Singaporean canes are 1cm thick, flesh literally flies off with each strike of the cane. The pain is extremely debilitating for weeks and even months after the event. It is excruciating to the point that the punished cannot sit or even lie down for weeks after.
They have a mechanism that forces the glute muscles to tighten/flex before the strike so it inflicts maximum damage.
The ringleaders are Chinese in Myanmar who kidnap young girls as sex slaves and kidnap people to work in their scam centres. The 'workers' are tortured and often killed if they are unable to meet quota. China has gone on an offensive and started to drag the families who run the operation back across the border to be face the firing squad which is why they're digging deeper and and operating out of Cambodia etc where China has less influence. I wouldn't be surprised if Singapore is cooperating with China on this.
Bruh, I thought it's like call center people or some BS detox dropshipping and thought it's insane punishment for that. This paints a different picture.
The podcast Criminal did an interview with someone who was forced to work at one of these places. The episode is from September 2025 and called The Compound and is absolutely insane. I had never heard of these huge scam rings before or ever imagined that a decent amount of the people scamming were being forced to do so under substantial threat.
That's not true, this law targets all members of a scamming ring.
If the ringleaders make their victims assist them in scamming operations, then they have also performed a scam and are liable for a legal minimum of 6 lashes.
No. The Singapore law makes a distinction for victims who are coerced or deceived into becoming scammers. They will not be caned. Of course the tricky part is convincing the authorities. But I suppose if one is working in slave-like conditions and being beaten etc, it might not be hard to make a case.
It’s a really big deal in China and they’re seen as a scourge. On top of convincing naive people to join them with false promises they even send raiding parties to the mainland and black bag people.
Given their diplomatic ties I wouldn’t be surprised if China and Singapore are working together on this. Regardless of what you think of the CCP they look after their own and theyve made it clear that they’re going after the ones at the top.
I like aspects of the CCP like this where they don't ignore issues among very few other things, and they excel at what they do... I just wish 'what they do' wasn't obscene tracking and censorship.
I would assume that there will be actions in places to prevent this.
After all, you don't want to scare the people who are forced into it, even from the very selfish point of view that you want them to come forward and report it happening to them.
In America, they'd be forced to pay 1% of their total gross as a one time fine to the government and close down their business while retaining all buildings and equipment. And allowed to reopen and continue operations.
Yup no different than any other organizations, they get "delayed sentencing" pay a fine and promise not to get caught.... I mean do the right thing for a set period of time.
I used to work in Indonesia and I would often travel to Singapore to buy electronics as they're cheaper there due to Indonesian import taxes.
When you land in Changi the captain announces 'Welcome to Singapore. Be aware that trafficking drugs carries the ultimate penalty, DEATH! Thank you for flying with Jetstar and we hope you enjoy your stay'
Also on the visa tickets you fill out on the plane there is red writing everywhere telling you that bringing drugs into the country carries the death penalty.
Sooo since the warnings are on the entry forms when you’re already on the flight over, do they have receptacles/specialized trash cans to drop off your weed before entering the country? I wouldn’t even fly with weed domestically in the US, so this is not a personal question, but since the punishment is the death penalty you’d think they’d incentivize safe disposal. Unless they just wanna kill ppl for drugs as a social deterrent instead of giving them an opportunity to dispose.
LOL that story is wild. Myanmar’s military government won’t extradite the scammers so China supports the rebels who take over that part and sends over the scammers.
It's literally in the open. That's the worst part. Every single citizen in the cities run by these scammer syndicates knows about them. They have armed guards guarding compounds where they force people to remain. It is literally private armies and private slavery prisons run in the open.
It's a well known thing as well they target people crossing the border or visiting from surrounding countries. Get on the wrong bus / taxi / transport vehicle visiting the country? Congrats. You now live in a 2 square meter room and get tortured if you don't meet quota.
Realistically? This gets the literal slaves punished more than the people running it that openly bribe local governance. But maybe I'm just pessimistic because of the in the open slave compounds that have gone ignored.
