrea.
I'm mildly amused that a comic depicting various religious figures in a (however weird) sexual act could be considered not safe for work - which seems just a different way to say "Comics like these might offend your coworkers / employer", which .. feels like the reduced, small-scale version of the "crime" the OP is prosecuted for.
It's a harmless picture, a comic, from a satirical magazine. It shouldn't be considered unsafe for work.
Why not Texas? Or Iowa? They're all part of the US that is bound by the immigration laws of your country right? What the hell does SF have to do with it?
If only all of the world's persecuted people could move to SF!
Because he's posting on HN for advice. Because SF and the Bay Area has a higher proportion of immigrants and human rights organizations than many other areas of the country. Because it's more likely easier to get here if he's in a country like Indonesia. Because I live in SF AND I HAVE A FUCKING COUCH HE CAN SLEEP ON if necessary.
Going into a foreign embassy is not gonna do you any good. "The Free World" spies on, and jails its own people, and it will not risk another Mohammad cartoongate helping you. So don't even think about requesting asylum at an embassy.
Sell all you own and head to the nearest border/coastal town. Pay off smugglers or fishermen and get the fuck out.
Also depending on the country you're in, keep in mind that you might be marked as suspicious for visiting a foreign embassy. Perhaps send a friend or someone to do the advice getting and only go when you have solid advice from a professional diplomat or embassy staffer that recommends that you do so.
It says in #1 that I was afraid he might be in the Mideast. Arabs would hang him with impunity to make an example of him. Malaysia can't: it would be perceived as racially motivated, as he is ethnic Chinese, and Malaysia is already under scrutiny for its race relations.
It's also worth adding that being from a relatively stable, democratic and secular country like Malaysia would make it much harder for him to claim asylum in other countries on the grounds of "religious persecution".
Malaysia also has numerous treaties and strong ties with the United States (including security cooperation). Given the Snowden situation, it is quite possible that US would simply refuse to grant asylum (by claiming the charges aren't political) for two purposes: 1) show "sensitivity" to the Islamist world (after implicitly supporting Morsi's outster) 2) to encourage other countries to turn over future whistle blowers despite plausibility of charges against them being political.
It isn't likely that he'll garner political support either: the religious right is itself opposed to pornography and like hopes such laws would exist in the US -- social conservatives are fighting hard to defend the idea that laws that prohibit actions that cause no harm are still legitimate, some segments on the left may be prone to political correctness or partisanship (as "their" guy is in power now).
Sometimes I think the cause of liberalism (broadly defined -- I don't mean celebrating Clinton over champaign, I mean a belief in individual liberty) has (by now) been hopelessly lost. It looks like the fight is between two varieties of anti-liberal communitarian thought: one merely favours a more diverse and equal society, the other is more traditional; they seem, however, to agree social conventions can trump individual rights (they just disagree what those conventions should be) and that achieving near absolutely security (even against already improbable events) is a more important goal (even if still unreachable) than maintaining most basic civil liberties.
While we in the "free world" have unprecedented concerns these days, I don't think spying is relevant to the issues the gentleman here is facing, and the assumptions that he will not be helped seem cynical, at best.
That being said, the ability of a foreign embassy to get you out may be limited. As we've seen in other cases lately, asylum can be granted, but only once you arrive. Laws are tricky things, and no country is going to use its diplomatic office as a backdoor for fugitives to flee the country as its an abuse of the privileges given. Once you're on another countries' soil however, "de facto" takes precedence.
What a foreign embassy can do however, is give you real, factual advice. For that reason alone, I'd suggest visiting one. They can advice you on what your legal options are and what opportunities are available to you.
It is important that you receive information that is accurate and actionable. We here at HN can offer suggestions, but you need the advice of professionals and experts. Speak to an embassy official and get the facts.
You think life is a video game, don't you? There are some other geniuses suggesting the same useless solution.
Let's say he did what you said. Do you think he will be able to build a life easily in another country as a refugee? Even opening a bank account will be a huge pain in the ass. The rest of his life will be ruined basically. And it seems he don't care about going to jail, he wants to keep his business running. Escaping the country will do the opposite.
Life isn't a game of "Prison Architect." I suspect prison sucks more than anything you could imagine in a video game. The poster's comment is useful to the OP, especially considering OP could be facing 10, 20, 30, or more years for his "infraction." We just don't know, so we can't assume that OP would prefer to remain in his country of origin.
Are you seriously comparing the difficulty of opening a bank account to the difficulty of losing your freedom and liberty?
You know, people did live before banks..
The only reason you think that he doesn't care about going to jail is the fact that he's prioritizing his livelihood. You're conveniently missing the lines where he calls it a mob action. He clearly doesn't agree with the sentence.
Actually, I'm just focusing on the question. He is asking "how can I save my business" not his freedom. Let him think about his own freedom.
And when I compare a couple of years in prison to my whole life the answer is clear for me. Escaping the country brings the bonus that he will never be able to see his own country again. As an expat who is away from home for the last 4 years I can easily say that it sucks. Being away from home doesn't make you free.
I agree with your first part. Indeed, the question he posed was about his business, and to be concerned for his life, while important, is outside the scope of the question asked.
