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Journalist and human rights activist Melissa Chen. Photo by Reason TV.

Top 10 Interesting Facts about Melissa Chen

Melissa Chen is a Singaporean-born journalist and activist based in the United States. She is a contributing editor and author for Spectator USA.

She is also the co-founder of the Ideas Beyond Borders organization aimed at promoting the free exchange of ideas.

Known for her bold advocacy in matters of civil liberties and human rights, Chen has published numerous articles calling out authoritarian policies in governments and championing free speech.

She is also known as the one-time advocate for Amos Yee, a Singaporean national who got imprisoned for negatively portraying Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Have a look at some of the top interesting facts about Melissa Chen.

1. Melissa Chen was born in Singapore

Singapore, view from Marina Bay Sands. Photo by Dietmar Rabich.

She was born in 1985 in Singapore where she spent her childhood and early teen years before leaving the country at age 17.

She was raised in a conservative neighborhood. Little is known about her family  as she hardly posts about her personal life.

2. She moved to the United States at 17

At 17, Melissa Chen left for Boston in the United States. She stated that one of the major reasons for her decision to reside in the USA was the country’s freedom of speech and the press.

It is evident from her critical journalistic works and advocacy efforts that Chen is not one to shy away from articulating her mind on concerning issues.

3. She attended Boston University

Boston University, College of Arts and Sciences. Photo b Fletcher6.

Having moved to the USA at 17, she attended her university education at Boston University. The University is a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. She studied journalism.

Some of the university’s notable alumni in related fields include TV personality Bill O’Reilly, radio host Howard Stern, and best-selling author Mark Manson.

4. Chen gained considerable recognition for the Amos Yee case

Students calling for release of Amos Yee in 2015. Photo sourced from

In 2015, Amos Yee was a Singaporean student with a YouTube channel and a blog. In March 2015, just shortly after Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister’s death, Amos Yee uploaded a controversial video on his account.

 In the YouTube video, he criticizes Lee Kuan. He compared Lee with Jesus, stating that both were common in that they there power-hungry people hiding under what appeared as compassion.

 The sentiments sparked anger not just for Lee’s supporters, but also for religious groups such as Christians for the attack on Jesus’s character.

Amos Yee received several death threats in the hateful comments, and a couple of police reports were made. He was arrested and charged with intention of wounding the religious feelings of Christians, obscenity and threatening, and insulting communication.

In December 2016, he fled to the USA to seek asylum citing fear of persecution for his political views by Singapore.

Melissa Chen advocated for Yee’s application to have political asylum granted to him, which he received in 2017.

5. She advocated for Yee’s deportation from the USA in 2018

In an interesting  twist of events, Melissa Chen once again addressed Yee’s plight but against him this time. She called for his deportation from the USA despite having helped Yee gain political asylum in the country.

Reason? Yee’s content on social media was advocating for pedophilia.  She had earlier on expressed her objections to Yee’s increasingly morally controversial content on YouTube.

Yee had cut off ties with Chen in 2017, calling her too authoritarian. Yee’s accounts were shut down and his videos pulled down after uploading 4 videos supporting pedophilia.

In 2020, he was arrested in Illinois and charged with possession of child pornography. He was found guilty and sentenced to 6 years in prison and warned that he would be deported or denied entry into the US in the future.

Chen, pointing out that being in America is a privilege and not a right, stated that Yee had abused it by betraying basic human decency.

6. She is a Co-Founder of Ideas Beyond Borders

In 2017, Chen got together with Faisal Saeed Al Mutar in co-founding Ideas Beyond Borders. Faisal is an Iraqi-American human rights advocate, writer, and commentator.

He is a strong advocate for free speech. The foundation is a non-profit initiative aimed at promoting the free exchange of ideas.

The organization has focused on translating written material and Wikipedia pages into Arabic, especially on controversial works. Chen is the managing director.

7. Chen is a contributing editor and author for Spectator USA

The Spectator is a weekly British magazine on politics, current affairs, and culture. It was first published in July 1828 and is the oldest weekly magazine in the world.

 In 2018, Editor Fraser Nelson and deputy editor Freddy Gray launched a digital-only version of the Spectator USA. The monthly print magazine ‘The Spectator US Edition’ was launched in October 2019.

Melissa Chen is a contributing author for the magazine, writing mostly on politics, civil rights, and current affairs.

8. She is a fierce critic of China’s human rights record

A good number of Chen’s articles on Spectator address matters in China. Chen is a critic of the often authoritarian policies of the Chinese government.

Numerous human rights groups have often publicized human rights issues in mainland China such as violation of freedom of speech, suppression of the media, and religious repression of minorities such as the Uyghur Muslims and Tibetan Buddhist religious groups.

One of Chen’s articles criticizes China’s passing of a national security law targeting ‘secession, subversion, and collusion.’ She termed it a break of promise by China to Hong Kong in their 27-year-long ‘one country, two systems’ framework.

9. Chen has firmly championed free speech by governments

Freedom of Speech includes the Press. Photo by Narih Lee.

One of the things that stand out in Chen’s advocacy is the freedom of speech. Her participation in Amos Yee’s grant of political asylum citing persecution for his political views by Singapore’s government highlight this.

She has often criticized China’s curtailment of speech, and Singapore’s restriction laws on the freedom of expression.

She states that one of the reasons she decided to reside in the USA is the country’s high guarantee of freedom of the press and speech.

10. She called for the closure of China’s wet markets in 2020

Meat section at wet market in Hong Kong. Photo by FuriousGeorge1.

During the unfortunate Covid-19 pandemic surge, Melissa Chen wrote an article on Spectator calling for the closure of wet markets.

She cited that they were one of the factors facilitating the spread of the virus. Wet markets are open-air marketplaces that sell fresh foods, which is mostly meat and fish, and other perishable produce. They are common in China, and Southeast Asia.

Wet markets have often been subject to suspicion for disease outbreaks due to the common unhygienic standards.

Chen’s article criticized China’s state of wet markets, and the risk consumers are exposed to during the pandemic and called for their closure.

She however, received some backlash on Twitter for the use of a picture of Singapore’s wet market while the article was not about Singapore.