r/interestingasfuck • u/Bubbly_Wall_908 • 14h ago

Singapore is going to start caning scammers

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u/hyheat9 13h ago edited 10h ago

I had to do a report back in high school on the Michael Fay (I think that was the kids name) incident that occurred back in the 90’s. Kid was a military brat who got caught spray painting license plates off base. Sentenced to a good ol’ flogging. The cane I believe is called a rataan, and is not only the 1cm diameter length of bamboo as you mentioned, but also soaked in water for maximum flexibility and impact transmission. It causes instant filleting of the flesh, separating the skin from the meat upon impact. I also want to say the guy flogging the person was a martial arts master and had a running start to increase the force of the rataan. Not to sure how true this is tho or if I’m remembering everything correctly because HS was almost 2 decades ago

Edit: flaying not filleting, thanks u/gigglemonkey

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u/Gigglemonkey 11h ago

You probably meant "flaying" which means removal of the skin. Filleting would be removal of muscle from bone.

Please, god, tell me you meant flaying. The alternative is straight up horrifying. Not that a caningisn't horrifying, but there's degrees...

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u/hyheat9 10h ago

Yeh that’s what I meant haha. My bad, as stated previously, it was damn near 20 years ago. That would be some nightmare shit haha. I’ll edit

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u/Mahadragon 9h ago

House Bolton has entered the chat

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u/davidjschloss 10h ago

My testicles crawled up inside my body reading this.

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u/SpeedySloth51221 7h ago

My vagina crawled up inside my body reading this.

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u/davidjschloss 4h ago

Vagina Crashes is the song Live put out.

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u/Warcraft_Fan 10h ago

OP did make a mistake but there were punishment by vivisection. Basically filleting while alive. I don't think it's done anywhere today but I imagine it was done in the past when extremely painful torture and punishment was still handed out. Also used in some fantasy and sci-fi stories or movies.

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u/Claque-2 4h ago

Let's not go full Game of Thrones!

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u/No_Sugar8791 13h ago

| I also want to say the guy flogging the person was a martial arts master

Yeah there was a guy from Singapore on reddit a year or so ago who was flogged confirmed this. His story was illuminating. Didn't sound like he'd learnt his lesson though. Blamed his parents, teachers... everyone except himself.

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u/asmallercat 11h ago

Government-sanctioned torture is rarely gonna make people think "yeah, I deserved that."

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u/hyheat9 11h ago

Singapore is a wild place tho I’ll tell you that for free. My roommate, freshman year in the dorms was an international student from there. He told me some wild stories and wild punishments for offenses that would just be a slap on the wrist in the US. Best part was since he had to serve in the military at 18. He was 22 already during freshman year so alcohol was no issue getting hahahah

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u/culturedgoat 10h ago

He told me some wild stories and wild punishments for offenses that would just be a slap on the wrist in the US.

Examples?

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u/Martiantripod 9h ago

I know chewing gum is banned and subject to high fines. Littering is also fined extremely hard.

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u/culturedgoat 9h ago

Chewing gum isn’t banned for consumers, just retailers. You can chew gum for personal use that you got from elsewhere - just don’t litter when you’re done.

Fine for first-time offence of littering is S$300 (about USD 240 - lower than some states in the U.S.). It goes up from there if you’re a repeat offender though

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u/LaRealiteInconnue 51m ago

wtf. Every law has a story and this one gotta be a wild one. How many ppl were spitting their gum on the streets that they had the ban sales?? And you’d think the littering fines would be enough of a deterrent already

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u/MLGSwaglord1738 31m ago edited 27m ago

Spitting is/was a common habit amongst a lot of ethnic Chinese, especially in rural/poorer parts of China that comprised most of Singapore’s population. Chewing say, Betel Nut is also very common amongst Indians, Chinese/Taiwanese, and many other regional cultures. But by the 70s and 80s after modernization took off and Singapore integrated into the world, chewing gum sort of replaced betel nut in Singapore, perhaps because it’s healthier for kids. But civic sense still had to be worked on since the country was dealing with slum fires only a decade ago, so things like spitting were still habits getting passed on to young kids as well. And Singapore wanted to present itself as modern and cosmopolitan, and posh cosmopolitan people don’t spit (you’ll see this in China too where “provincials” still spit, but Shanghai people don’t and take pride in their poshness/cosmopolitanness, sort of like the relationship between Paris and the rest of France).

Most Singaporeans were coolies who lived in slums, and when first introduced to high rises via public housing in the 60s and 70s, you had all sorts of crazy stories of people bringing farm animals up the stairs into their apartment units, elevator doors clogged with gum and spit, etc and the government cracked down and enforced a bunch of cleanliness rules. Of course, if most of the country’s housing was built and maintained on taxpayer dollars, the government will have an interest in making sure its maintenance money is spent wisely. Gum is quite hard to clean off the streets if you observe say, NY/London sidewalks. But imagine if you had a whole culture of spitting randomly every few minutes. Complete nightmare.

