President Halimah Yacob made the news on Monday (Dec 19) with a Facebook post where she mentioned that rapists should not be spared the cane just because they are fifty years old and above and called for a review of Singapore’s laws. “It’s timely that we review this law. It’s our duty to protect our young, and we must not fail them,” she said.
In response, the leading gender equality advocacy group, AWARE, thanked the President for her post but said it is “opposed to corporal punishment, both generally and as a response to acts of violence in particular.” “We do not agree that the government should consider caning rapists who are above 50 years old,” the group said in a statement published on Facebook on Tuesday (Dec 20).
“Corporal punishment enforces the inherently violent idea that authority and norms should be established through physical domination. Instead of reducing the culture of violence, corporal punishment normalises violence, furthers its cycle and plays into sexist ideas that correlate masculinity with physical strength,“ AWARE added.
The group cited a survey from October by the Singapore Children’s Society and Yale-NUS, which found that “corporal punishment of children at home was largely seen as not just ineffective but detrimental, with reported outcomes such as strained parent-child relationships.”
“In terms of deterring potential abuse and recidivism, we have not seen clear evidence that caning is in fact a deterrent of sexual abuse, or is superior to prison terms, rehabilitation programmes or other non-violent penalties.”
AWARE further said that Singapore should consider, “therefore, how the state’s judicial practices may be influencing domestic life (for the worse).”
The group noted that it could be a sign of improvement that children are reporting sexual abuse, as noted by the President, “sexuality education is enabling young survivors to name their abuse in the first place. It has historically been common for such cases to go unreported for many years, only coming to light when survivors are well into adulthood (if at all).” /TISG
President Halimah: Rapists above 50 should also be caned, time to review the law