However, I don't agree with your second part. 4 years in prison isn't just 4 years in prison. It is 4 years in a situation that is widely out of your control, and opens you up to a host of threats that you didn't consider during your 'outside' life. Sure, you can be hit by a car and killed during normal pedestrian action, but it's quite hard to be the victim of prison violence when you're a normal citizen.
Imprisonment is terrible, don't sell it short. It is a completely different world than every day life, including that of an expat, and it very well may stay with him for the rest of life in the form of a crippling physical or mental injury or even death.
He runs a SaaS, not a hot-dog stand. The power of the internet is internationalism and non-locale.
I'm not telling prison is good! In the current situation there is nothing much to do for him. My point is being a refugee is almost same with being in an open air prison. I know because I live in that prison! And selling hotdogs can be less stressful for a refugee when you compare it to online business without a legal citizenship, passport, credit card etc. Power of the bureaucracy will crush power of the internet easily. Ask that to people living in some countries with limited internet.
that means you prefer to be an american not russian. however there are things independent from the "home" concept that puts you in trouble. and i'm not even talking about the food : )
It only keeps you bound if your "Country" is your identity.
But regarding the OP's question, he was not asking about how to keep his freedom, he was asking about how to save his business, which I believe as you do many here have failed to see.
Now, one has to ask themselves...how likely would it be for the OP to actually save his business by running away? The likelihood of him not having everything confiscated by the government and simply shut down upon his disappearance is rather low. As it sits right now he could loose it if he doesn't "give" it to another person to care for it.
Also, he most likely feels an obligation to his clients to maintain the service.
Taking the time to train a trusted friend or family member would most likely be his only real option in this case.
Sell your stuff, get currency, use your international connections. It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done, but liberty is the most important. Who knows what will happen in prison and for how long they will detain you.
Also, depending on how technically competent your government is, you need to get all your services offshore now: Wuala for storage (like dropbox - based in Switzerland); Runbox for email (based in Norway); servers in somewhere like Europe or other nearby friendly countries that provide sufficient bandwidth... Burner phone, TOR, careful about your online presence, etc. In the meantime, move locally and rent a place cash under the table where address won't be registered. Basically, become invisible to your government.
Then you want to move your business domicile and bank accounts elsewhere if feasible so your local government can't confiscate your business once you do leave. Read into the 5-flag theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler
You're entrepreneurial, intellectually curious, freedom-loving - rotting away in prison would be a waste of great talent and not to mention a human rights violation. Starting a startup is hard enough as it is, it's important. But not as important as liberty. If you plan correctly, you can have both. Obviously, I (or likely none of us on here) cant fully empathize with your situation - best of luck!!
Edit: Are you in Singapore? I know Singapore is socially strict, but I thought it was secular. If you're in Malaysia, it's a different story. Moving your domicile and bank accounts to Singapore might make a lot of sense if you're in Malaysia.
He is being charged for Sedition which is 8 years in prison. The best thing for him is to escape and i believe even many malaysian muslims will help him to escape as long as he repents for his mistake. People are never cruel only institutions are cruel, because if they are not, they lose control and the consequences are far more than a simple prank.
I really don't think that the OP made any mistakes. And you're wrong about people not being cruel. They can be very cruel. Very recently in my country, four bloggers were jailed because they wrote sarcastic blogs about Islam and one was killed for running a website that mocked religion. And the vast majority of the people were happy. And I'm not talking about the old generation, I'm talking about generation Y and Z.
I myself, received threats because my FaceBook said I was an 'atheist' and I was engaged with social media movement against religious oppression.
I know a guy who came to USA on his friend's passport, and once he was on American soil, claimed asylum. It's entirely possible this same person could do it.
Are you in Singapore? This doesn't make sense - you say you live in a Muslim country? I know Singapore is socially strict, but I thought it was secular.
Singapore is big on social harmony. There are laws against offending other cultures and anything considered pornography is illegal. But I think he's in trouble in Malaysia.
You can go to Sabah and pay some fisherman to take you to Palawan, Philippines. Once there, ride a bus or van to go to Puerto Princesa City. From there, you can go to Cebu or Manila and start your life all over again. You can stay in Palawan if you want to, but it's more of a vacation place and it doesn't really have the infrastructure to start an IT business. The Philippines is a 3rd world country, but Filipinos, in general, are quite tolerant of people with different religious and/or sexual orientation.
Big plus one on this - especially the Philippines. Jumping on a fishing boat in a place like Malaysia is probably not super difficult. But would take some capital.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak has weighed in: "The insolent and impudent act by the young couple who insulted Islam showed that freedom of expression and irresponsible opinion can jeopardise the community"
Yet the Malaysian constitution includes "every citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression".
It doesn't really matter whether constitution provides for basic human rights or not. In either case, human race is faced with the question of what to do when basic human rights of people are violated. In general i despise neocons, yet i completely understand their logic of interventionism (note: i don't mean in narrow military sense of Bush doctrine that it was dumbed down to)
The United States is also moving more and more to an offense-based model of disallowed speech despite having strong constitutional protections for free speech[1]. Free speech has never been terribly popular anywhere.
