Is Amos Yee abnormal?

Sure yes, given he was raised and educated in Singapore. But he would be considered quite normal if he was in Hong Kong, and should be nothing but normal if he was in the UK, US, Australia or Canada. We have an excess supply of teenagers here who are blogging and posting videos everyday to badmouth the government, and we aren't even interested to know exactly who they are. Normality is just a matter of relativity. Moreover, judging from the contents of his videos and the depth of his analysis, Amos is exceptionally talented, and he presented his points in a far more intellectually sophisticated way compared to many of our teenagers here and even some of our LegCo members.

While the prosecution and eventual conviction of this exceptionally talented teenager who dared to criticize Singapore's political system and even speak ill of the country's beloved leaders should not surprise the international community^1,2, anyone who values the freedom of speech would not agree with imprisoning a teenager who posted his secondary creation involving his country's former leader and spoke on YouTube about his own personal views against Christianity. But the Singaporean judicial system is clearly committed to defend one of Singapore's core values—the importance of limited freedom—as explained by its Prime Minister³, and that's something we ought to think about when the same scenario is projected to our city. Should we be worrying now if our teenagers and university students are starting to 'talk' about independence, given the strong precursors that signal our gradual convergence to the mainland's values and beliefs. However, the sad thing here is that, unlike in Singapore where the government makes all decisions and people obey, we volunteer to give up our own rights. Hadn't Chris Patten already predicted this back in 1996? "My anxiety is not that this community's autonomy would be usurped by Peking, but that it could be given away bit by bit by some people in Hong Kong."

May 2016