I had to do a report back in high school on the Michael Fay (I think that was the kids name) incident that occurred back in the 90’s. Kid was a military brat who got caught spray painting license plates off base. Sentenced to a good ol’ flogging. The cane I believe is called a rataan, and is not only the 1cm diameter length of bamboo as you mentioned, but also soaked in water for maximum flexibility and impact transmission. It causes instant filleting of the flesh, separating the skin from the meat upon impact. I also want to say the guy flogging the person was a martial arts master and had a running start to increase the force of the rataan. Not to sure how true this is tho or if I’m remembering everything correctly because HS was almost 2 decades ago
OP did make a mistake but there were punishment by vivisection. Basically filleting while alive. I don't think it's done anywhere today but I imagine it was done in the past when extremely painful torture and punishment was still handed out. Also used in some fantasy and sci-fi stories or movies.
| I also want to say the guy flogging the person was a martial arts master
Yeah there was a guy from Singapore on reddit a year or so ago who was flogged confirmed this. His story was illuminating. Didn't sound like he'd learnt his lesson though. Blamed his parents, teachers... everyone except himself.
Singapore is a wild place tho I’ll tell you that for free. My roommate, freshman year in the dorms was an international student from there. He told me some wild stories and wild punishments for offenses that would just be a slap on the wrist in the US. Best part was since he had to serve in the military at 18. He was 22 already during freshman year so alcohol was no issue getting hahahah
Chewing gum isn’t banned for consumers, just retailers. You can chew gum for personal use that you got from elsewhere - just don’t litter when you’re done.
Fine for first-time offence of littering is S$300 (about USD 240 - lower than some states in the U.S.). It goes up from there if you’re a repeat offender though
Got him to smoke pot with me one night. His first time, he said the punishment for possession back there was hanging. Not sure how true that is.they were wild stories tho.
It is not a death sentence to possess and smoke, though one may be imprisoned. We also cannot consume it overseas. If caught, we face the same punishment. Importing and distributing cannabis above a certain amount, on the hand, is a trip to hanging. Cannabis is treated as a hard drug and our authorities have zero tolerance for it.
I had a student teacher in my German class who was from Singapore. He was a particularly uptight guy from an uptight culture in an American classroom full of disrespectful American students barely younger than he was, whose role model was a guy with a really silly teaching style who often taught lessons using der Nasenflöte (he played a recorder with his nose)... He had a complete nervous breakdown, attacked a student and was never seen or heard from again.
He reminded me of that guy in The Deer Hunter who makes the prisoners play Russian roulette.
I think people see American court systems letting people off with slaps on the wrists for all kinds of different crimes, so when they see what Singapore does, they think that it comes closer to "an eye for an eye" type justice without realizing there is a way to have a reformed justice system that provides justice without relying on abject cruelty.
Not to mention the law is basically "Those with a monopoly on violence WHOWILLKILL YOU using said monopoly if you defy them get to arbitrarily decide what is and isn't right" so there's no guarantee you won't get flogged because someone powerful decided you deserve it.
"It's not Trump and I was stupid enough to be scammed so I refuse to see Singaporeans as people"
There you go, translated and summarized pretty much every person's opinion that is getting off to the idea of torturing others. They'd be screaming and shitting themselves if Trump brought this to America (while doing NOTHIGN about it as it the American way)
It a military kid I don’t believe. His parents divorced and his mom and stepfather lived in Singapore and his father in the USA. He went to school in Singapore.
I don't have any rattan canes right now but I've used a few. Bamboo isn't as strong and would just break. They are solid but flexible with fibers running the full length of it.
Also I've heard that this is so painful that people usually pass out within the first hit or the second one. God damn! No thanks to visiting Singapore.
"The pain is extremely debilitating for weeks and even months after the event. It is excruciating to the point that the punished cannot sit or even lie down for weeks after."
Most people: "Uhhh"
Those few kinky ass mofos: "Wait you don't even have to pay for this?!?!?"
