Category: Sosial

Singapore Has Done Relatively Well In Social Mobility

As part of its move to build a fair and inclusive society, and enhance social mobility, the Government has made a deliberate tilt towards supporting the lower- and middle-income group over the past five years, through a progressive tax system, said Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam as he wrapped up the Budget debate in parliament on Thursday (Mar 5).

This is where higher income earners contribute the bulk of taxes, the lower-income group receives the most benefits, and the middle-income group receives more than they used to.

SINGAPORE HAS DONE ‘RELATIVELY WELL’ IN SOCIAL MOBILITY

Mr Tharman said that social mobility is the defining challenge of every advanced country today. But he said that Singapore has done relatively well, staying more fluid than most other countries.

In the US for example, among those who were in their mid-20s and early 30s, and who started off in the bottom 20 per cent, only 7.5 per cent eventually moved up into the top 20 per cent of the population. In contrast, Singapore saw 14 per cent of those who started off in the bottom 20 per cent, move up to the top 20 per cent of the population.

But Mr Tharman acknowledged that with each decade, it gets harder to improve social mobility. The Government has introduced a range of measures to address this. These include investing in education, diversifying pathways and promoting home ownership.

There have also been “significant moves to temper inequality”, such as the introduction of Workfare and the progressive wage model to raise the salaries of low-wage workers.

Mr Tharman added the Government has also shifted significantly to permanent schemes such as GST vouchers and the Silver Support Scheme. In fact, he said 90 per cent of transfers last year comprised permanent schemes.

PROGRESSIVE TAX SYSTEM

The progressive tax system also means that most benefits flow to those who truly need it.

To illustrate, he said that the top 20 per cent of households pay 55 per cent of all taxes and receive 12 per cent of benefits. The middle 20 per cent pay 11 per cent of all taxes, and receive 20 per cent of benefits. Correspondingly, the lowest 20 per cent of households pay 9 percent of all taxes, largely through GST, and receive 27 per cent of all benefits.

Said Mr Tharman: “The system is not just about redistributing from the rich to the poor. It is also about the middle income. The middle income group in Singapore are net beneficiaries of our system and there has been a significant increase in the amount the middle-income group has received over the last 10 years.”

He said that for every dollar of tax paid by the middle-income group, they now get back S$1.70 – a sum that has been increasing over the years. That is much more that what the middle-income group in countries like Finland, US and Britain gets back in benefits.

Mr Tharman said: “The benefits that our middle income get are not what you see like in the Scandinavian countries or the UK or many other advanced countries. Some of them have free healthcare, free tertiary education, free many things. But they are paying for it. It is not free, it is never free.

“And in most of these societies, with the Scandinavian countries being the classic example, in fact their tax system are not particularly progressive. They rely mainly on the VAT and high income tax for everyone to be able to flow back the benefits. Everyone is paying for the free benefits that they are getting.”

STRENGTHENING VALUE OF FAIR, INCLUSIVE SOCIETY

But while the Government is playing a more active role in redistribution, Mr Tharman noted that what is important is how it goes about strengthening the value of a fair and inclusive society.

He said: “The key to building a stronger society is not how much we are doing to redistribute, it is about how we strengthen the values that undergird and sustain a fair and inclusive society. It is not how much we are doing but how we do it, and whether how much we are doing strengthens the value of a fair and inclusive society.”

He said the Government is seeking to build a stronger social compact, where personal and collective responsibility go hand in hand. And it is doing so by empowering people and aspirations as well as rewarding responsibility throughout life.

“Our whole approach therefore is to avoid a zero sum game between personal and collective responsibility and get a compact where personal and collective responsibility reinforces each other,” he said.

Source: www.channelnewsasia.com

March 6, 2015
German Vandals Sentence To Nine Months Jail And Three Strokes Of Cane

SThe two Germans who trespassed on Bishan Depot last year to scrawl graffiti on an SMRT train have each been sentenced to nine months’ jail and three strokes of the cane.

Andreas Von Knorres, 22, and Elton Hinz, 21, each pleaded guilty yesterday to two charges of unauthorised entry into the depot, as well as to a third charge of vandalising the train.

In announcing the sentencing, District Judge Liew Thiam Leng said it had to serve to deter others from committing similar offences.

The court heard that at about 2.20am on Nov 7, the duo entered Bishan Depot through the drainage system. To reach the level where the trains were located, they had to scale a wall. They observed where the trains were and left the depot the same way they had entered.

The next day at about 2.48am, the men entered the depot again, using the same route, and climbed to the level where the trains were located. There, they took a selfie of themselves in front of a train. They then began spraying graffiti, 10m in length and 1.8m in width, on the left side of the train, using 12 cans of spray paint they had bought two days earlier. The duo later threw the cans under some wooden crates near the rail tracks and left the depot the same way they had entered.