Singapore will also jail you if you did what he did, but in Singapore people know the consequences and generally don't fight the Government Rules. He is in Malaysia and the only way for him is to get out of the country which may be easier if you have the right connections.
It is a very sad state of affairs if pranks by intelligent kids are used against them not because of the actual prank but as a scapegoat so that others don't do this and it is also sad that intelligent people don't understand the consequences of their action and pranks are not worth 8 years in prison.
This advice doesn't consider OP's situation at all. It isn't the right solution for everyone to drop all friends, family, connections and familiar culture at the drop of a hat. This is the kind of advice that's really easy to give if you happen to be a perpertual traveler yourself, or if you're sitting comfortably in a democratic country with a stable job.
Hopefully OP will have enough information himself to make an educated decision as to whether skipping the country is the right decision.
I have plenty of family who did this to escape an Islamic regime.
You need to cross the border into a friendlier country and claim asylum. Pay a smuggler, go by horse (seriously), do what you need to do to get across (bribes). Go and start a better life for yourself, I know so many who did and never looked back. You can visit your family in a 3rd country.
How well do you maintain friends, family, connections and familiar culture from the inside of a jail cell? That's the kind of advice that's really easy to give if you happen to be sitting comfortably in a democratic country with the freedom to leave your domicile as you please.
(i am very sorry for your situation. this response is assuming you cannot find any way to get out of jail. i hope you do though.)
i had a friend from the internet who went to jail before. we used to run topsites together back in the day. he would usually wind up getting the boxes and affiliations, and i would wind up taking care of them, scripting them, and maintaining them. we had a good racket going.
one day he wound up going to jail for something incredibly stupid and unrelated, for almost a year. he gave me all his passwords and i just took care of the sites while he was gone. if i needed to interact with someone he knew, i just logged into his IM or email and pretended to be him. nobody even knew. then he came back and it was like nothing ever happened.
it's hard, but do you think you would be able to find someone like that? if not a friend, then maybe someone you could employ?
Open source your code. It might not be as much of a competitive advantage as you think and open sourcing it will help with the bug fixes and features
Concentrate on the value that you and your brand provides - if your main customers are in your home country then you can already provide value from localisation. Can you hire someone to handle the marketing and support?
Depending on how long you are likely to go away, it's probably best do just do the time.
Escaping, as others suggested, would mean leaving your life behind, likely living as an illegal elsewhere (without the ability to open a bank account or own a business). If it's probably just a couple of years, it's probably best to sit it out, and resume your life after.
You need to hook up with someone you really trust, and give them 50% revenue of the startup (after a while, they will see it as theirs, and wonder why they are paying you if it's less). Family would be good, but otherwise an old friend. If they are technically literate, maybe they can outsource the actual work so long as they remain in control.
I disagree. I say run, leave that country. I once did the same. Why would he like to live in a country governed by religion to the point that a secular photo gets you to jail?
Run, start your life somewhere else. That is my advise.
A lot of countries have dogmatic laws many people in them disagree with. For instance, in the US, you can go to jail for selling cannabis, and a lot of people disagree with that.
If an American friend told you he was about to go to jail for a year for selling drugs, and you felt it was unfair, would you tell him to flee?
As such, you can comply with unfair laws, or not and take the consequences, or go somewhere with different laws. Separately, you might campaign to change them, but while those laws are in place the above choices are all you have. Which you do is really a cost benefit thing.
>If an American friend told you he was about to go to jail for a year for selling drugs, and you felt it was unfair, would you tell him to flee?
For a year? I'd tell him to stay. For 4-5 years, or 10-15? Run if you can come up with any way to. This particular case also revolves around religious freedom, so it may be possible to get refugee status somewhere, esp. being high-skilled and entrepreneurial.
Hire someone outside your country for a percentage of the profit. Don't worry too much about the paperwork. Just hire a well known guy(meaning open source projects, vocal on technical issues etc.) in the hacker community to find someone trustworthy. I am sure many of us would be happy to help. Though I may not be qualified I am up for it.
I obviously can't know what kind of anti religious posts you have made and what your history on that matter is, but if it isn't hate speech that encourages others to discriminate or do anything else illegal there definitely would be some countries that would give you asylum.
The other option if you want to accept going into prison for whatever reason (maybe it is just a few months, or you cannot leave for other reasons like family) is to give someone else you trust some equity and hand operation over to that person for the time you are in prison.
Hmm spend time in a civilized nation's prison or 3rd world prison... doesn't seem hard to decide.
(Insert joke about not sure if the .au prison is the civilized one or the 3rd world one ... oh oh look what I just said, now I'm about to be sharing a cell with OP)
This goes double for the Norway comparison... whats the worst thing they can do to you in a Norway prison, serve lutefisk for dinner?
On a 3rd world prison, you might be able to bribe the warden to provide you with better room, cellphone, cable tv, internet, air conditioning unit, small kitchen, etc.
I'm not sure that is a given. Maybe Australian prisons are nice. You could make the same joke about the USA and it would unfortunately be closer to the truth. I'd rather get sent to jail in Mexico than one in Arizona.