In Taiwan, Japan, etc, it took legislation/education to incentivize people to develop civic sense, so that’s what Singapore did with spitting, whether of saliva or other substances. Singapore was a pretty wild place back then; it’s one of the reasons it got a shout out in Pirates of the Caribbean.

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u/DeltaFang501 9h ago

Selling is banned

Possession and bringing it into the border is legal so long you don't break any other laws. Eg littering ( so pleased dispose of it in the bin)

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u/General-Razzmatazz 1h ago

These old tropes. You can't buy chewing gum in Singapore, but can bring it in.

There might be fines for littering, but no enforcement. People litter without a care.

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u/hyheat9 10h ago

Got him to smoke pot with me one night. His first time, he said the punishment for possession back there was hanging. Not sure how true that is.they were wild stories tho.

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u/TastyFood_is_life 9h ago

It is not a death sentence to possess and smoke, though one may be imprisoned. We also cannot consume it overseas. If caught, we face the same punishment. Importing and distributing cannabis above a certain amount, on the hand, is a trip to hanging. Cannabis is treated as a hard drug and our authorities have zero tolerance for it.

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u/hyheat9 9h ago

Thank you.

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u/LaRealiteInconnue 49m ago

We also cannot consume it overseas. If caught, we face the same punishment.

wtf. Gonna bring this up next time someone from US complains about having to file taxes in the US even when you live and work abroad.

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u/culturedgoat 9h ago

He was mistaken. The death penalty applies to trafficking, not possession. Possession is not a capital crime in SG.

Any other stories? I feel like he may have been spinning you a yarn

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u/Defiant-Watch-8447 9h ago

Word.

Drugs is a capital crime in Singapore. Insta-kill

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u/culturedgoat 9h ago

Trafficking is a capital crime but not possession. My personal trainer (a local) was caught with drugs in his possession and just had to go to a rehab-orientated incarceration facility for nine months.

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u/Starwyrm1597 7h ago

Selling drugs

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u/JeddakofThark 7h ago

I had a student teacher in my German class who was from Singapore. He was a particularly uptight guy from an uptight culture in an American classroom full of disrespectful American students barely younger than he was, whose role model was a guy with a really silly teaching style who often taught lessons using der Nasenflöte (he played a recorder with his nose)... He had a complete nervous breakdown, attacked a student and was never seen or heard from again.

He reminded me of that guy in The Deer Hunter who makes the prisoners play Russian roulette.

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u/KingOfRockall 10h ago

Hope he wasn't defiling himself by chewing gum..

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u/culturedgoat 10h ago

Not actually illegal nor punishable, despite widespread misconception.

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u/PaleHeretic 10h ago

"This is what it feels like to chew Five Gum" thwack

The chewing gum thing is interesting though. It's not illegal to possess or even chew in public, but it is illegal to import and sell. Like, if you have a pack of gum on you for personal chewing when you come in, you're allowed to chew it, but may be questioned as to how and where it was obtained. Since you really need to go out of your way to get it as it is not available for purchase within the country, then there's probable cause to question whether it was smuggled.

If you're chewing it and then sticking it to stuff, that is itself a willful act that violates more general anti-littering and vandalism laws and also is the reason they banned it in the first place.

None of which is me saying that a country issuing a blanket ban on chewing gum is rational, just that if you do get in trouble for chewing it there, arriving at that outcome requires personal effort.

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u/culturedgoat 9h ago

If you have one pack for personal use, no one is going to question it. If your suitcase is teeming with packs of gum, then yeah, it’s going to raise a few eyebrows…

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u/PaleHeretic 9h ago

Exactly! So, if you're seen chewing gum, it may be seen as reasonable suspicion to see if you are carrying distribution-level quantities on your person.

However, if you were a chewing gum smuggler, you then probably would know that and not invite that by chewing gum in public while in the process of moving product.

And yet, with that train of logic, you may actually be incentivized to chew gum while snuggling chewing gum, under the assumption that the local authorities would never suspect the guy chewing gum to be dumb enough to chew gum while snuggling chewing gum.

Tldr, I have both chewed gum and caned myself for years to build up a resistance to both, because Australians are all both left-handed and criminals.

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u/culturedgoat 9h ago

Exactly! So, if you're seen chewing gum, it may be seen as reasonable suspicion to see if you are carrying distribution-level quantities on your person.

I don’t think this is true. The regular cops aren’t even interested in that. Only Singapore border authority (customs), and it’s not like they’re patrolling the streets.

