COMMENT Singapore in a new move is going all out to make it as costly as possible for kidnappers and hostage takers.
In a legislation passed last Monday, the country’s widely-circulated newspaper, the Straits Times, called the enactment of the new law as “(giving) effect to a United Nations convention against terrorism”.
For a country that recently was the target of a terror bomb plot inspired in Indonesia by militant clerics, it does therefore make for plenty of reason to justify why it may need such a law.
After all, it is a global metropolis. Hordes of business clusters dot its marketplace. And so too, are the many government and international organisations which have based their operations in the island-republic.
Hence, it did not take long to make sure the city-state retains its allure. And perhaps accordingly with its fortress-like security preparedness, it told the world how little stomach it has for hostage takers!
The new law immediately imposes the death penalty on hostage takers of either a government official or an international governmental organisation. And if the offence is committed against any other person, the offender can be jailed for up to 15 years.
Strangely there was no mention either in local papers or over Internet chat lines why it was imposing, of all things, the death penalty when the victim is a government official!
Hardline attitude
There is no doubt that when matters such as this grave stare down the Singapore state, the republic always resorts to what it knows best: give the problem a good whipping and send it packing.
It is too soon, however, to consider the legal, ethical and moral implications that now warrants the death penalty for yet another new classification of offences.
And just as interestingly, the new law makes it permissible for offenders to be prosecuted and extradited to Singapore for offences committed outside Singapore’s boundaries.
What all these amounts to, is an unprecedented sweep of “extra-territoriality” though that may be purely an academic exercise in legalese.
Yet there is no denying of the practical challenges that may soon follow suit once implementation is adopted.
There was no discussion as to what prompted this sudden hardline attitude.
Singapore has not had any major kidnapping incidents on its mainland for as long as living memory could possibly arrive at.
High stakes
The only time when something of that sort ever did happen was late last year when one of the nation’s vessels, a container ship named Kota Wajar, belonging to shipping firm PIL, was hijacked and is crew commandeered.
That then proved a Catch-22 sort of situation for the nation’s operators.
Authorities were neither able to mount a French-style rescue mission nor undertake any kind of acts that would have resolved (the issue) in blood and thunder synonymous with nations exhibiting a healthy dislike for such kinds of criminality.
They were also constrained by the very law they themselves had instituted. And that concerns the Kidnapping Act 1998, which expressly prohibits ransom payouts as it may otherwise encourage kidnappings.
Yet there is no denying that, given the recent exposure of a military servicemen’s quest to join the ranks of the al-Qaeda terrorist group coupled with revelations that terrorist groups planned to bomb a train station, there conceivably is every reason to justify, stemming from those news, that attitude of not wanting to brook criminal activity of any kind must be met with the severest of penalties.
All said there should no faulting Singapore authorities.
It has high stakes riding on their back and one of them is to keep the country continually safe for all and sundry.
And nowhere was proven to such tantalising effect than in the recent Gallop poll commissioned in the United States which identified the city-state’s public record on safety as being the main draw for the world’s immigrants.
Maxwell Coppers is a free-lance writer based in Singapore.
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