Fay, a private-school student who pleaded guilty last month to disfiguring two cars with eggs and spray paint, moved a step closer last week to his six lashes from a moistened rattan cane. The chief justice of Singapore rejected an appeal, which was accompanied by diplomatic protests and a plea for mercy early last month from President Clinton. Fay’s last hope is a grant of clemency from Singapore’s President Ong Teng Cheong. “We continue to believe caning is an excessive penalty for a youthful nonviolent offender who pleaded guilty to repairable crimes against private property,” said Ralph Boyce, charge d’affaires at the local U.S. Embassy.
But Singapore is a country that pursues law and order with a vengeance. Trafficking in more than a half ounce of heroin is punishable by hanging. Chewing gum is illegal because it messes up the sidewalks; violators can be fined $316. There is little sympathy for Fay or any other vandal. “Singaporeans have no reason to be defensive about the stringency of the laws they live by,” a pro-government newspaper, The Straits Times, editorialized last week.
If Fay fails to receive clemency, he’ll be stripped and bound by the hands and ankles to a wooden trestle. Pads covering his kidneys and groin will be his only protection from the cane, which is usually wielded by a martial-arts expert. “Pieces of skin and flesh fly at each stroke,” reports a Singapore newspaper. Should he pass out from the pain, a doctor will be on hand to revive him. Then the caning will resume. The wounds can take about two weeks to heal; scarring is permanent. “I couldn’t sit or sleep on my back or bathe all this time … The pain burns in your mind long after it is over,” says a Singapore businessman, describing for a local paper in 1988 the 12 strokes he received.
The ordeal has already taken its toll on Fay himself Free on bail until last week, he has spent most of the month since his sentencing hospitalized for depression, according to news reports. Randy Chan, his mother, says he is “very, very scared. He just doesn’t understand why this is happening to him.” Some Singaporeans think their government is sending a message to its own teenagers: don’t be lured by Western freedoms-or Western excesses.
