by Eric Feigenbaum
Like the Montagues and Capulets, the owners of Zam Zam and Victory restaurants – adjacent to one another on Singapore’s North Bridge Road – have been at war for roughly a century. A one-time partnership turned bad led to two families operating restaurants with almost identical menus to operate in parallel.
The fare is simple involving various kinds of roti prata and murtabak – a Malaya-originated dish of giant pratas filled with seasoned chicken, egg and onion – and sometimes other fillings, served with a bowl of curry sauce for dipping. These “greasy spoon” specialties are often served 24 hours a day and are a common “after the bars close” foods.
Channel News Asia – Singapore’s equivalent to CNN – reported on the judicial proceedings around a mid-2015 crime:
The owner of Zam Zam, 49-year-old Zackeer Abbass Khan, conspired with several others to have Victory restaurant supervisor Liakath Ali Mohamed Ibrahim slashed and scarred.
He had instructed business associate and long-time friend Anwer Ambiya Kadir Maideen, 50, to procure an attack on the victim, offering money to get the job done.
Anwer then hired secret society member Joshua Navindran Surainthiran to slash the victim’s face with a knife on Aug 26, 2015.
The victim was left with a permanent scar, and Joshua was sentenced to six-and-a-half years’ jail and six strokes of the cane in 2016 for several charges in relation to the case.
On March 6, 2020 District Judge Mathew Joseph found both Zackeer and Anwer guilty of conspiring to voluntarily cause grievous hurt.
“Business rivalry is a common occurrence,” Judge Mathew said. “It’s part of everyday commerce and it is to be taken in its stride. In the case of Victory and Zam Zam restaurants, both are household names in Singapore,” the judge said, adding that their rivalry has spanned almost 100 years. “This is not surprising as murtabak is a very popular and tasty food item eaten at all times of the day and night in Singapore.”
On Monday May 11, 2020 Judge Mathew sentenced Zackeer to six years in jail and six strokes of the cane.
In California, a crime like Zackeer’s would likely get three years in prison if charged as a felony and not pled down. That said, it can also be charged as a misdemeanor in which case a year in county jail and $10,000 fine are the ceiling of the sentence that might be imposed. Under no circumstance would corporal punishment be imposed.
Singapore’s approach to criminal justice is one of its most controversial features – at least among its Western friends.
As I’ve touched on before, the 1994 Michael Fay incident in which a 15-year-old American boy was sentenced to six strokes of the rattan cane for vandalism and graffiti became a major international news story that even drew intervention by then President Bill Clinton. The element of permanently scarring corporal punishment – especially when inflicted on a minor – was seen by Americans as “cruel and unusual” and something that would not be acceptable, let alone constitutional in the United States.
Ironically, while American standards of “cruel and unusual” were shaped by the British, so were Singaporeans’. Caning in British Malaya began in the 19th Century and was applied in the same circumstances as flogging would have been in the United Kingdom. In 1871, caning was incorporated into the Straits Settlement Penal Code. Much like the firing squad remains a method of executing capital punishment in Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Utah – so caning has remained in not just the Singaporean legal system, but also Malaysia’s where rape, violence or drug trafficking, illegal immigration, bribery, and criminal breach of trust are subject to corporal punishment.
What many don’t realize is Singaporean law works off the same British Common Law system as the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and most other former British possessions. Singapore proudly boasts an honest corruption-free independent judiciary. It parts from its friends over the severity of punishment. Harsh sentences including corporal and capital punishment are the norm in Singapore.
However, Singapore’s incarcerated population is 9,900 out of its roughly six-million-person population, or 164 incarcerated per 100,000. By comparison, the United States incarcerates 531 persons per 100,000. In 2023, Singaporeans experienced one violent crime and 145 theft and property crimes per 100,000. The United States recorded 381 violent crimes and 1,954 property crimes per 100,000. A marked difference.
Singaporean leaders will tell you the severity of punishment acts as a strong deterrence – in part because this was a belief the country’s founders took from the Japanese occupation of Singapore from 1942 to 1945 which was marked by extreme brutality to the local population.