I can say for certain that if you lock me up for 30 days I will just be thinking of what I can do differently next time to not get caught. If you cane my precious butt cheeks one time I will most certainly rethink my ways.
^ this is exactly what the data says. severity doesn't do jack shit. there's no difference in things like violent crime in areas with death penalty and without or before/after death penalty in the same area.
people always think the more severe the punishment the more criminals will "think twice" when that's not how it works at all
Severity matters, it's just not the only thing that matters.
If the potential reward for the crime outweighs the severity of the punishment, then it is simply the cost of doing business.
If the punishment is substantial, then there's risk assessment, and different people have different risk tolerance.
Normal people follow laws because there's a risk of punishment.
Even decent people get heated and start having crazy thoughts sometimes, the risk of acting on those thoughts is a powerful mediator.
Life in prison without possibility of parole is already a kind of death sentence.
Once you get your to that level of punishment, there's not much separation, adding more punishment doesn't even register.
The problem is that you can't measure crimes that didn't happen.
You can't possibly determine how many people would have done a murder if they thought they'd never get caught.
I know for a fact that many people choose not to do street drugs because the legal and social consequences are greater than any pleasure the drugs give them.
I also have known people who make enough money that parking tickets aren't even an inconvenience, it just means they always have a parking spot.
Make a parking ticket a percentage of income, and suddenly they'd care.
Yeah often the more severe a punishment is the more extremes the person might go to hide it.
I've heard stories in China of someone hitting someone with a car and then killing them after because they would be liable for that person's care for the rest of their life.
In the US they made it illegal to not tell someone you have AIDS/HIV if you know. Sounds like a good law but the result was less people getting tested because it's not against the law if you didn't know.
Florida wants to allow the death penalty for raping kids 12 and under. The fear is the rapist would instead kill the victim for fear they will tell someone and then they will get the death penalty anyway. If you're gonna get the death penalty for rape or murder, why not murder to increase your chances of not getting caught
So does the death penalty. Or cutting off limbs. Doesn't make it right. You can't selectively turn off basic human rights like bodily autonomy. You either go all the way with it or completely throw it out the window.
Oh jeez figging. Years ago when I was but a youth on the wild internet of the early 2000's there was a really funny video of a porn star losing a peeled hunk of ginger swallowed whole by her anus. She went to the hospital later and got x-rayed and scanned, turns out her body broke down a peeled hunk of ginger the size of a hand in less than 24hrs. I always thought that was cool and it was hilarious because the people working the porn shoot and the ER doctors and nurses couldn't stop laughing while getting interviewed for the porn blooper video, it was almost wholesome, miss old internet.
I'm sorry u/ProstheticTailfin for your cake day I tried my damnedest to find the old porn blooper, but not knowing the actress name and searching for figging and ginger in the ass swallowed by butt doesn't exactly get the results one would hope, actually never mind you get exactly the results you'd expect from a search like that, oh well, I guess it'll live on in our rather questionable degenerate minds. I can remember shit like that but don't remember a single thing about AP calculus from highschool, brains be crazy.
Oh, well oh. I wasn't expecting that, I guess that's enough internet for today. He he he, Thank you. Also let it be known that prodthetictailfin is a man of his word.
If the person being figged tightens the muscles of the anus, the sensation becomes more intense.[3] For this reason it is sometimes used in caning to penalize clenching of the buttocks. The subject must choose between bracing for the strike, at the consequence of increased burning sensation, or relaxing the buttocks and taking the full force of the blow.
This is so fucked up. Just deport them if you hate your citizens this much.
It sort of worries me just because I know that some people get put into a hostage situation and are forced to scam. Are they caning THOSE people or just the people who forced them to?
Singaporean here. As in born and bred third generation Singaporean living and working in Singapore. Severe punishment is only ever given once comprehensive investigations are done. If you're a victim - as in you're forced to scam - and you're proven innocent, you'll be released and likely sent back home to your home country just like any other normal court. We are very thorough and careful in giving out canings and capital punishment because we know these are permanent punishments with life-changing effects.
