Torture by Police, Forced Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment In the early years of the 21st Century, 2000 to
2025 gvnet.com/torture/Singapore.htm
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CAUTION: The following links
have been culled from the web to illuminate the situation in Singapore. Some of these links may lead to websites
that present allegations that are unsubstantiated or even false. No attempt
has been made to validate their authenticity or to verify their content. HOW TO USE THIS WEBPAGE Students If you are looking
for material to use in a term-paper, you are advised to scan the postings on
this page and others to see which aspects of Torture by Authorities are of
particular interest to you. You might
be interested in exploring the moral justification for inflicting pain or
inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment in order to obtain critical
information that may save countless lives, or to elicit a confession for a
criminal act, or to punish someone to teach him a lesson outside of the
courtroom. Perhaps your paper might
focus on some of the methods of torture, like fear, extreme temperatures,
starvation, thirst, sleep deprivation, suffocation, or immersion in freezing
water. On the other hand, you might
choose to write about the people acting in an official capacity who
perpetrate such cruelty. There is a
lot to the subject of Torture by Authorities.
Scan other countries as well as this one. Draw comparisons between activity in
adjacent countries and/or regions.
Meanwhile, check out some of the Term-Paper resources
that are available on-line. ***
ARCHIVES *** 2020 Country
Reports on Human Rights Practices: Singapore U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, 30 March 2021 www.state.gov/reports/2020-country-reports-on-human-rights-practices/singapore/
[accessed 5 August
2021] TORTURE AND OTHER
CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT The law mandates
imprisonment and mandatory caning for approximately 30 offenses, such as
certain cases of rape, robbery, and drug trafficking. Caning is discretionary
for convictions on other charges involving the use of force, such as
kidnapping or voluntarily causing grievous hurt. Caning also may be used as a
punishment for legally defined offenses while in prison, if a review by the
Institutional Discipline Advisory Committee deems it necessary and the
commissioner of prisons approves. Women and girls, men older than 50 years
and boys younger than 16, men sentenced to death whose sentences were not
commuted, and persons determined medically unfit were exempt from punishment
by caning. Freedom House
Country Report 2020 Edition freedomhouse.org/country/singapore/freedom-world/2020 [accessed 18 May
2020] F3. IS THERE
PROTECTION FROM THE ILLEGITIMATE USE OF PHYSICAL FORCE AND FREEDOM FROM WAR
AND INSURGENCIES? Singaporeans are
largely protected against the illegitimate use of force and are not directly
exposed to war or insurgencies. Prisons generally meet international
standards. However, the penal code mandates corporal punishment in the form
of caning, in addition to imprisonment, for about 30 offenses, and it can
also be used as a disciplinary measure in prisons. Singapore continues to
impose the death penalty for crimes including drug trafficking. Thirteen
people were executed during 2018; complete information on executions during
2019 was not available at year’s end. Singapore rejects
criticism that caning is `torture` Zee News, 9 March
2015 zeenews.india.com/news/world/singapore-rejects-criticism-that-caning-is-torture_1558648.html [accessed 6 April
2015] Singapore on Monday
defended a court order for two German men to be caned for spray-painting a
metro train and trespassing into a high-security depot, rejecting claims the
punishment amounts to torture. US-based Human
Rights Watch has slammed Singapore`s continued use of caning -- a punishment
dating back to British colonial rule -- as a "shameful recourse to using
torture". "Singapore`s
laws against vandalism are well known. Caning is a prescribed punishment for
the offence of vandalism, and the law applies to any person who chooses to
break it," a spokeswoman for the Attorney-General`s Chambers told AFP. "Caning is not
torture. It is carried out in Singapore under strict standards, monitored at
all times by a doctor," she added. Human
Rights Watch World Report 2015 - Events of 2014 Human Rights Watch,
29 January 2015 www.hrw.org/world-report/2015/...
or
www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/wr2015_web.pdf [accessed 18 March
2015] SINGAPORE CRIMINAL JUSTICE
SYSTEM
- Singapore continues to use the Internal Security Act (ISA) and Criminal Law
(Temporary Provisions) to arrest and administratively detain persons for
virtually unlimited periods without charge or judicial review. Government
authorities publicly maintain that such laws are necessary to protect
Singapore from international terrorist threats. Authorities did not report
any new arrests under the ISA in 2014. Yong Vui Kong, who had his death sentence for drug-running
commuted to life imprisonment and now faces a 15-stroke caning, has mounted a
constitutional challenge to caning, asserting it violates Singapore’s
constitution and customary international law that prohibits torture and other
cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. The challenge was
pending before the Supreme Court at time of writing. AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL From an old article -- URL not available Article was
published sometime prior to 2015 TORTURE AND OTHER
ILL-TREATMENT
- Judicial caning – a practice amounting to torture or other ill-treatment –
continued as a punishment for a wide range of criminal offences. Drug traffickers
sentenced to life imprisonment instead of the mandatory death penalty would
be liable to caning under proposed amendments to the Misuse of Drugs Act. Search … AMNESTY
INTERNATIONAL For more
articles:: Search Amnesty
International’s website www.amnesty.org/en/search/?q=singapore+torture&ref=&year=&lang=en&adv=1&sort=relevance [accessed 14 January 2019] Scroll
Down ***
EARLIER EDITIONS OF SOME OF THE ABOVE *** Human Rights
Reports » 2005 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and
Labor, March 8, 2006 www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61626.htm [accessed 11
February 2013] 2009-2017.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/2005/61626.htm [accessed 5 July
2019] TORTURE
AND OTHER CRUEL, INHUMAN, OR DEGRADING TREATMENT OR PUNISHMENT – The law
prohibits such practices, and the government generally respected these
prohibitions. In March 2004 a detainee claimed that in 2003 police officers
used physical means to force him to confess and threatened to arrest his
wife. The trial judge ruled that the confession was involuntary, refused to
allow it into evidence, and subsequently acquitted the man of all charges. In
August 2004 the High Court sustained the ruling that the confession was
involuntary and disallowed it. It nonetheless found the accused guilty and
sentenced him to two years' imprisonment. The police force took no action
against the officers accused of using "physical means" because the
detainee had not lodged a complaint prior to the trial. In previous years
there were some cases of alleged police mistreatment of detainees. Persons
alleging mistreatment were permitted to bring criminal charges against
government officials suspected of involvement. The media reported fully on
allegations of police abuse, and the government took action against abusers. All
material used herein reproduced under the fair use exception of 17 USC § 107
for noncommercial, nonprofit, and educational use. PLEASE RESPECT COPYRIGHTS OF COMPONENT
ARTICLES. Cite this
webpage as: Patt, Prof. Martin, " Torture by Police, Forced
Disappearance & Other Ill Treatment in the early years of the 21st
Century- Singapore", http://gvnet.com/torture/Singapore.htm, [accessed
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