Only those that come by boat. Many many more asylum seekers come by plane which is not such a problem. Detaining boat people is meant to deter others risking their lives the same way.
Religious Muslim intolerance might not be the best asylum reason there. There are strange double standards, e.g. right now a comedian is getting shanghaied for a mild joke about Islam -- for generations many times worse jokes have been done about all other religions. Sweden is, in short, a weird duck pond which seems to have a giant Ol' Boy's network between media, politics and everything else.
But -- even illegal immigrants without papers (like failed asylum applicants) will get free school for children and free health/dental care. Some parts of the country have lots of this.
(Yes, this seems to imply that anyone which can fake not being a Westerner can get free health care in Sweden, if they don't show their passport... Time to brush up on a Russian accent for Americans that need expensive operations? :-) )
I think if you make (negative) comments on religion, sexuality and race, you are bound to offend some people. Maybe it's a matter of opinion. But if he made an unsightly comment to the gay community at the gay parade, he will probably be deemed offensive too.
Huh. What do you think would be the gay parade equivalent of the pork-eating image?
Maybe a picture of a naked woman with the caption "I'm a heterosexual male, pussy is great, sucks to be you."
Mildly offensive, I guess, if you're extremely sensitive about your sexuality. Do you think someone should go to jail for displaying such an image during a gay parade?
Offensive enough to be sent to jail with murderers, thieves and rapists? You'd either have to be a ridiculously apologistic liberal or put the mental in fundamentalist to go that far.
Apologistic liberal? I know that term has different interpretations, but I've never seen it being associated with inhibiting free speech in order to not cause offense. It would be pretty silly if "liberal" ended up meaning "without liberty".
I second the call from other comments to flee the country. Doesn't sound like he wants to live in those rules/conditions. At least the startup can continue.
Some people take the "don't be a dick" thing a bit too seriously, perhaps?
Weirdly, other reports suggest that FB closed the account.
> The couple’s page was closed down subsequently. According to their twitter, Facebook administrators had done so due to “strong negative feedback”. But in an act of defiance, they tweeted on Saturday night, “You may shut us down now but we will be back and be stronger and better than ever. Enjoy your Ramadan for now.”
So, jokes about raping women == fine; mislabelling something as halal when it is haram == closed account. (If that's an accurate quote.)
I think it was the text that was offensive, basically saying "Why don't you break your fast by having some pork!" sarcastically. People shouldn't go to jail for being assholes, though.
Posting a picture of them eating pork is not offense to me as a non-muslim. What is offensive to me as a non-muslim is that their lives are in question because of religion. It's 2013: get over it. My religion doesn't forbid eating pork, would you be offended if I said I had bacon for breakfast this morning?
This is not really a fair comparison. It would be more like posting a picture during the Xmas holidays of doing something sinful/forbidden by Christianity with the baby Jesus. The context of this being during Ramadan is extremely important, as it's the holiest time of the year for Muslims.
I'm a former Muslim. I'm not offended by the OP's action, I just think it's a dumb joke that shows a lack of sensibility and respect.
The key is, in the West, if you did what I described above, you would probably receive a lot of flack, but you definitely wouldn't go to jail!
That's another perspective, you could really define it in many ways. I went with Christmas because it's the most holy and high-profile time for that religion. Lent doesn't really come close on the average Christian's radar in terms of involvement and public awareness.
Of course, what makes it really difficult to compare is the huge difference in attitudes towards and the role of religion between the cultures.
South Park actually did that very thing in one episode, where satanic animals were celebrating Christmas by sacrificing babies or something similar.
Was in it poor taste? Sure. But no one went to jail for it, no one was at all punished for it, no one really cared. So when the person I responded to decided to admonish these people for doing something "offensive to muslims and non muslims"... well for one that's objectively false, and for two that's ridiculously backwards from the culture of tolerance that I was raised in. His comment was more offensive to me than the action these folks took by several orders of magnitude.
It's impossible for me to fathom any serious repercussions stemming from offending the sensibilities of religious people. Because where I come from, that's basically a national pastime.
That's only offensive to some Muslims and it is definitely not offensive to non-Muslims. It is also a ridiculous reason for being jailed, offensive or not.
Only Muslims from eastern countries(India, Pak, Malaysia(duh), etc. consider it offensive. From purely legal POV, there is no precedence from authentic Islamic history on people being punished for eating in front of fasting Muslims. On the contrary, there are a number of precedences where fasting Muslims were offered food, and they would refuse saying "I am fasting" and the other people(Muslims and non Muslims) would simply continue eating.
From religious POV, a fasting Muslim actually gets reward when others are eating in front of them.
No, it wasn't offensive to me and I'm a muslim. Just because something 'offended' you should not be the reason for somebody else to go to jail. He posted stuff on the internet, the people who got offended had the option not to see it.
How hard is it to keep it alive? Can I do it for you while you get your stuff sorted out? Do you have a decent lawyer? Would that make a difference? Let me know (email in profile), I'll gladly help you if I can. I second the calls to leave your country but I can see that this may not always be an option.
