The father of a British former public schoolboy sentenced to 24 strokes of the cane and jailed for 20 years for drugs offences in Singapore has revealed his guilt over his son’s upbringing.
London-born Ye Ming Yuen, 29, will be stripped naked and strapped to a large wooden trestle after being convicted of seven drug charges, including trafficking.
As a youngster he boarded at the £37,000-a-year Westminster School, where he was made to feel ‘inferior’ by the amount of ‘talented people’, said his father Alex, 70.
The businessman, who lives in the UK, said his son had been unfairly sentenced by the courts as mitigating circumstances, including that he assisted officers in catching other criminals, was not heard in court.
Ye Ming Yuen (pictured left and as a schoolboy, right) has been ordered to serve 20 years in jail after being convicted of seven drug charges, including trafficking
He revealed he himself caned his son, who had been working as a DJ in Singapore, as a child and expressed regret for his ‘very strict’ upbringing.
Mr Yuen told the Times: ‘My father caned me, so when he was young I caned him. Then he went to boarding school, so I hardly saw him except at weekends.
‘Therefore I think he had a void in him — he didn’t get recognition at home. For a sensitive person, this may be damaging.
‘Going to Westminster did not help. There were a lot of talented people there… I think the pressure made him feel inferior.’
The case has sparked a rift between Singapore and the UK, which traditionally have close ties.
It has also prompted the intervention of Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his officials, who made clear they ‘strongly oppose the use of corporal punishment’.
Yuen (pictured), first arrested over drugs offences in August 2016, is being held at Changi prison in Singapore
As part of his sentence, he will be stripped naked and strapped to a large wooden trestle. Then his buttocks will be flogged 24 times with a 4ft-long rattan cane.
His ‘judicial corporal punishment’ –which will be inflicted by a ‘trained caner’ taught how to cause the most pain possible – is the maximum caning sentence that can be handed out in Singapore and could leave him scarred for life.
He was originally facing the death penalty but the capital charge was dropped because the net weight of drugs involved was below 500g.
His family quickly branded the caning sentence as ‘barbaric’ and ‘a form of torture’, and begged authorities in the former Crown colony – renowned for its no-nonsense approach to law enforcement – to grant him clemency.
Mr Hunt raised Yuen’s case with Singapore’s minister for foreign affairs, Vivian Balakrishnan, while visiting the country, and since then Foreign Office officials have made representations on Yuen’s behalf.
Pictured is a Changi prison officer using a dummy to demonstrate how inmates are caned
Human rights groups have condemned Singapore’s use of the cane, saying it breaches the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Yuen – first arrested over drugs offences in August 2016 – is being held at Changi prison.
According to his family, the only furniture he has in his cell, where he spends 22 hours a day, is a bamboo mat. He is allowed only two visits from family per month.
Details of Yuen’s plight are outlined in his handwritten appeal submission, in which he asked for a reduced sentence of eight and a half years and 15 strokes of the cane.
A former top club DJ in Singapore, his offences include two counts of ‘repeat drug trafficking’ – one of 69g and one of 60g of cannabis. Another offence included drug trafficking of 15g of crystal meth. In his failed appeal bid, he said: ‘Should a shorter sentence be imposed, it would allow me to remain useful in society.
‘I was misled in my youth, in an environment surrounded by drugs, to fall into the dark lure of addiction, oblivious to the hold it had on me.’ Before moving to Singapore in 2007, Yuen – the son of a marketing consultant from China and a Singapore-born marketing executive – was a pupil at Dulwich Prep School in South London and then Westminster School, whose alumni include Nick Clegg, Peter Ustinov and John Gielgud.
At Westminster School he gained 11 GCSEs – four A*s, six As, and one B. But while at the top public school he ‘got in with the wrong crowd’ and ended up in trouble with the Metropolitan Police.
In 2007, it emerged that Yuen was wanted by Scotland Yard over an alleged forged driving licences scam. A newspaper tracked him down to Singapore, where he reportedly admitted that he manufactured fake documents and sold them to pupils.
As part of his sentence, Yuen (shown) will be stripped naked and strapped to a large wooden trestle. Then his buttocks will be flogged 24 times with a 4ft-long rattan cane