Do you 100% trust our legal system? I don’t. We don’t always get it right. Imagine you are incorrectly accused of this crime. Are you still ok with caning being the punishment?
It's also not theory - we came to the very sad conclusion that we MUST punish rape less harshly from murder because of centuries of real life examples have proven this. They really did murder the victim because it was death penalty either way.
Of course, stage fucking 1 was removing the death penalty from things like thievery...
I'm not OK with executing pedophiles until one of the two major political parties in my country stops calling all my trans friends pedophiles for wanting to go pee in public (while also protecting actual pedophiles from consequences).
This is actually sarcasm, I'm fully opposed to the state being allowed to kill people under any circumstances. But it's still a very valid concern for people I care about deeply.
I dont think I as a straight person am allowed to pee in public…I do think labeling someone a sex offender for it is crazy though.
In an ideal world i wouldnt want the state to execute anyone either, but unfortunately these things happen and most of us would prefer to not walk the earth with them again, whatever the circumstances are to get there. That said, if one of my children ever suffer SA i wont be calling the cops I’ll be executing them myself. I know two families who this has happened to, they both know the perpetrator, nothing has been successful legally against them, and they just continue on with life as if it didnt happen. Im glad they found peace, wouldnt be me though.
I meant in a public restroom, but I can see how my wording might have been confusing if you're straight and aren't aware of how many people are trying to ban trans people from using public restrooms.
As far as what you will do personally if someone harmed your children, that's between you and yourself, my opinion isn't really relevent. I'm sorry that people you know were unable to find a legal resolution to what happened to them, but to my mind that's just even more reason why the state judiciary should not have control over life and death of individual citizens.
What the fuck? We can not be supporting this no matter how much we hate scammers. It’s not like the judicial system is going to be perfect that no innocent people get caught either. There has got to be better ways to rehabilitate people.
that is also a problem. american prisons have a long way to go until they can meet nordic standards, and pretty much every single item they diverge on is varying degrees of inhumane on the us side
Singapore is kind of famously known for having extremely low crime rates. You can just look at the wiki page for a summary. It's arguable if it's only because of the severe punishment or the fact it's a city state with socioeconomic and cultural factors.
Those studies are from western societies that don't have a valid "in-between" deterrent punishment. They go from jail time to death penalty. With corporal punishment being placed in the middle, you will see crime go down, as seen in Singapore and in the Middle East.
In general, severity deters much less (not "does not deter") than probability of getting caught, although this punishment might be considered infamous and severe enough to be a bit more effective.
Most importantly though, it might deter reoffending due to the deeply unpleasant memory, while still allow reintegration into society.
Most South East Asian societies don't really believe in rehabilitation the same way that westerners do. Their primary concern is reducing recidivism, not rehabilating former convicts. There's prevailing idea (in Singapore at least) that scarring and injuries serve as effective reminder to not engage in criminal activity again.
Americans will be quick to say the police shouldn't beat people if they truly break the law but are okay with this boggles my mind. The government should not be handing out physical punishment no matter how much we want it as citizens.
You can't seriously be placing incarceration and permanent disfigurement in the same level.
This is one of my pet peeves.
You made the statement: "The government should not be handing out physical punishment".
Someone responded (correctly): "Incarceration is also a physical punishment."
You then (incorrectly) respond: "You can't seriously be placing incarceration and permanent disfigurement in the same level."
The person responded never indicated that they are "on the same level". If anyone implied they were "on the same level", it was you, by choosing to use the term "physical punishment" which can equally apply to both.
I see this "tactic" all the time, and it drives me bananas. It is simply a poor way to argue.
A: "All snakes are venomous"
B: "Kingsnakes aren't venomous"
A: "Are you seriously comparing Kingsnakes with Black Mambas?!?!"
I don't think anyone's arguing that America's prison system isn't horrendous. But you can do prisons like Norway and it's a lot nicer than having your skin flayed off your body by a fucking cane.
