Warning-- How Singapore Deals with Crime

[MrMan]

I have been to Singapore many times on visa runs when I lived in Indonesia. One time before a trip there, during a conversation with my mother, she told me Singapore sounded dangerous. I thought that was funny. People let you cross the street in Indonesia. They try to drive around you and just barely miss you in Jakarta. Singapore is a developed, well-ordered society, especially compared to it's chaotic neighbor Indonesia.

But I know why she said that. Back in the 1990's, a young American was sentenced to caning for taking down street signs and vandalizing cars. A Singaporean friend of mine said he spray painted the wrong judges car. Whatever the case, he was caned, and it was in the news.

Singaporean caning is brutal. They strip the men naked and line them up to be caned with just a cloth over their penis.. They have to stand with feet far apart to maximize pain and damage. Kidneys are padded. A trained martial artist dips a rattan rod in salt water and whacks the buttocks with maximum strength up to 160 kilometers an hour. A doctor can call of the beating and let them save more strokes for later if the prisoner is deemed unable to take more. After three or four strokes, the cane starts taking flesh with it. Buttocks bleed. Men man poop, pee, or ejaculate during this ordeal as their bodies go haywire because of the pain and injury. Grown men wail and weep. Some faint. Caning leaves are permanent marks. Prisoners can't wear underwear and have to lay buttocks up for weeks. They moan and whine. They have difficulty pooping. They can end up with intestinal problems because of this. Some prisoners claim guards come play with their wounds to torment them. Guards can also cane prisoners in their cells.

Singapore also gives foreigners the death penalty if they bring drugs into the country. Be careful about delivering a package to a friend without opening it first. Don't let anyone sneak marijuana into your bag.

Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore. I accidentally brought some in and someone found it on me at the airport, but they let me keep it. They just don't sell it in Singapore (sigh of relief.) They didn't care if I chewed a few sticks. Kids were putting it in the doors of the MRT, so they outlawed it.

Singapore is tough on foreigners who stay in the country for an extended period of time past their visas. Also, if you overstay your visa, you could get caned. But I think if it is a day or two, it's $100 a day or something like that. But if you overstay for months, you could get 6 months in jail, your buttocks severely damaged for life, intestinal problems, and PTSD.

If you overstayed your visa for a very long time, it might be better just to put your passport in a bag like in the Shawshank redemption and swim to Johor. I don't know if you could come out of the water and get a visa stamp. You could go to the government and say you overstayed in Singapore, and take your penalty. They can jail your for 5 years, and charge you $240. But hopefully they just fine you and send you elsewhere. Another approach might be to get a boat to Batam. They can charge you a million rupiah, about $70 a day, for overstaying a visa there. If you road a boat there without a visa, you wouldn't have a stamp to date it against. One could probably illegally by a stamp in an immigration office for a few hundred bucks in Indonesia.

My understanding is that Singapore has a very low crime rate. I heard an announcement from this screen on the other side of the street while I was crossing the street once when I was there that said something like, "Singapore's crime rate is 0.2%. But be careful. Low crime does not mean no crime."

[kangarunner]

[MrMan]

They say the cane striking sounds like a bullet firing.

[kangarunner]

This world we live in is beautiful. But the majority of people in this world are despicable.

[Yohan]

I have been to Singapore many times on visa runs when I lived in Indonesia. One time before a trip there, during a conversation with my mother, she told me Singapore sounded dangerous. I thought that was funny. People let you cross the street in Indonesia. They try to drive around you and just barely miss you in Jakarta. Singapore is a developed, well-ordered society, especially compared to it's chaotic neighbor Indonesia.

But I know why she said that. Back in the 1990's, a young American was sentenced to caning for taking down street signs and vandalizing cars. A Singaporean friend of mine said he spray painted the wrong judges car. Whatever the case, he was caned, and it was in the news.

I am fine with this, Singapore was teaching him a lesson, he left after his release from jail and never came back.

About visa-run, the country you should criticize is Indonesia, it's not a country which welcome foreigners for longstay.

Singaporean caning is brutal. They strip the men naked and line them up to be caned with just a cloth over their penis.. They have to stand with feet far apart to maximize pain and damage.

Singapore also gives foreigners the death penalty if they bring drugs into the country. Be careful about delivering a package to a friend without opening it first. Don't let anyone sneak marijuana into your bag.

Not so much difference to Malaysia, about the same rules. These are old laws which were created by UK and after independence they were taken over by these local governments. The problem I have with these and some other laws that they are gender-specific. Only men will be punished in that way but not women, even if they commit identical crimes.

Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore. I accidentally brought some in and someone found it on me at the airport, but they let me keep it. They just don't sell it in Singapore (sigh of relief.) They didn't care if I chewed a few sticks. Kids were putting it in the doors of the MRT, so they outlawed it.

I can live without chewing gum and I do not spit or piss etc. on a public road in Singapore and elsewhere.
If you cannot live without chewing gum, use it only in your private rooms and you will be fine.

Singapore is tough on foreigners who stay in the country for an extended period of time past their visas. Also, if you overstay your visa, you could get caned.

Again, this applies only to men and never to women, Singapore is a rather feminist orientated society.

