Taiwan politician says S'pore not fully democratic because of caning

Taiwanese politician Hsu Kuo-yung made a controversial remark recently, saying that Singapore is not fully democratic because of laws that allow caning as a form of punishment.

A former member of the Legislative Yuan, Hsu is currently the Secretary-General of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

Hsu made the remark during a livestream on YouTube channel DPP Live when he was commenting on the scam situation in Taiwan.

Scam cases are rampant globally and Taiwan is not the only place facing this problem, so there's nothing to be ashamed about, Hsu said.

He claimed that Taiwan's crime rate is second-lowest in Asia, just after Singapore.

Taiwan's crime situation is also better than Japan, he highlighted.

He let on that Singapore, however, uses caning as a form of punishment, which – according to him – violates human rights. Therefore, he concluded that Singapore is not a fully democratic country.

Criticised

Hsu's comments faced criticism from other politicians.

Kuomintang's Hung Meng-kai slammed Hsu's remark as inappropriate and not taking the scam crisis seriously, especially since the total amount of money lost to scams in Taiwan is much more than that of Singapore.

According to Focus Taiwan in September 2024, an anti-scam research report suggested that US$7.37 billion (about S$9.3 billion) were lost in Taiwan in 12 months.

In contrast, S$1.1 billion were lost in Singapore in 2024.

In its latest bid to fight scams, Singapore will also be introducing mandatory caning for scammers and scam mules.

Top photo from Canva and @DPPLive/YouTube