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Volunteers Blameless In SEA Games Closing Ceremony Debacle

Spectators who were affected by the lockout from the SEA Games closing ceremony at the National Stadium on Tuesday were unhappy about the experience, but drew the line at the abuse of volunteers and spoke up against such behaviour.

Calling the volunteers blameless and praising them for doing what they were instructed to under difficult circumstances, members of the public instead blamed the organisers for the chaos.

Believed to number in the hundreds, some spectators could not enter the 55,000-seat arena despite having purchased tickets. This is because those already inside had waited at the concourse area after failing to find their seats when the lights went off for the ceremony. It meant stadium personnel had to close the gates as a safety measure to prevent greater crowd congestion.

On Tuesday, the Singapore SEA Games Organising Committee (SINGSOC) apologised for the incident, offering a full refund for the tickets, which cost up to S$40, and a supporter’s medallion. As of press time last night, SINGSOC had yet to respond to TODAY’s queries on the situation.

Several of the affected spectators yesterday criticised the people who took their frustrations out on the volunteers.

Said Ms Teo Su Xin, 23, who had to wait 40 minutes before being allowed in: “We (crowd) couldn’t enter. They (volunteers) said it was a full house and volunteers kept asking us to move from one gate to another and I just followed the crowd, but there was this uncle who was agitated and raised his voice at the volunteers.

“I didn’t think they deserved such treatment as they were merely carrying out instructions given to them.”

Spectator Mark Tan was also unable to enter. “They (volunteers) were … effectively abandoned by whoever should have been coordinating them,” he said.

Ms Paddy Low, 50, who waited for 45 minutes before deciding to go home instead, added: “The volunteers at the gate were put in a difficult spot as they didn’t know why there was such a situation. I felt sorry for them as they kept getting scolded by people.”

Said a volunteer who declined to be named: “The crowd definitely grew rowdy, frustrated and impatient, shouting at the security and volunteer team on duty at Gate 14. A man carrying a baby also shouted at those on duty.”

The lockout is probably one of the few blots of the 28th SEA Games, which were otherwise praised for the way they were run.

SINGSOC roped in 17,000 volunteers to help run the biennial meet.

Source: www.todayonline.com

June 18, 2015
Impose Reformative Training With Caution

Although reformative training is aimed as a rehabilitative sentencing option for youth offenders, it should be imposed “cautiously”, given the nature and duration of the punishment, said a district judge.

Reformative training involves an offender between 14 and 21 years old who is institutionalised for at least 18 months and up to 30 months. It results in a criminal record, while a community sentence is rendered spent after it is completed. Probation is deemed not to be a conviction.

While reformative training aims to be rehabilitative, the courts have recognised that it is incarcerative in nature, said District Judge Lim Keng Yeow, in his grounds of decision for rejecting prosecutors’ call for the penalty to be imposed on a teenager who had beaten up foreign workers to practise his martial-arts skills.

“Given the nature and duration of reformative training as it now stands, it should be imposed cautiously, perhaps with as much care as when a physician prescribes very strong medication carrying notable potential side effects,” he wrote. “The courts have absolutely no reason to flinch from imposing reformative training, where it is appropriate. But care ought to be taken not to impose it gratuitously.”

The judge had sentenced Daryl Lim Jun Liang to 10 days of detention and other conditions, ruling that reformative training for the 18-year-old would amount to a “sledgehammer approach”, given the offender’s high capacity for community rehabilitation. Even adults who commit the exact same offence of voluntarily causing hurt would not have been sentenced to a substantial prison term lasting several months, he added.

In his written decision issued last month after the prosecution indicated that it would appeal — which it did yesterday (June 16) — the judge felt community sentencing for Lim was the most fitting option, as probation was insufficiently retributive or deterrent.

A short detention order would mean Lim would still undergo the grim and harsh experience of being locked up, he said. In addition, he was ordered to do 150 hours of community service, report daily to a supervision officer for a year and remain indoors from 10pm to 6am.

The judge said Lim’s probation and community-sentencing suitability reports were positive — he had a supportive family, was able to talk to his mother about past involvement with a gang, and the restaurant he had interned at re-employed him even after knowing about his offence. He demonstrated a capacity for rehabilitation “high enough to outweigh other retributive or deterrent considerations calling for tough sanctions”, DJ Lim said.