About crimes in Singapore, it is crime-low and not crime-free. There is no crime-free country existing I think.
It's anyway a small city-state, rather costly and not so much to see, no reason to overstay... I would say, if you have no working contract there, you will likely leave within one or two weeks. I consider Singapore merely as a transit point to other destinations.

[MrMan]

I have been to Singapore many times on visa runs when I lived in Indonesia. One time before a trip there, during a conversation with my mother, she told me Singapore sounded dangerous. I thought that was funny. People let you cross the street in Indonesia. They try to drive around you and just barely miss you in Jakarta. Singapore is a developed, well-ordered society, especially compared to it's chaotic neighbor Indonesia.

But I know why she said that. Back in the 1990's, a young American was sentenced to caning for taking down street signs and vandalizing cars. A Singaporean friend of mine said he spray painted the wrong judges car. Whatever the case, he was caned, and it was in the news.

I am fine with this, Singapore was teaching him a lesson, he left after his release from jail and never came back.

The caning inflicts a very severe injury that takes 6 weeks to heal, can cause severe digestive issues (since it is difficult to defecate after such an injury, especially if there are multiple strokes. If an individual is deemed unable to withstand the full punishment, it can be stretched out over time. And prisoners say guards come and touch their wounds to torment them.

I think it is too harsh for some of the crimes. They could reserve it for more severe offenses like rape, homosexual activity, importing drugs (as opposed to the even more severe death penalty) and violent offenses.

About visa-run, the country you should criticize is Indonesia, it's not a country which welcome foreigners for longstay.

The visa run thing never made sense to me. Why do they require it? If they are going to require visa runs, why not set up a territory within their borders where someone can fly to, and spend hotel and tourist dollars, and keep some of the profits for themselves? But why require it in the first place?

It isn't the most friendly country for expats to retire to either. They only allow noncitizens to own airspace and the price for apartments that qualify are quite high.

Singaporean caning is brutal. They strip the men naked and line them up to be caned with just a cloth over their penis.. They have to stand with feet far apart to maximize pain and damage.

Chewing gum is illegal in Singapore. I accidentally brought some in and someone found it on me at the airport, but they let me keep it. They just don't sell it in Singapore (sigh of relief.) They didn't care if I chewed a few sticks. Kids were putting it in the doors of the MRT, so they outlawed it.

I can live without chewing gum and I do not spit or piss etc. on a public road in Singapore and elsewhere.
If you cannot live without chewing gum, use it only in your private rooms and you will be fine.

I used to chew gum when I was young, but I do not usually do so now, so it is no big deal for me, either. They just don't sell gum in Singapore. Owning or chewing it did not seem to be an issue.

I had a student in South Korea that said that in Singapore, there was a camera in elevators and they would fine you if you took a leak in the elevator and fine you if you didn't flush a toilet. Of course, I had a couple of questions. Why would anyone urinate in an elevator? He said if someone were really drunk, they might. That made more sense, considering I was living in South Korea. Drinking excessively is a problem there, and I've seen drunk Koreans taking a leak by the side of a small back road, heard a dude taking a dump outside, and even saw a guy in Seoul struggling to stand up as he took a leak literally in the middle of the street. It's just nasty, so I can see why they might put cameras in elevators to catch drunk Korean visitors if they had a lot of them.

It sounded like enforcement was unlikely for the toilet law. When I went there, they had a lot of electric toilet flushers, as I recall.

About crimes in Singapore, it is crime-low and not crime-free.

I was crossing the street there, and I saw a big screen and heard a message that said that crime was down to .02% (or some low number) but be careful. Low crime does not mean no crime.

It's anyway a small city-state, rather costly and not so much to see, no reason to overstay... I would say, if you have no working contract there, you will likely leave within one or two weeks. I consider Singapore merely as a transit point to other destinations.

Singapore is interesting for a few days. It's also a relief after having lived in Jakarta for while, a big crowded mess with wild traffic. A Singaporean hotel buffet might have bacon and other stuff that is a bit hard to get in Jakarta.

But Singapore is a bit dull after a while. There was a government department holding up my proper visa paperwork for a whlle back when I lived in Jakarta. So my employer had me on a business visit visa and my kids on another visa. I didn't have to go to the embassy (which is faster in Singapore) to renew our visa most of the time, just leave the country. We started going to Kuala Lumpur. I had a cousin with kids there, and our kids got along. I tried to set up a short trip to a beach resort island in Malaysia, but for some reason that didn't work out. The first place they put us up in in Malaysia had a not-so-nice room and breakfast that was stomach filler and little else. The 'fresh milk' tasted powdered. Then, we stayed in a service apartment with a really nice buffet, hung around there for an hour or two, and kept going back. Then the new head of HR got chincey and only wanted to pay for plane tickets, as exhausted as I was getting all those kids up early and taking them there. About that time I got my regular visa so it was only an issue once. I was a bit upset because the reason I was leaving was because they didn't provide me with a proper visa. Government issues were their problem.

KL is a little less crowded than Singapore. Maybe less developed, but not by much. We got around fine in English. I was able to see that I could actually speak Malay and get buy okay if I did that. But a lot of Malaysians that are not putri bumis (children of the land/earth) do not speak it.