Von Knorres and Hinz reportedly left Singapore on Nov 8, but were arrested on Nov 20 by the Malaysian police at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, where they were about to board a plane to Australia. The two men have been in remand in Singapore since Nov 22 and their prison sentences will be backdated to that date.

Further investigations showed that Von Knorres and Hinz worked in Australia and that they had committed the offences while on their first visit to Singapore.

The duo’s case — the second security breach to hit Bishan Depot last year — brought to light security vulnerabilities at the depot, arising from a network of canals and drains running underneath it.

SMRT had stated earlier that it was working with the authorities to “urgently address the identified points of vulnerability to further safeguard the depot and its transport assets”.

The maximum sentence for vandalism is up to three years’ jail, and/or a fine of up to S$2,000, with between three and eight strokes of the cane. Those who trespass on protected areas may be jailed up to two years and/or fined up to S$1,000.

Source: www.todayonline.com

March 6, 2015
Convicted New Delhi Rape Perpetrator Blames Victim

NEW DELHI — In the months after the death of a young woman who was brutalized and gang-raped on a moving bus in New Delhi in 2012, thousands of politicians, activists and ordinary citizens crowded India’s airwaves and its public spaces to say their piece about the crime.

But there was no comment from the six slight, ordinary-looking men accused of her murder. Whisked in and out of the courtroom past shouting crowds of journalists, they listened impassively to testimony and offered monosyllabic answers on the stand. Courtroom guards said they hummed Bollywood tunes under their breath. Their opinions were anyone’s guess.

Now, one of the men on death row for the crime, Mukesh Singh, has told a British filmmaker that the young woman invited the rape because she was out too late at night and that she would have lived if she had submitted to the assault.

“You can’t clap with one hand,” said Mr. Singh, who was convicted of rape and murder, though he denied taking part in the assault. “It takes two hands. A decent girl won’t roam around at 9 o’clock at night. A girl is far more responsible for rape than a boy. Boy and girl are not equal. Housework and housekeeping is for girls, not roaming in discos and bars at night doing wrong things, wearing wrong clothes. About 20 percent of girls are good.”

Mukesh Singh, Credit Associated Press

The comments, released as part of a publicity campaign for the film, called “India’s Daughter,” were met with outrage in India, in part over why the filmmaker, Leslee Udwin, had been permitted to interview the defendant in jail.

After complaints by the home minister, an Indian court issued a restraining order, stating that Mr. Singh’s interview created “an atmosphere of fear and tension with the possibility of public outcry and law and order situation.” The order said the film violated four Indian statutes, including one against “intent to cause alarm in the public” and another banning acts “intended to outrage the modesty of a woman.”

Ms. Udwin said the order amounted to a ban.

“That means they have banned a film which is in the public interest without having seen it, without having requested a copy of it,” she said. The film will be distributed through social media, she added.

“No intelligent person can watch this film and not understand that these remarks are not being promulgated,” she said.

The woman, a 23-year-old physiotherapy student, had been to see “Life of Pi” with a male friend, and they boarded the private bus without realizing that it was off duty and that the six men aboard had been driving the streets in search of a victim. After knocking her friend unconscious, they took the woman to the back of the bus and raped her, then damaged her internal organs with an iron rod. An hour later, they dumped the pair on the roadside, bleeding and naked. The woman died two weeks later of her injuries.

In the interview, for a film that will air Sunday on the BBC, Mr. Singh said the woman had provoked the deadly assault by resisting the rape.

“When being raped, she shouldn’t fight back,” he told the filmmaker, Ms. Udwin, according to a transcript provided by the BBC. “She should just be silent and allow the rape. Then they’d have dropped her off after ‘doing her,’ and only hit the boy.”

In footage from the film, Mr. Singh tonelessly narrates the assault, saying that he heard the woman screaming for help but that his brother instructed him to keep driving as they “dragged her to the back” and “went turn by turn.” Afterward, he said, he saw the youngest of the assailants, who was 17 at the time of the crime, withdraw something from her body.

“It was her intestines,” Mr. Singh said. “He said: ‘She’s dead. Throw her out quickly.’ ”

He called the killing “an accident.”

Ms. Udwin, at a news conference in New Delhi, said the film crew had interviewed Mr. Singh for 16 hours and had seen no sign of remorse. “He is almost like a robot,” she said.

According to police records, the men divided the pair’s possessions: Mr. Singh took one cellphone, and Vinay Sharma, 20, took the other. Pawan Gupta took the man’s watch and 1,000 rupees in cash, a little less than $20. Akshay Kumar Singh took the woman’s rings. The juvenile was given a bank card and some cash.

Months before the trial, Mr. Singh’s brother, Ram Singh, hanged himself with his bedsheet in his prison cell. The juvenile defendant, whose identity has not been made public in accordance with Indian law, was sentenced to three years in a detention center, the heaviest sentence possible in India’s juvenile justice system. The remaining four men pleaded not guilty; they are appealing their death sentences.