I have a decent lawyer. It isn't hard to keep alive; heck, I've been running it pretty half-assed for the past almost 2 years. Still, I cannot abandon it totally.
Also, I don't think it makes enough revenue to warrant hiring anyone to take care of it, I think. I'd make a loss. And since familiarising with the current code base etc. may require a lot of effort, way more effort than anyone would care to dedicate, unless they're paid a lot to get familiar with it.
I really want to keep the startup, because it's my main source of income that pays my rent, food, entertainment, transportation, etc. It's also my first startup -- it has great sentimental value.
What is your (honest) estimate of the code quality / time to familiarize?
What about those bugs, are they things that you could conceivably still do before you go to jail? Would it be acceptable if they were there as long as you were gone? (after all, they are there right now).
You're in Singapore?
How do you intend to deal with the financial side of this? (I take it there is a small business to be run as well to keep the lights on).
I can see a few options:
- blindly trust some random stranger (probably a bad idea!)
- give the company in trust to your lawyer while you are
away to run on your behalf
- get a friend up to speed in the time remaining and turn
the site over to them before you go.
Keeping the lights on is basically what you're asking for but the bit that I'm missing still in your plan is that you are right now probably promoting your site as well, which is one of the reasons it is working. Mothballing it with the marketing stopped will only work if the period without active work on the site is not too long, it may take more effort to keep it at the level where it is right now if the time is longer.
You'd have to expect that no matter what by the time you get out of jail (how long do you expect to go away for?) the business will have shrunk or will have died.
Good to see you at least have a decent lawyer, that may be an important part of the solution.
Yeah I wondered if that was connected. God damn, what the Malaysian Chinese have to put up with. Every single organization in the nation, public and private, is completely run by Chinese managers, with a few bumiputra cronies as figureheads and a workforce packed with other laid-back Malays. Nothing in that country (and it's a lovely country, one of my favorite to visit) would ever get done without the Chinese. Yet many Malaysians' burning envy of Singapore seems to find its only outlet in abusing their own Chinese, either directly, through the rhetoric of politicians like Mahathir, or through the entrenched quota system. It's been over a decade since I was in the region, but I'll always have sympathy for the Chinese in Malaysia.
Not that Singapore is any shining beacon of freedom. I can certainly imagine the "Happy Ramadan" stunt drawing a stiff fine there. I doubt, though, that any minority in Singapore would need to speak "truth" to power in this way.
If it's your main source of income, it must be making some money. Can you use that to pay someone to take care of it while you're away?
There's got to be some kind of middle ground between 'taking a loss' and 'main source of income'. Even if it's not as much as someone would make in a different job, I bet some people would be willing to help you out for a small stipend.
the religion you have offended has great sentimental values to the people who follow that religion. yet you ask people to save your startup because it has great sentimental values to you. what a pity.
Could the loss you take from hiring someone to take care of it be a loss your business could handle for the duration of your incarceration? If the choice is loss and still kicking, or complete company failure, the loss might be preferable.
jacquesm is a real stand-up guy by the way. It doesn't count for much, but I'd recommend considering his offer.
I'll also offer to assist (preferably with one or two other people sharing the workload), but details would help a lot. An attorney should be able to ensure that your rights to the business are protected in the meantime.
>> Is there anything I can do to save my SaaS startup?
Don't you think you have bigger things to worry about then your SaaS company ? I meant, you are about to lose your freedom which I feels should be your first priority.
SaaS companies normally don't have lot of overhead, so you can hand over the control to some local friend, do inform your customers about your current situation and the possible repercussions of it.
Thrown in jail with a prohibitive bail for months, beaten there, and finally thanks to an anonymous donor out on bail but still facing years in jail for one facebook comment.
And that's just the most readily available example.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 447 ms ] threadYour story can travel far beyond the local media
I have no idea how prison is where you live, but I doubt you will be able to run any kind of SaaS business from there so either fold it or sell it.
(just don't let your government see you doing it)
People who enter a country illegally and then claim asylum status are unlikely to be in any position to keep their business running.
You could go to the USA, Canada, or EU country embassy and see if they can help you with asylum etc.
I would recommend Canada.
Even if it were easy as a pie, OP is worried about being convicted of a 'crime' which is not considered a crime in most of the developed world. So, he has a chance of being granted asylum.
Faking a passport, however, IS a very serious crime and it would be something ridiculously stupid to do.
The U.S. is the last place you want to seek refugee from an unjust government.
The downside is asylum/refugee can be somewhat political. Not sure what the USA's relationship is with Malaysia, and it may offend Singapore. It's better to be from a country nobody ever thinks about, or assumes is horrible like Somalia or Eritrea.
Sorry to be pedantic but there are a lot of pictures you can post in the US that will get you sent to jail.
If The Onion didn't get in trouble for this one, then the US is safe. Cartoon, not safe for work.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-...
(sorry, used to seeing NSFW, not "not safe for work" so clicked on it before I realized)
It's a harmless picture, a comic, from a satirical magazine. It shouldn't be considered unsafe for work.
If only all of the world's persecuted people could move to SF!
