Former minister slams Singapore for sentencing British ex-public schoolboy to ‘dark ages’ punishment

Former minister slams Singapore for sentencing British ex-public schoolboy, 29, to ‘dark ages’ punishment of 24 cane lashes for drug offences

  • Priti Patel lammed Singapore’s decision to cane London-born Ye Ming Yuen, 29 
  • Yuen has also been sentenced to 20 years in jail and will be stripped naked 
  • Ex-public schoolboy’s buttocks will be flogged 24 times with a 4ft rattan cane

Singapore’s decision to cane a Briton for drugs offences was condemned by a former Cabinet minister yesterday.

Priti Patel said the punishment for London-born Ye Ming Yuen was reminiscent of the Dark Ages.

Her comments increase the pressure on the authorities in Singapore to grant clemency to the 29-year-old former public schoolboy.

‘In this day and age it is astonishing to see these sorts of reprehensible punishments being given,’ said Mrs Patel, who sits on the Commons foreign affairs committee. ‘This sounds like something from the Dark Ages. Drug offences are serious, and we need to understand the severity of the impact of drugs on people’s lives.

London-born Ye Ming Yuen, 29, has been jailed for 20 years and will also be caned for drug offences in Singapore

‘But the punishment given here is wrong. The Government needs to use its bilateral relations with Singapore to make clear how badly we think of this.’

The case has prompted the intervention of Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt and his senior officials, who say they strongly oppose corporal punishment.

Mr Hunt was in Singapore on an official visit earlier this month but sources said the authorities there gave no assurances that Yuen would not be caned. The city-state’s government, which regards caning as a traditional part of the island’s legal system, has defended the sentence. 

Yuen, who has also been sentenced to 20 years in jail, will be stripped naked and strapped to a large wooden trestle. Then his buttocks will be flogged 24 times with a 4ft rattan cane delivered at a speed of up to 100 miles an hour.

It is the maximum caning sentence that can be handed out in Singapore and one that could leave him scarred for life.

His family said he could be subjected to the punishment any day at Singapore’s Changi Prison, where he is being held following his convictions for seven drug-related offences last year.

Former minster Priti Patel has slammed the punishment as being from the 'dark ages'

Former minster Priti Patel has slammed the punishment as being from the ‘dark ages’

Yuen was originally facing the death penalty but the capital charge against him was dropped because the net weight of drugs involved was below 500 grams, the quantity that warrants execution in Singapore. A former top club DJ in the city, his offences include four cases of repeat drug trafficking involving either cannabis or methamphetamine. He was also sentenced for a further three offences of possession of meth.

Yuen’s businessman father has called for his son’s case to be reviewed by officials in the former crown colony.

Alex Yuen, 70, who lives in London, said: ‘The fundamental principle of sentencing is that the punishment must fit the crime and the culpability of the offender, that the sentence must be fair and proportionate to the seriousness of the offence, which is measured by the degree of harm to society caused by the offender. If Ming was not genuinely remorseful and if he did not have the upmost respect for law, he would have absconded at the first opportunity instead of remaining in Singapore to attend court again and again, waiting to exchange his freedom for many years of incarceration and caning.’

Last year the Singaporean authorities refused to let Yuen’s father attend his son’s court case because he did not have the necessary travel documentation. His family hope he will be able to visit his son in the coming months after he is given a British passport.

Human rights groups say caning in Singapore is a violation of international law. In 2015 the International Commission of Jurists said: ‘International prohibition against ill-treatment extends not only to torture, but also to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment. The ICJ considers that caning constitutes both types of ill-treatment.’

An armed robber is said to have successfully sued the Singapore government in 1991 for ‘grievous harm to his buttocks’ after he was wrongly subjected to a 48-stroke caning in one go.

Asked whether there had been any developments in the caning row case, a Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘Our consular staff have been assisting a British man and his family since his arrest in Singapore in 2016.’

Yuen attended Westminster School in London where fees are £37,000 a year.

Read more at DailyMail.co.uk