Mr. Singh told the filmmaker that he believed the harsh sentences, instead of acting as a deterrent, would drive more rapists to kill their victims. “Before, they would rape and say: ‘Leave her alone. She won’t tell anyone,’ ” he said. “Now, when they rape, especially the criminal types, they will just kill the girl. Death.”

Source: www.nytimes.com

March 4, 2015
Bali Nine Australians Andre Chan And Myuran Sukumaran Moved To Execution Site
The ringleaders of the “Bali Nine” Australian drug gang are being transferred from Bali to another Indonesian island to be executed.

Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran are among nine foreigners expected to face a firing squad in the coming days.

Australia has pressed Indonesia not to go ahead, with Prime Minister Tony Abbott saying he was “revolted”.

The pair were convicted in 2005 after being caught attempting to smuggle heroin from Bali to Australia.

Indonesia has some of the toughest drug laws in the world and ended a four-year moratorium on executions in 2013.

President Joko Widodo has said the drugs trade destroys lives in Indonesia and he will show no mercy to convicted dealers.

Chan and Sukumaran left Kerobokan jail in Bali in the early morning in armoured cars and are being transferred to Nusakambangan, the prison island where the executions are due to take place.

Chan’s brother Michael and Sukumaran’s mother Raji, who have visited the pair regularly, were seen talking with prison guards after the convoy left.

Australian media said they were refused a request to see the pair.

It is not clear when the executions will take place, but a formal announcement will be made by authorities 72 hours before.

There have been unprecedented levels of security for this transfer. Some media outlets have reported that members of Indonesia’s anti-terror unit Detachment 88 are also involved – highly unusual for the transfer of two drug convicts.

But that may be because of the unprecedented level of media interest in this case.

Chan and Sukumaran have had all their appeals and applications for clemency rejected by the Indonesian government, despite repeated representations on their behalf by the Australian government and human rights activists who say the two men have reformed.

Their planned executions have raised tensions between Australia and Indonesia, at a time when the two countries were just starting to repair ties after a spying incident.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo has said that no amount of foreign pressure will stop the executions from going ahead.

Speaking to ABC News on Wednesday, Mr Abbott said millions of Australians were feeling “sick in their stomachs at the thought of what’s likely to happen to these two men”.

He acknowledged that they had “committed a terrible crime”, but added: “We abhor the death penalty, which we think is beneath a country such as Indonesia.”

Who are the Bali Nine?
- The eight men and one woman were arrested in April 2005 at an airport and hotel in Bali, Indonesia after a tip-off from Australian police.
- They were trying to carry 8.3kg (18lb) of heroin back to Australia
- In 2006 a court ruled that Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran had recruited the others and paid their costs. They were sentenced to death
- The other seven are serving sentences of between 20 years and life, after some had death sentences revoked on appeal
- Chan and Sukumaran have repeatedly appealed against their sentences and say they are reformed characters – Chan teaches Bible and cookery classes in prison while Sukumaran is an artist
Who are Chan and Sukumaran?

Chan and Sukumaran’s relatives and supporters have pleaded for their lives to be spared, arguing that they have been rehabilitated while in jail.

Lawyers for the two men said they were still attempting to mount a legal challenge but Indonesia’s Attorney General Muhammad Prasetyo said on Monday that any legal appeals were no longer valid following the earlier rejection of clemency by President Widodo.

Earlier in the month, all of Australia’s living former prime ministers made a united plea for Indonesia to spare the lives of Chan and Sukumaran.

Brazil and France, whose citizens are also on death row in Indonesia, have expressed their unhappiness in recent weeks.

Paris has summoned the Indonesian envoy and Brazil’s president refused to accept the credentials of the new Indonesian ambassador.

If the executions go ahead, the nine foreigners and one Indonesian national would be the second group of drug offenders to be put to death since Mr Widodo came to power.

In January Indonesia executed six people, five of whom were foreigners, for drug offences.

The Netherlands and Brazil, whose citizens were executed, recalled their ambassadors to Indonesia in response, saying this severely affected diplomatic relations.

Source: www.bbc.com
March 4, 2015
Vietnamese Woman Died After Vehicle Accident, Fell From West Coast Highway Onto Telok Blangah Road

A 25-year-old Vietnamese woman is believed to have fallen from West Coast Highway, which is a viaduct running above Telok Blangah Road.

The Straits Times understands that the woman and the man were travelling on a motorcycle on West Coast Highway just before the woman fell to her death. She landed in front of a bus stop near Seah Im Food Centre.

Police received a call requesting for assistance at about 3.20pm. Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF) was informed at the same time and despatched an ambulance to the scene.

When police arrived, the woman was found lying motionless and pronounced dead by paramedics at the scene. A man in his 20s who was at the scene refused to be conveyed to hospital, said an SCDF spokesman.

The police are investigating the unnatural death.

Source: www.straitstimes.com

March 4, 2015