Because he's posting on HN for advice. Because SF and the Bay Area has a higher proportion of immigrants and human rights organizations than many other areas of the country. Because it's more likely easier to get here if he's in a country like Indonesia. Because I live in SF AND I HAVE A FUCKING COUCH HE CAN SLEEP ON if necessary.
You insensitive pricks make me sick.
Going into a foreign embassy is not gonna do you any good. "The Free World" spies on, and jails its own people, and it will not risk another Mohammad cartoongate helping you. So don't even think about requesting asylum at an embassy.
Sell all you own and head to the nearest border/coastal town. Pay off smugglers or fishermen and get the fuck out.
It will be very hard living as an undocumented person, but I have seen it done. I'm Somali.
Do you ever visit Hargeisa?
1) I don't recommend escape as before. I was fearing you might be in an Arab country. Malaysia has what vaguely resembles a law, at least.
2) On the other hand, you are ethnic Chinese. I'd tell the lawyer to bring up the issue of your safety in prison.
Man, my heart is seriously aching for you, specially after reading your story. Be safe.
It isn't likely that he'll garner political support either: the religious right is itself opposed to pornography and like hopes such laws would exist in the US -- social conservatives are fighting hard to defend the idea that laws that prohibit actions that cause no harm are still legitimate, some segments on the left may be prone to political correctness or partisanship (as "their" guy is in power now).
Sometimes I think the cause of liberalism (broadly defined -- I don't mean celebrating Clinton over champaign, I mean a belief in individual liberty) has (by now) been hopelessly lost. It looks like the fight is between two varieties of anti-liberal communitarian thought: one merely favours a more diverse and equal society, the other is more traditional; they seem, however, to agree social conventions can trump individual rights (they just disagree what those conventions should be) and that achieving near absolutely security (even against already improbable events) is a more important goal (even if still unreachable) than maintaining most basic civil liberties.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamza_Kashgari
That being said, the ability of a foreign embassy to get you out may be limited. As we've seen in other cases lately, asylum can be granted, but only once you arrive. Laws are tricky things, and no country is going to use its diplomatic office as a backdoor for fugitives to flee the country as its an abuse of the privileges given. Once you're on another countries' soil however, "de facto" takes precedence.
What a foreign embassy can do however, is give you real, factual advice. For that reason alone, I'd suggest visiting one. They can advice you on what your legal options are and what opportunities are available to you.
It is important that you receive information that is accurate and actionable. We here at HN can offer suggestions, but you need the advice of professionals and experts. Speak to an embassy official and get the facts.
He's probably going to get worse treatment than average from the other inmates.
You know, people did live before banks..
The only reason you think that he doesn't care about going to jail is the fact that he's prioritizing his livelihood. You're conveniently missing the lines where he calls it a mob action. He clearly doesn't agree with the sentence.
And when I compare a couple of years in prison to my whole life the answer is clear for me. Escaping the country brings the bonus that he will never be able to see his own country again. As an expat who is away from home for the last 4 years I can easily say that it sucks. Being away from home doesn't make you free.
However, I don't agree with your second part. 4 years in prison isn't just 4 years in prison. It is 4 years in a situation that is widely out of your control, and opens you up to a host of threats that you didn't consider during your 'outside' life. Sure, you can be hit by a car and killed during normal pedestrian action, but it's quite hard to be the victim of prison violence when you're a normal citizen.
Imprisonment is terrible, don't sell it short. It is a completely different world than every day life, including that of an expat, and it very well may stay with him for the rest of life in the form of a crippling physical or mental injury or even death.
He runs a SaaS, not a hot-dog stand. The power of the internet is internationalism and non-locale.
it seems like it depends on their your "home" is. I've been living in US for more than decade. Never looked back :)
But regarding the OP's question, he was not asking about how to keep his freedom, he was asking about how to save his business, which I believe as you do many here have failed to see.
Now, one has to ask themselves...how likely would it be for the OP to actually save his business by running away? The likelihood of him not having everything confiscated by the government and simply shut down upon his disappearance is rather low. As it sits right now he could loose it if he doesn't "give" it to another person to care for it.
Also, he most likely feels an obligation to his clients to maintain the service.
Taking the time to train a trusted friend or family member would most likely be his only real option in this case.
Good luck to OP!
O.
If I had to choose between prison and becoming a refugee the answer should be obvious. All over the world, people flee similar situations everyday.
Sell your stuff, get currency, use your international connections. It's going to be the hardest thing you've ever done, but liberty is the most important. Who knows what will happen in prison and for how long they will detain you.
Also, depending on how technically competent your government is, you need to get all your services offshore now: Wuala for storage (like dropbox - based in Switzerland); Runbox for email (based in Norway); servers in somewhere like Europe or other nearby friendly countries that provide sufficient bandwidth... Burner phone, TOR, careful about your online presence, etc. In the meantime, move locally and rent a place cash under the table where address won't be registered. Basically, become invisible to your government.
Then you want to move your business domicile and bank accounts elsewhere if feasible so your local government can't confiscate your business once you do leave. Read into the 5-flag theory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_traveler
You're entrepreneurial, intellectually curious, freedom-loving - rotting away in prison would be a waste of great talent and not to mention a human rights violation. Starting a startup is hard enough as it is, it's important. But not as important as liberty. If you plan correctly, you can have both. Obviously, I (or likely none of us on here) cant fully empathize with your situation - best of luck!!
