The secretary-general of the opposition Workers Party in Singapore, J B Jeyaretnam says it will appeal against a court order to pay one-hundred-and-eighty-thousand US dollars for defamation.

The court ruled on Monday that an article in the Workers Party newsletter defamed the organisers of the 1995 Tamil language week in Singapore, by accusing them of being government stooges who were seeking power.

Last year, the Workers Partylost a similar case over the same article, which said the government was only paying lip service to the promotion of the Tamil language, spoken by a small minority of Singapore's population.