Apex court dismisses constitutionality challenge against caning

SINGAPORE — He may have escaped the gallows, but not the cane, as the Court of Appeal has dismissed Malaysian drug courier Yong Vui Kong’s appeal against his caning sentence.

In late 2013, Yong’s death sentence was commuted to life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane.

The 26-year-old from Sabah, East Malaysia, then later challenged the caning sentence, with his lawyer Mr M Ravi, producing a series of arguments to show that caning was unconstitutional, which included that caning was a form of torture, that the act of caning was so irrational and arbitrary that it cannot be “law”, and that caning discriminates men under age 50, since it can only be inflicted on them.

In delivering the decision to dismiss the appeal today (March 4), Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon said that there were safeguards in place to ensure that the present practice of caning in Singapore “does not reach a high threshold of severity and brutality that is required for it to be regarded as torture”.

He also listed and elaborated on the grounds given for the appeal, as well as reasons for the decision derived from past written judgements.

After the sentencing Mr Ravi told reporters that it was a “black day”, and said that he will be speaking with the Malaysian High Commissioner today to go to the International Court of Justice to apply for a stay order on the execution of the judgement.

The human rights lawyer also said that he will be consulting with other Malaysian politicians such as Anwar Ibrahim and Lim Guan Eng, as well as the Chief Minister of Sabah, Musa Aman, on the matter.

Yong was arrested in 2007, at the age of 19, after making two drug deliveries. He was found guilty of trafficking 47.27g of heroin in 2008, and given the then-mandatory death sentence.

After a series of attempts to appeal against the sentence, Yong was spared the gallows in 2013, with the introduction of new laws which give judges the discretion to sentence a drug trafficker to life imprisonment, with at least 15 strokes of the cane, instead of death, if he had only played the role of a courier, and either suffers from a mental disability that substantially impairs his appreciation of the gravity of the act, or has cooperated with the Central Narcotics Bureau in a “substantive” way.