Edit: Are you in Singapore? I know Singapore is socially strict, but I thought it was secular. If you're in Malaysia, it's a different story. Moving your domicile and bank accounts to Singapore might make a lot of sense if you're in Malaysia.
If it's not a very long sentence, OP is better off trying that after he's done with it. Maybe ask for asylum, but afterwards.
I myself, received threats because my FaceBook said I was an 'atheist' and I was engaged with social media movement against religious oppression.
Singapore is big on social harmony. There are laws against offending other cultures and anything considered pornography is illegal. But I think he's in trouble in Malaysia.
Yet the Malaysian constitution includes "every citizen has the right to freedom of speech and expression".
[1] http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/06/13/essay-critici...
It is a very sad state of affairs if pranks by intelligent kids are used against them not because of the actual prank but as a scapegoat so that others don't do this and it is also sad that intelligent people don't understand the consequences of their action and pranks are not worth 8 years in prison.
Hopefully OP will have enough information himself to make an educated decision as to whether skipping the country is the right decision.
You need to cross the border into a friendlier country and claim asylum. Pay a smuggler, go by horse (seriously), do what you need to do to get across (bribes). Go and start a better life for yourself, I know so many who did and never looked back. You can visit your family in a 3rd country.
What could go wrong?
i had a friend from the internet who went to jail before. we used to run topsites together back in the day. he would usually wind up getting the boxes and affiliations, and i would wind up taking care of them, scripting them, and maintaining them. we had a good racket going.
one day he wound up going to jail for something incredibly stupid and unrelated, for almost a year. he gave me all his passwords and i just took care of the sites while he was gone. if i needed to interact with someone he knew, i just logged into his IM or email and pretended to be him. nobody even knew. then he came back and it was like nothing ever happened.
it's hard, but do you think you would be able to find someone like that? if not a friend, then maybe someone you could employ?
Concentrate on the value that you and your brand provides - if your main customers are in your home country then you can already provide value from localisation. Can you hire someone to handle the marketing and support?
On topic: Post more information about the SaaS. Someone where could want to buy it.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/18/sex-bloggers-coul...
Escaping, as others suggested, would mean leaving your life behind, likely living as an illegal elsewhere (without the ability to open a bank account or own a business). If it's probably just a couple of years, it's probably best to sit it out, and resume your life after.
You need to hook up with someone you really trust, and give them 50% revenue of the startup (after a while, they will see it as theirs, and wonder why they are paying you if it's less). Family would be good, but otherwise an old friend. If they are technically literate, maybe they can outsource the actual work so long as they remain in control.
Run, start your life somewhere else. That is my advise.
If an American friend told you he was about to go to jail for a year for selling drugs, and you felt it was unfair, would you tell him to flee?
As such, you can comply with unfair laws, or not and take the consequences, or go somewhere with different laws. Separately, you might campaign to change them, but while those laws are in place the above choices are all you have. Which you do is really a cost benefit thing.
OP and his girlfriend face 8 years in jail for posting a picture of themselves eating pork on Facebook.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/07/18/sex-bloggers-coul...
For a year? I'd tell him to stay. For 4-5 years, or 10-15? Run if you can come up with any way to. This particular case also revolves around religious freedom, so it may be possible to get refugee status somewhere, esp. being high-skilled and entrepreneurial.
I obviously can't know what kind of anti religious posts you have made and what your history on that matter is, but if it isn't hate speech that encourages others to discriminate or do anything else illegal there definitely would be some countries that would give you asylum.
The other option if you want to accept going into prison for whatever reason (maybe it is just a few months, or you cannot leave for other reasons like family) is to give someone else you trust some equity and hand operation over to that person for the time you are in prison.
Good luck
(Insert joke about not sure if the .au prison is the civilized one or the 3rd world one ... oh oh look what I just said, now I'm about to be sharing a cell with OP)
This goes double for the Norway comparison... whats the worst thing they can do to you in a Norway prison, serve lutefisk for dinner?
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&pr...
A kickstarter to pay off his judge is something I've not seen yet and is an interesting hack on the system.
Or if forbidden by kickstarter, a startup competitor to kickstarter could have bribery as its secret weapon.
Imagine getting every NRA or NOW or Sierra Club or EFF member to donate to pay bribes in the 3rd world to help some cause.
Religious Muslim intolerance might not be the best asylum reason there. There are strange double standards, e.g. right now a comedian is getting shanghaied for a mild joke about Islam -- for generations many times worse jokes have been done about all other religions. Sweden is, in short, a weird duck pond which seems to have a giant Ol' Boy's network between media, politics and everything else.
But -- even illegal immigrants without papers (like failed asylum applicants) will get free school for children and free health/dental care. Some parts of the country have lots of this.
(Yes, this seems to imply that anyone which can fake not being a Westerner can get free health care in Sweden, if they don't show their passport... Time to brush up on a Russian accent for Americans that need expensive operations? :-) )
Edit: Clarity, some more facts.
