Submitted by farhan on Sat, 06/06/2015 - 11:24am
Yesterday I attended Amos Yee’s
sentencing hearing at the State Courts at 9.30am. As you may be
aware, Amos has refused to accept probation. The AG had asked for
probation, presumably to save the PAP the international opprobrium
for jailing a child who had spoken the truth about the late Lee
Kuan Yew.
Instead Amos requested that he
serve a jail term instead. After all he had already served a longer
period in remand than the man who assaulted him received after
automatic good behaviour. However the AG objected and asked the
judge to sentence Amos to reformative training instead on the
grounds that he was unrepentant.
For those of you who are not
familiar with what “reformative training” is in the Singapore
context, let me enlighten you. The regulations governing it can be
found in the Criminal Procedure Code (Reformative Training)
Regulations 2010. A person sentenced to reformative training must
serve at least eighteen months but no longer than three years.
However after release they will be under the supervision of a
probation officer and must comply with any conditions imposed. Any
breach of those conditions will result in six months additional
sentence. This supervision lapses four years after the date of the
original sentence so in the case of someone sentenced to three
years reformative training the supervision period is one year but
if the sentence is only eighteen months the supervision period is
three years.
This is what an AsiaOne article
had to say about reformative training:
Reformative training is a strict
prison regime for young offenders. It consists of foot drills,
counselling and education. Offenders spend at least 11/2 years
behind bars. Upon release, they are placed under supervision, which
includes wearing ankle tags that track their movements
electronically.
The article was about how the
courts deemed reformative training as a suitable punishment for
young loan shark runners who would not be allowed the “soft” option
of probation even for a first offence. However the runner in this
case was 20 years old and in NS.
It revulses me that the court and
the AG could somehow think that the punishment option for someone
defacing and vandalising the flats of those owing money to loan
sharks, presumably with threats of violence intended to intimidate
the unfortunate debtors, and other violent young criminals is
appropriate for a child like Amos.
I say “child” advisedly even
though our law treats him as an adult when he reaches 16 despite
not being allowed to vote till you are 21. Yet another
inconsistency in Justice Kaur’s judgement was that she claimed to
be protecting the youth of Singapore from being corrupted and
depraved by Amos’s supposedly obscene image while she was treating
Amos as an adult for the purpose of sentencing. Amos’s blog and
video were clearly aimed at adults and viewed mostly by adults and
not children.
I will get back to yesterday’s
hearing. The queue for the public gallery was quite short, perhaps
because the hearing was originally scheduled for 2pm but was then
moved to 9.30am. Singaporeans do not like to get up so early. The
atmosphere among the crowd was slightly flippant considering that
it was a child’s future we were talking about. When I said that the
Government was out to break Amos, some people said jocularly that
he would be more likely to break the AG and the judicial system by
his refusal to bend. A young man in a suit made some comment to the
effect that unlike the “soft” West we treated criminals like Amos
as adults from the age of 16 and that the “shackles” which
presumably soft-hearted liberals like myself objected to were just
cuffs.
After a delay while the
prosecution and defence lawyers met outside the courtroom, Justice
Kaur entered at about 9.50am. I expected someone older and tougher
looking. Instead she looked quite slight and undoubtedly younger
than me. She was extremely soft-spoken so it was very difficult to
hear what she was saying. It was difficult to fit her image to her
reactionary and inconsistent judgement.
The DPP argued that as Amos had
not “learnt his lesson” and refused to agree to probation that a
reformative training sentence was necessary. He said that Amos’s
conduct and his decision to make the image and video public again
demonstrated the need for rehabilitation and appropriate
counselling. The DPP said a jail term or a fine would have no
rehabilitative effect on Yee and would therefore not be “tenable,
because we cannot be popping back into court every other day.”
The judge agreed with him and said
that “Rehabilitation is the fundamental tenet of our justice
system” and ruled that he be remanded for three weeks to assess his
mental and physical suitability for reformative training.
Alfred Dodwell, Amos’s lawyer,
argued in vain that Amos should be given a fine or a jail term
equivalent to the time he has already spent on remand and pointed
out quite correctly that Amos was being punished for a second
offence for which he had not been tried.
At the end of the hearing Amos was
taken into custody again. I saw his mother passing him a plastic
bag which made me feel very sad.
There can be no doubt that in this
case “rehabilitation” is just a euphemism. The PAP Government mean
to break Amos’s spirit through a harsh regime that is worse than
prison. They would like to show Singaporeans that anyone here who
dares to challenge the official narrative will be harshly dealt
with.
In totalitarian regimes like
Communist China, the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany “rehabilitation”
meant years of imprisonment in harsh concentration camps. Everyone
remembers the infamous words above Auschwitz which said “Arbeit
Macht Frei” which loosely translated meant “Work Makes You Free”
which was meant to be a sadistic joke about rehabilitation.
I feel only a slightly milder
version of this punishment regime is in store for Amos. He will be
forced to work and if he refuses will likely be punished. I am
concerned that reformative training may include caning if Amos
refuses to obey the orders given to him by his captors. He has
years of imprisonment to look forward to and when he is inducted
into NS he will probably end up serving his time in a military
prison. Lee Kuan Yew made countless racist remarks designed to
wound the feelings of minorities and was commended globally for his
wisdom and candour.
Even with his time on remand Amos
has served more time than the man who attacked him. The reports
said that he would not be with adult inmates. However since Amos is
already being treated as an adult that seems just another example
of the AG’s disingenuity. He will presumably be placed with the
kind of hardened criminals who are normally considered suitable for
reformative training. He wlll probably be bullied and may be
sexually assaulted. Of course many comments from PAP supporters and
LKY worshippers on the internet were that rape was much too good
for him.
The PAP Government’s treatment of Amos is an international
embarrassment to them and to Singapore. The PAP always justify
draconian restrictions on our freedoms by saying we enjoy Swiss
standards of living as a result. But I look around and I can see
that we have neither, at least not for the bottom 80% of the
population.
I called Amos Singapore’s youngest
political prisoner which led to the usual fierce attacks from
people saying that he was tried and convicted. However so was
Nelson Mandela who received a sentence of life imprisonment for
terrorism. Yet today no one would dream of calling Nelson Mandela a
criminal let alone a terrorist.
I will end by letting Amos’s own
words speak for him:
Unless you do in fact relish in my
misery, I hope both of you will be able to sleep at night, and live
with the fact that right now, as it is written in the annals of
history, my blood is on your hands.”
I am seriously concerned by those
last words and worry that, if this harsh treatment of a 16 year old
that makes me sick to my stomach is not stopped and some compassion
shown that Amos may do something that will indeed leave the AG, the
judge and the PAP Government with blood on their hands
Kenneth Jeyaretnam
- See more at:
http://www.allsingaporestuff.com/article/amos-yee-singapores-youngest-political-prisoner#sthash.cJqf0rYZ.dpuf