I’ve been to Singapore. You do not get flogged from dropping a chewing gum wrapper or chewing gum. The famous flogging incident in 1994 was for an American teenager who spray-painted a car. The caning was six strokes of a rattan cane, if I recall correctly. I wish they would do that to graffiti criminals here. Singapore is a beautiful place that is clean and free of most crime. I found it heavenly. I also remember being there at Christmas, when the stores had huge “Merry Christmas” signs posted across the exterior. The 70 percent Chinese majority in Singapore is Christian.
As someone who lives in NYC, I can tell you that there is almost no graffiti in this city. You are probably about 25 years in the past with this idea. Sort of like people who complain about English food, not realizing the revolution in food that has occurred in that lovely country.
That said, I do get a little tired of the hygenic-crazy freepers who think that there is nothing better than living in a germ free environment rather than the rough and tumble of a great democracy and republic that is currently in big trouble. Personally, I think a little dirt is good for the immune system.
RE: The famous flogging incident in 1994 was for an American teenager who spray-painted a car. The caning was six strokes of a rattan cane, if I recall correctly.
__________________
Actually, the number of cane strokes in Michael Fay’s sentence was reduced from six to four after U.S. officials requested leniency.
Michael Fay later revealed that, at the end of his punishment, his buttocks were bleeding only slightly, that he needed no immediate medical treatment, and that he was able to walk, albeit with “a lot of pain”.
In fact he had shaken hands with the caning operative after his four strokes had been administered.
This, together with the information that Fay actually sat down when he met a US consular official the day after his caning, contrasts with some of the more lurid descriptions of Singapore caning (”bits of flesh fly with each stroke”, etc.) that had been carried in the western press after the sentence was first announced.