What you did was quite offensive, for Muslims and non-Muslims.
If you are that person, it may difficult to find someone you can trust enough to take over the SaaS startup whilst you are away. Good luck.
Maybe a picture of a naked woman with the caption "I'm a heterosexual male, pussy is great, sucks to be you."
Mildly offensive, I guess, if you're extremely sensitive about your sexuality. Do you think someone should go to jail for displaying such an image during a gay parade?
This overreaction seems like more of a negative comment about Islam then anything anyone could possibly say.
> Sex bloggers Alvin Tan and Vivian Lee have been charged and imprisoned without bail
It clearly isn't him
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v7/ge/newsgeneral.php?id=9...
I second the call from other comments to flee the country. Doesn't sound like he wants to live in those rules/conditions. At least the startup can continue.
They are out of bail.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXw4qTp2GWQ
And I'm a non-Muslim, and it wasn't offensive to me, so perhaps less with sweeping statements and judgements?
Weirdly, other reports suggest that FB closed the account.
> The couple’s page was closed down subsequently. According to their twitter, Facebook administrators had done so due to “strong negative feedback”. But in an act of defiance, they tweeted on Saturday night, “You may shut us down now but we will be back and be stronger and better than ever. Enjoy your Ramadan for now.”
So, jokes about raping women == fine; mislabelling something as halal when it is haram == closed account. (If that's an accurate quote.)
Let me assure you that I don't know one single person in my circle that would consider that offensive.
I'm a former Muslim. I'm not offended by the OP's action, I just think it's a dumb joke that shows a lack of sensibility and respect.
The key is, in the West, if you did what I described above, you would probably receive a lot of flack, but you definitely wouldn't go to jail!
Of course, what makes it really difficult to compare is the huge difference in attitudes towards and the role of religion between the cultures.
Was in it poor taste? Sure. But no one went to jail for it, no one was at all punished for it, no one really cared. So when the person I responded to decided to admonish these people for doing something "offensive to muslims and non muslims"... well for one that's objectively false, and for two that's ridiculously backwards from the culture of tolerance that I was raised in. His comment was more offensive to me than the action these folks took by several orders of magnitude.
It's impossible for me to fathom any serious repercussions stemming from offending the sensibilities of religious people. Because where I come from, that's basically a national pastime.
From religious POV, a fasting Muslim actually gets reward when others are eating in front of them.
Grounds for calling someone an idiot/jerk? Sure. Grounds for jail-time? Absolutely not.
Also, I don't think it makes enough revenue to warrant hiring anyone to take care of it, I think. I'd make a loss. And since familiarising with the current code base etc. may require a lot of effort, way more effort than anyone would care to dedicate, unless they're paid a lot to get familiar with it.
My startup is http://www.zuupy.com.
I really want to keep the startup, because it's my main source of income that pays my rent, food, entertainment, transportation, etc. It's also my first startup -- it has great sentimental value.
Best wishes for your outcome.
What is your (honest) estimate of the code quality / time to familiarize?
What about those bugs, are they things that you could conceivably still do before you go to jail? Would it be acceptable if they were there as long as you were gone? (after all, they are there right now).
You're in Singapore?
How do you intend to deal with the financial side of this? (I take it there is a small business to be run as well to keep the lights on).
I can see a few options:
Keeping the lights on is basically what you're asking for but the bit that I'm missing still in your plan is that you are right now probably promoting your site as well, which is one of the reasons it is working. Mothballing it with the marketing stopped will only work if the period without active work on the site is not too long, it may take more effort to keep it at the level where it is right now if the time is longer.You'd have to expect that no matter what by the time you get out of jail (how long do you expect to go away for?) the business will have shrunk or will have died.
Good to see you at least have a decent lawyer, that may be an important part of the solution.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/18/alvin-and-vivian-ja...
Not that Singapore is any shining beacon of freedom. I can certainly imagine the "Happy Ramadan" stunt drawing a stiff fine there. I doubt, though, that any minority in Singapore would need to speak "truth" to power in this way.
There's got to be some kind of middle ground between 'taking a loss' and 'main source of income'. Even if it's not as much as someone would make in a different job, I bet some people would be willing to help you out for a small stipend.
Good luck!!
EDIT: for those who up voted, i was being sarcastic.
I'll also offer to assist (preferably with one or two other people sharing the workload), but details would help a lot. An attorney should be able to ensure that your rights to the business are protected in the meantime.
My email's in my profile.
Don't you think you have bigger things to worry about then your SaaS company ? I meant, you are about to lose your freedom which I feels should be your first priority.
I really feels to have a stronger case and to preserve your freedom, you should come out open with your name. International pressure and media do work as in Deborah Dalelv's case http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/19/marte-deborah-dalel...
SaaS companies normally don't have lot of overhead, so you can hand over the control to some local friend, do inform your customers about your current situation and the possible repercussions of it.
Justin carter for example
http://freejustincarter.org/category/justin-carter/
Thrown in jail with a prohibitive bail for months, beaten there, and finally thanks to an anonymous donor out on bail but still facing years in jail for one facebook comment. And that's just the most readily available example.
Please less hyperbole and naivety