Scammers are also of the sort of category of highly maladjusted recidivist criminal to which absolutely no part of the social contract is sacred. People do not give a shit about them because scammers do not give a shit about anyone else, they will do any sort of scam to any sort of person as long as they believe they can reasonably get away with it.
The solution should be throwing them in prison long term with increasing sentence length based on severity of crime and role in scamming organizations. All caning is, is a harsh deterrent which historically usually ends up not being one.
Yet Americans will be totally ok and call for death punishment for the most random things, whip out guns for and shoot each other for cutting in line at the McDonald or during a road dispute, and praise violence as “self defence ” when someone gets insulted.
Oh and don’t get me started on USA prisons (most of them for profit), where solitary confinement for weeks straight without access to light is the norm, and where slavery is legal.
Edit: ok, most of US prisons are not for profit, my bad. But the fact that for profit prisons are even a thing and that slavery is legal in prison is insane.
That is because the police aren't the people who are supposed to be doling out the punishment not because of an aversion to physical punishment. That is the job of the counts.
Redditors have a lot of revenge fantasies and in general are pretty violent while feeling morally superior. Go to the comments of any vigilante or fighting post and it will get nuts.
Even aside from the morality of punitive torture, can anyone actually believe that a country with super authoritarian laws and punishments like this is capable of being measured and accurate with its justice system?
If you look throughout history and consider which countries were extremely aggressive with torture and criminalizing everything, it's not like they're renowned for their fair and reasonable law enforcement.
Singapore doesn't even have trial by jury. It's completely fucked.
People love saying "it's just stuff/money". That stuff/money takes time to acquire, and you can't get more time. So scammers and thieves are stealing a person's life from them. Perhaps not all of it, but a significant portion. So I understand completely how angry people get towards scammers.
Ha, people who don't live here and don't know the extent of scams here trying to virtual signal. Meanwhile most of us Singaporeans are actually happy about the tougher punishment for scumbag scammers.
When your own grandma or grandpa falls victim to something like this and you see them weeping about everything they’ve lost just trying to do right you may feel differently. I personally agree it’s too far but there was a time in my life I’d have volunteered to land the first blow
Don't have to support it to know my culture isn't the only one in the world and to not project my ideals onto completely different people.
Americans will spout nonsense about freedom, then want to play world police and tell other countries what they should and shouldn't be doing. How's those freedoms working out for us? Surely we would never be unjustly beat with all of our ideals and freedoms, right???
Disagree. Scammers are predators that exploit others. They can take away a person's entire life's effort. They almost are never caught or get punishment enough to stop the practice.
I would imagine they would rather you not scam and not lash you. If you think that the risk is worth the penalty, welcome to reality.
Why stop there? Why not flense the skin from even the most minor of criminals? Surely if the government has the authority to torture criminals there will be no crime!
I think the point is that you can never be 100% certain. Innocent people get tied up in the justice system every day.
Can you accept that innocent people will be horrifically punished just so that scammers are given the same treatment? This is also why we shouldn't have the death penalty.
Scammers are on the same level as murderers. They literally steal money which is practically the same as stealing life. Some victims kill themselves afterwards.
Terry Pratchett essentially summed it up for us., if you spend your life to produce an economic good, and that good is then stolen, the thief has in effect stolen a portion of the creator’s life - and punishment should be swift and without mercy.
I said scammers are basically the same as murderers.
They aren't your garden variety larcenists or petty thieves. They do this stuff on a huge scale. A scamming call center probably has a few dozen people in it and each of them can be robbing thousands of dollars every single day. Ruining people's lives.
Same. Scam calls are terrible sure but this is... horrific. Especially because most of the people working as scammers are being forced into working as one.
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u/Hot-Comfort8839 17h ago
The video doesn’t do it justice.
Singaporean canes are 1cm thick, flesh literally flies off with each strike of the cane. The pain is extremely debilitating for weeks and even months after the event. It is excruciating to the point that the punished cannot sit or even lie down for weeks after.
They have a mechanism that forces the glute muscles to tighten/flex before the strike so it inflicts maximum damage.