Singapore Swing
News that Singapore has sentenced a Swiss national for spray-painting graffiti brings back memories – and they are not good. The two cases are not parallel, but there are similarities to the infamous Michael Fay affair of 1994. It was worse on Fay, of course, but it colored my entire experience of living and working in Singapore, where I managed the American Embassy’s commercial section.
Fay's painting wasn't this good.
Fay was arrested and charged with spray-painting cars and also stealing road signs. He wasn’t the only kid involved, but most of the others had managed to be spirited out of the country by concerned parents before Singapore would have seized their passports. Fay was a student at the Singapore American School, where our son knew him slightly. Our son avoided Fay, who seemed to him to be a “bad apple”. Probably a good judgment, as Fay certainly was not a choir boy.
That said, Singapore’s behavior as the case progressed was a bit peculiar. Fay and his buddies had, probably unknowingly, included the car of one of Singapore’s supreme court justices among their targets, raising the case to a higher level than it likely deserved. This was an era when Singapore’s Lee Kwan Yew was competing with Malaysia’s Mahathir bin Mohamad to see who could better diss the imperialist Americans. We were in the middle of the great Asian values debate, which collapsed so quickly during the Asian financial crisis three years later.
Singapore had two laws under which Fay could have been prosecuted. One was the Malicious Mischief Act, which carried penalties of a fine and a jail sentence – and which had been used in local cases of graffiti-style spray-painting to that point. The other was the Vandalism Act, originally used to combat spray-painting of Communist political slogans on public buildings, and which carried fines, a jail sentence and caning. Fay’s crime did not involve either political slogans or public buildings, but the Vandalism Act was the law he was charged under. Some say that Lee Kwan Yew himself made the decision. When convicted, Fay was sentenced to six strokes of the cane, a small fine and four months in prison.
It’s interesting to note that the Vandalism Act was used in today’s case as well, though the crime was spray-painting non-Communist slogans on train cars (see it here), not a public building. And the current case involves breaking and entering, an aggravating element that did not arise in the Fay case. With the added charge, Swiss Oliver Fricker was sentenced to only three strokes of the cane, but he did get five months in prison.
Vandalism was a hot topic in America at the time of the Michael Fay case, many cities being faced with the dual challenges of gang activity and the new “sport” of tagging. Probably most Americans viewed caning as something like being spanked with a switch, failing to realize that the cane is a bamboo pole, soaked in water to make it heavier, and wielded by a martial arts expert. Certainly the Clinton White House did not realize this in the beginning, despite substantial communication from the American Embassy in Singapore. They glommed on to it later when President Clinton made his appeal for clemency that succeeded only in getting the caning sentence reduced from six strokes to four.
There were some other oddities. Normally, in any kind of diplomatic fracas, informal communication continues between the two sides. This is absolutely essential if the countries involved are to be able to have “what if” discussions. “What if” my side takes this action, or your does that – so surprises are kept to a minimum and mutually acceptable solutions have a chance of being developed. Singapore shut this off. The Embassy could find no one to talk to in the Foreign Ministry, the judicial system, or any other part of the Singapore Government. Word had obviously gone out from on high not to talk to the Americans. This likely led to Singapore’s seemingly honest surprise that the White House was angered when Fay’s caning sentence was reduced by only two strokes. Singapore’s foreign policy objective had been achieved when President Clinton asked for clemency, but keeping the four strokes just rubbed it in and kept Singapore under a cloud during the remainder of the Clinton Administration.
I’ll never the forget the morning I walked out of the U.S. Embassy while Fay was awaiting trial. I had just been in a meeting about the Fay affair, when I was accosted by a Singapore woman sympathetic to Fay. She had an armload of books she wanted to send to him in jail so he could have something to read, and asked me how she could do it. I told her to go right into the Embassy and speak to one of the consular officers who was visiting Fay. She said she couldn’t do that. When I asked why, she pointed to several spots around the Embassy where she said Singapore had mounted cameras to keep track of who entered or left. I had been briefed by Embassy security and saw that this woman had nailed every one of the surveillance cameras! I nodded and took the books from her, delivering them to the consular section myself.
Don’t get me wrong. There are many things I love about Singapore and I admire the Lion City’s many accomplishments. The Fay affair, unfortunately, is not among the things I admire.