“The Japanese Military Administration governed by spreading fear. It put up no pretense of civilized behavior,” Founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew once explained, “Punishment was so severe that crime was very rare. As a result, I have never believed those who advocate a soft approach to crime and punishment, claiming that punishment does not reduce crime.”
Naturally, there are excellent arguments to be made that Singapore’s commendably low crime rate has other causative factors including the role of family and schools, social and economic safety nets, percentage of homeownership, quality of education, access to healthcare, wealth distribution and more.
That said the rate of drug trafficking arrests largely falls on foreign actors. The penalty for bringing drugs of any volume into Singapore is death. It’s much harder to ignore the likely linkage between punishment and crime rates in this area.
To understand Singapore’s views on crime and punishment, it helps to learn a little under-reported history. Nearly from the city-state’s inception, Singapore’s leadership decided bowing to international pressure was more problematic than defiance. On March 10, 1965 two Indonesian terrorists set-off a nitroglycerine bomb in MacDonald House, an office building primarily used by HSBC along Singapore’s prominent Orchard Road. Three workers were killed. This was part of a greater terrorist campaign in an unofficial war between Indonesia on one side and Singapore and Malaysia on the other.
The bombers were both Indonesian marines and were caught when their motorboat experienced mechanical trouble as they attempted to escape Singapore. Given they were in plain clothes and disavowed acting on behalf of the Indonesian government which did not want to be seen as a terrorist state – the two men were tried as civilians.
Singapore became an independent country in August 1965 and had not yet developed any real military, Indonesia was a much larger geographically, population-wise and militarily. Nascent Singapore had every reason to want good relations with its formidable neighbor. The Indonesian government tried to capitalize on this and attempted to intercede on behalf of its two captured nationals.
Singapore decided its neighbors understood power better than overtures and that clemency would weaken its standing with Indonesia and any other potential aggressor. Instead, on October 17, 1968 the bombers were hung in Changi Prison.
It was a pivotal moment for Singapore diplomatically and in establishing itself as a nation of law and order.
“I always thought that humanity was animal-like. The Confucian theory was that Man can be improved. I’m not sure he can be, but he can be trained, he can be disciplined,” Lee Kuan Yew said in a July 2009 interview with National Geographic.
That thinking clearly became a cultural outlook spanning generations. The Singapore Ministry of Home Affairs’ 2023 study on public perceptions of Singaporean drug policy, including punishment both for abusers and traffickers revealed 70 percent of the population supports the Death Penalty for drug trafficking. Of course, that was lower than support of imprisonment (93 percent) and caning (80 percent).
Moreover, 77 percent of Singaporeans believe the Death Penalty should be used for the most serious crimes and 87 percent agree Singapore’s existing drug policies are effective at keeping the country relatively free of drugs.
Singaporean public support for corporal and capital punishment for crimes that carry lesser sentences in the Western democracies is unequivocal.
In the end, whether Singapore’s approach to judicial punishment is effective really depends on how the goals are defined. Increasing bodies of sociological studies show punishment – imprisonment and corporal punishment – are not especially effective deterrents because by and large, people committing crimes – especially violent ones – are not rational actors. This goes hand-in-hand with the work of economists like Dan Ariely who specialize in Irrational Economics – showing how in many cases, Classical Economics’ assumptions of humans as rational actors is incorrect. We in fact have misperceptions and frequently act emotionally, impulsively or from behaviors developed for evolutionary survival.
On the other hand, if the goal is to remove criminals from society, imprisonment is highly effective. Similarly, if the goal of corporal punishment is to deliver justice, it may offer an opportunity to reduce prison populations thereby alleviating strains on government budgets. Administrating a caning, for example, is much cheaper than housing a prisoner for ten years.
In reality, there has been no public conversation on the role and goals of judicial punishments in Singapore. By and large, Singaporeans – not unlike Americans – have accepted the outlook of their leaders who themselves have worked from anecdotal evidence and traditional beliefs. Formal studies on to what extent punishment actually deters – particularly judicial corporal punishment – are relatively recent and few.
It is just as possible Singapore’s low crime rate is more linked to its population living higher up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs than many other societies. At the same time, there is no evidence Singapore’s approach to crime and punishment is either wrong or backfiring. So, if nothing’s broken, it seems unlikely anything will be changing.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.