Singapore rejects criticism that caning is torture

Singapore has defended a court order for two German men to be caned for spray-painting a metro train and trespassing into a high-security depot, rejecting claims the such punishment amounts to torture.

A court in the city-state, which takes a hardline stance against vandalism, last week sentenced Andreas Von Knorre, 22, and Elton Hinz, 21, to nine months in prison and three strokes of the cane over the incident in November last year.

US-based Human Rights Watch has slammed Singapore's continued use of caning - a punishment dating back to British colonial rule - as a "shameful recourse to using torture".

But Singapore's state prosecution arm said yesterday the court's decision showed that the city-state was holding the two Germans to "the same standards as all others".

"Singapore's laws against vandalism are well known. Caning is a prescribed punishment for the offence of vandalism, and the law applies to any person who chooses to break it," a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Chambers said.

"Caning is not torture. It is carried out in Singapore under strict standards, monitored at all times by a doctor," she added.

Von Knorre and Hinz were "vandals who broke the law for their own self-aggrandisement, without consideration of the social costs, and the disruptions that their acts would cause to others," she said.