A worrying trend

by Dr Hsu

A few headlines in the past couple of days reported in the media really worry me.

First, a young man who is working in a bank was allegedly detained for 3 days for failing to wear safety belts. This is a traffic offence which does not warrant detention. What the police officer should do was to issue a summon and this young man can either pay a fine or he can choose to go to court to fight his case. But he was detained for 3 days for obstructing civil servants for carrying out duty. The latter charge is of course serious, but a thorough investigation must e done to ascertain whether there was really any obstruction.

The fact that the young man was not charged and released after three days gives the benefit of doubt to the young man, as to whether such obstruction has taken place. The police must do a thorough investigation in this case. If the young man was detained for three days just because someone wanted to teach him a lesson, then it is a really serious case of power abuse.

Another case was reported in Singapore newsapaper about 2 Singaporean women being detained and made to do nude squat. They have of course erred by going through the immigration without letting their passoports inspected. But in modern society, no one is empowered to strip a person nude and makes him/her do nude squat. If this is true, it is another case of power abuse.

It was in 2004 that a IPCMC was proposed. 7 years have passed and it has not even been instituted.

Then there were the 2 cases of death in MACC’s premises which have not been resolved.

I am actually getting a bit pessimistic about any real reform in these enforcements agencies.

Unless and until there is political wills to weed out the black sheep in these forces, things will not improve and will only get worse.

But when there are forces within the Big Brother ready to pounce on the very Top, I doubt whether he would risk his position and push for a really big clean up of these agencies.