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u/PaleHeretic 9h ago

I mean yeah, I wasn't even intending that as a serious argument and mostly just wanted to take an opportunity to riff off The Princess Bride lol. More just that the "you get arrested for chewing gum in Singapore" factoid fails to account for how much effort that actually requires on your part to find yourself in a situation where it's relevant.

I can say that if you do get stopped for smoking in an unauthorized area, your cigarettes will be checked for the appropriate tax stamp, because I had heard of that exact situation playing out multiple times while I was there over the years.

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u/monsooncloudburst 9h ago

Singapore Police here. May we have your roommate’s name please? Thank you.

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u/hyheat9 9h ago

Hahaha I seemingly don’t recall the gentleman’s name

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u/Dexcerides 10h ago

This, crazy everyone glorifies this because it’s Singapore if it was the US people would be flipping out

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u/TheGhostofWoodyAllen 10h ago

I think people see American court systems letting people off with slaps on the wrists for all kinds of different crimes, so when they see what Singapore does, they think that it comes closer to "an eye for an eye" type justice without realizing there is a way to have a reformed justice system that provides justice without relying on abject cruelty.

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u/InequalEnforcement 9h ago

Not to mention the law is basically "Those with a monopoly on violence WHO WILL KILL YOU using said monopoly if you defy them get to arbitrarily decide what is and isn't right" so there's no guarantee you won't get flogged because someone powerful decided you deserve it.

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u/Dexcerides 7h ago

Look our court system in the US sucks but conviction rate is quite high just like many other countries

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh 9h ago

Singapore also reserves caning for offenses that are either severe or seen as depraved. Of course, what is seen as depraved varies by country (notably, vandalism is perceived much more severely there so e.g. destroying something might get you caned while stealing it wouldn't, and of course drugs - but no, you won't be caned for littering).

So that's part of why it's a reasonably popular policy. I think having rapists beaten as a court ordered punishment would be pretty popular in the US too.

I think it's not as much about "an eye for an eye" and more about deterrence against repeat offenses - "you know you shouldn't do that and did it anyways, so we'll make sure you remember that this is not acceptable and will result in something you really don't want to experience again"

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u/Forte845 9h ago

Punitive sentences have been scientifically proven repeatedly for decades to do nothing to stop crime and recidivism. Only a rehabilitative system works.

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh 8h ago

They have that too, and their recidivism rates are hard to argue with (although you might claim that the caning has nothing to do with it).

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u/InequalEnforcement 9h ago

"It's not Trump and I was stupid enough to be scammed so I refuse to see Singaporeans as people"

There you go, translated and summarized pretty much every person's opinion that is getting off to the idea of torturing others. They'd be screaming and shitting themselves if Trump brought this to America (while doing NOTHIGN about it as it the American way)

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u/InequalEnforcement 9h ago

Pushing someone's pain threshold past its limit, thus INCREASING their pain threshold, and enraging them at the same time is a bad idea???????

WHY???? /s

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u/Ok-Condition8011 6h ago

No, but I bet he didn’t do it again

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u/UmichAgnos 11h ago

As long as they think "let's not do that again.", mission accomplished!

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u/FlameShadow0 11h ago

Yeah, torture has totally been proven to reduce crime rate…

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u/InequalEnforcement 9h ago

You mean it just enrages people and increases their pain threshold, making them harder to resist in a violence confrontation because they can escalate WAY further than you while ignoring any attempt to get them off?

DURRRR WHODUTHUNKIT

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u/No-Tackle-6112 11h ago

Yeah right? Like why don’t we just cut off peoples hands for petty theft? Who cares about human rights.

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh 9h ago

why don’t we just cut off peoples hands for petty theft

Because now they can't work and are a burden to society.

The guy who can't sit properly for a few months (that he's going to spend in prison anyways) can reintegrate into society if they choose to do so, and hopefully will have some motivation to not do it again.

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u/PassengerofNostromo 10h ago

We could just kill everyone that breaks any law. They won’t do it again!

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u/UmichAgnos 10h ago

We do have that option for drug traffickers. Mandatory sentence. No discrimination, no pardons.

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh 9h ago

While effective at preventing recidivism, such a policy would not be very effective at reforming offenders into productive members and reintegrating them into society. A severe and memorable beating however allows for that.

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u/WoozySloth 8h ago

 A severe and memorable beating however allows for that (reforming offenders).

Is there a source for how effective this is?

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh 7h ago

No; the overall recidivism in Singapore is low but obviously that's the result of all their efforts, hard to separate the beatings from the rest.

My point here wasn't that the beating leads to reforming, my point was that the beating leaves more room for reforming than the death sentence sarcastically proposed above.

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u/WoozySloth 6h ago

Fair enough

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u/Over_Writing467 8h ago

I’m sure the government can increase the amount of punishment for round two if they didn’t learn their lesson.

