The tiny city-state of Singapore has made the news several times in the past few weeks due to a number of stories highlighting increasingly harsh and frequent penalties for wrongdoing, which may appear at odds with its global reputation as peaceful, safe, clean, and corruption-free.
These include the death penalty for cannabis importation, potential prison for public mischief, and new rules about who can be flogged with a rattan cane–and potentially raise questions about where effective governance ends and an increasingly authoritarian legal system begins.
Across Southeast Asia, Singapore has long been celebrated as an economic powerhouse, and is also one of the richest countries in the world, along with Luxembourg and Liechtenstein in terms of GDP per capita based on purchasing power parity. It is also consistently ranked one of the world’s safest countries due to its low crime rate and low terrorism risk, and is known as one of the least corrupt countries globally.
As such, Singapore often presents a contrast with some of its Southeast Asian neighbors, with other countries in the region known for bloated corruption, authoritarian and military crackdowns on civilians, ongoing civil conflict, and both political and economic instability.
Yet recent events may present an uncomfortable question: is Singapore’s rule of law becoming even more draconian, or is a legal iron fist needed to keep order in the city-state that has always prioritized discipline and social control?
The first unsettling incident occurred on April 16, when Singaporean national Omar Yacob Bamadhaj was hanged for carrying just over one kilogram of cannabis into the country in 2018, having been handed the death penalty in 2021.
In Singapore, capital punishment is only applicable for the most serious crimes, including drug trafficking under the Misuse of Drugs Act, although Bamadhaj claimed that he did not know that there were drugs in the car he used to drive from Malaysia back to Singapore after a trip to see family.
He also alleged that he was threatened into confessing by officers who said they would throw a pen at him, and hang him and his father, if he did not admit to the crime.
Despite several appeals, including one for presidential clemency, Bamadhaj’s sentence was upheld, making him the eighth person to be hanged in Singapore this year alone, and despite desperate pleas from groups including Human Rights Watch.
In 2025, Singapore, which has earned the unfortunate moniker “Disneyland with the death penalty,” executed 17 individuals – including three in one week – the highest number of death row inmates executed since 2003.
Following Bamadhaj’s execution, on April 24 came the news that a French teenager had been charged with “committing mischief” and “public nuisance” after a video went viral on social media showing him licking a straw from an IJooz orange juice vending machine and then returning it.
The case came about when IJooz filed a police report after seeing the viral video, and 18-year-old Didier Gaspard Owen Maximilien will return to court in May to answer to the case. If convicted, he could face a prison term of up to two years for licking the straw.
Finally, on 6 May, it was reported that male students at schools in Singapore found guilty of bullying could be subject to three strokes of the cane as a “last resort” under new rules discussed in parliament.
According to education minister Desmond Lee, caning will only be considered appropriate “if all other measures are inadequate, given the gravity of the misconduct.”
He added that caning would only be handed down if approved by a school principal, and students would be thrashed by an authorized teacher.
“Schools will consider factors such as the maturity of the student and if caning will help the student learn from his mistake and understand the gravity of what he has done,” he continued.
Under Singapore’s criminal procedure code, the caning of women is prohibited, which is why the new rules only apply to male students aged 9 years old and above. The caned children will receive counseling following the punishment, Lee added.
Taken individually, the above cases do not appear to be connected, but put together in the span of just three weeks, they potentially paint a picture of a state that is increasingly comfortable using harsh punishments to maintain order and the rule of law.
Some, however, would perhaps argue that it was ever thus.
Caning, for example, while now being extended to children as young as nine, is nothing new in Singapore’s legal system, and adult offenders can be caned if they are under the age of 50 for crimes including visa overstaying, scamming and robbery. The violent punishment was first introduced into the Singaporean penal code by the British during the colonial period, although the practice has now been abolished across the United Kingdom.
In addition to caning, Singapore is also famous for having banned chewing gum, the sale of which has been prohibited since 1992, in addition to vaping, littering, graffiti and jaywalking.
For some, perhaps this legal iron fist is a necessary trade-off to preserve Singapore’s non-corrupt, peaceful, and clean reputation. For others, the recent spate of hangings, arrests and new corporal punishment legislation may be seen as an intensification of a legal system already known for being one of the strictest in the world.