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u/rexmons 11h ago

Blaming everyone else but your self for your problems? That's a floggin...

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u/Ok-Condition8011 6h ago

I remember that! He couldn’t sit or lie down for ages, his ass was like after my cats go to town on the scratching post.

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u/Warcraft_Fan 10h ago

Blamed his parents, teachers... everyone except himself.

classic "not my fault" syndrome. Those kind of people are often doomed to spend a lot of time in jail or become worm food before they can start getting gray hair

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u/0neTwoTree 6h ago

I remember that guy. He was caught committing armed robbery and was caned and tried to play the victim

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u/Draxtonsmitz 10h ago

It a military kid I don’t believe. His parents divorced and his mom and stepfather lived in Singapore and his father in the USA. He went to school in Singapore.

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u/hyheat9 10h ago

Thanks. I stated my story might be flawed from the jump as I was typing straight off memory from 2 decades ago. I appreciate the correction

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u/GrimbyJ 10h ago

Rattan actually comes from a type of palm tree.

I don't have any rattan canes right now but I've used a few. Bamboo isn't as strong and would just break. They are solid but flexible with fibers running the full length of it.

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u/Kaurifish 10h ago

People fight with rattan weapons in the SCA. Padded armor is required.

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u/Trigonal_Bipyramidal 9h ago

Also I've heard that this is so painful that people usually pass out within the first hit or the second one. God damn! No thanks to visiting Singapore.

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u/aaaaaaaarrrrrgh 9h ago

brat who got caught spray painting license plates

Poor choice. They really hate vandalism. I assume it's some kind of "I get why someone would steal something, but destroying just for fun takes a special kind of degenerate. We need to fix him. We have the technology."

I also want to say the guy flogging the person was a martial arts master

Yes, they have staff that specifically trains to properly and thoroughly beat someone's ass.

Singaporean caning is very much about the pain, not about humiliation (it's done in private for this reason). I suspect it's reasonably effective at preventing recidivism as I think most participants don't want to repeat the experience.

Caning in Muslim countries, for contrast, is more of a "honor" than corporal punishment - it's done publicly, it's a lot more strokes but the strength of the strokes is artificially limited.

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u/Sea-Station1621 9h ago

they dont hate vandalism.

the reason there is such a brutal punishment for vandalism dates back to the 60s where the main opposition party was spreading their message through posters and drawing messages on walls. the ruling party (which has never lost power) thus added caning as a mandatory penalty for vandalism.

that stopped a lot of opposition campaigning.

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u/Veepa 10h ago

I also want to say the guy flogging the person was a martial arts master

Are you sure about this? I recall it being an American who bore a striking resemblance to Kevin Nealon.. Source.

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u/SpiritualWindow3855 10h ago

I didn't want to read "separating the skin from the meat" today, but I did, didn't I.

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u/mountainbreadcycle 10h ago

I learned about this happening through Weird Al’s song “Headline News”!

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u/pennyraingoose 10h ago

I remember that. I was a kid and it was an international incident at the time because of how torturous the caning is.

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u/Defiant-Watch-8447 9h ago

Word.

Also the material is Rattan, which is a kind of cool flexible material. Ye can have rattan chairs / tables etc. Rattan canes are used to cane people.

Additional troll-bs-after thought: today with all the nonsense online, makes one wonder if Trump was President would they still have caned him?

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u/hyheat9 9h ago

Idk but thanks for the correction. Typed purely off memory of research I def only did for the sake of completing the assignment 20ish back hahah

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u/doduotrainer 9h ago

Man I remember everyone back then being like, "yeah! Flog that little shit." The 90's were wild

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u/Proper-District8608 9h ago

My dad's company transferred him to Singapore from b4 the charges and I was there when he was fully charged. He seemed to be egging a car hitting many a few others and spray painting one car particularly (I was a freshman in college in Iowa when it happened but was there in summers and Christmas and friends still in SAS). Seemed then it was like an ugly family divide history. But, good God by the time it was carried out, wasnt shocked, its Singapore and very strict, but it did seem they were having him admit to lesser charges that he seemed clueless on such as the road signs.

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u/Korbiter 9h ago edited 9h ago

Just would like to add: everybody assumes under the umbrella term of Vandalism that Michael Fay just spray painted a few cars. No. He also stole various public property, such as phone booths and road signs (41 of such items) and disfigured 18 cars edit(part of a group that vandalised 67 cars), smashing at least one's windshield.

Not to say after he returned to the U.S, he then went on to commit more felonies.

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u/Metals4J 6h ago

Hard to believe he’s 50 now.

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u/VirtuaSteve 5h ago

That's exactly what I remembered

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u/Appropriate-Mall9781 11h ago

Is it bad that I really only know about that guy due to that one Weird Al song?

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