Together with three friends, the teen looked for foreign workers who were smaller in build to beat up last September and October, and mocked the victims by dancing in front of them.

The prosecution contended that a deterrent sentence was needed as Lim had targeted a specific class of people, but the judge felt the teen’s offence was not targeted at any particular nationality, race or cultural group, as foreign workers are a large and varied class of individuals.

In his judgment, DJ Lim also made observations about the prosecution’s “unfortunate and undesirable” about-turn in submissions on sentence. It had made no submissions on this at the start, yet objected to probation and pushed for reformative training after the favourable presentencing reports despite having “not more but less reason to press for tougher sanctions”, he said.

The prosecution is allowed to change its mind, but DJ Lim said it could have discharged its duty to the court better in this case, given its “remarkable and yet quite inexplicable” about-turn on sentencing submissions.

Source: www.todayonline.com

June 18, 2015
1965 Dramatic Thriller, Not Lee Kuan Yew Biopic

Scenes of the race riots of the early 1960s juxtaposed against happier occasions among Singapore’s ethnic communities, and a clip of actor Lim Kay Tong as Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew calling for Singapore to be a multicultural nation.

Film-makers Randy Ang and Daniel Yun shared a glimpse of the highly-anticipated film 1965, when they screened the film’s trailer at a press conference yesterday (June 17) at Shaw Lido.

However, both Mr Ang and Mr Yun were quick to reiterate that the movie, which tracks events in Singapore in the early 1960s leading up to independence in 1965, is not just about the race riots.

“It is not a biopic of Lee Kuan Yew, it’s not a propaganda film, it is not a documentary or a political film,” said Mr Yun, the executive producer and co-director for 1965. “It’s a dramatic thriller based on historical events, and touches on something fragile — racial harmony and some of the peace that we experience right now.”

Mr Yun also said the movie was not just about looking back into the past. “Towards the end of the film, we sort of ask, ‘What’s next?’ That really is what this film is about. We showed what happened in 1965, then there’s a segment where we show the present day, but then we ask what’s the next 50 years going to be like.”

More importantly, he added, it stresses the idea of home, a sentiment that actress Joanne Peh, who plays Chinese immigrant Zhou Jun in the film, echoed. “Until I did this movie, I never questioned the sense of home,” she said. “I was born in the ’80s and there was peace and harmony. For (my character), coming from China and settling in Singapore was a temporary situation … but we take (the idea of home) for granted.”

Also introduced at the press conference were the official promotional posters and two songs written for the movie: Selamat Pagi by Sezairi, who also has a role in the film, and a new song by singer-songwriter Gentle Bones.

Mr Yun is aiming high for the movie. “We hoping that this is a movie that can (have) box office (takings) of S$3 million to S$6 million. You never know — we could do better,” he said.

Despite the movie being a period piece set in Singapore, Mr Ang said the film has legs to run well beyond SG50. “There are some universal truths in the film,” he said. “The film may be released for SG50 but even more than that, the racial and social discord (in the film) is something that is still happening. We had it here in the past, but elsewhere it’s still happening.”

Mr Yun agreed that the film could have international appeal, adding that they are looking to market the film outside of the Republic, like in Malaysia, India and China.

Source: www.todayonline.com

June 18, 2015
Body Of Missing Elderly Man Found On BKE

The decomposed body of a man was found in the grass next to the Bukit Timah Expressway (BKE) towards Woodlands Checkpoint at about 9am yesterday.

The man’s daughter-in-law, Madam Mabel Yeo , 44, told The New Paper yesterday evening that he had been missing since June 5.

Identifying her father-in-law as Mr Ow Lew Bin, 78, Madam Yeo said: “We spent about four to five hours each day looking for him.”

She also went on Facebook to appeal to the public to help look for him.

Madam Yeo wrote in a Facebook post yesterday: “We searched everywhere but we just didn’t go (to) this walk(ing) path of BKE. Everything is too late now.”

Source: www.tnp.sg

June 18, 2015
‘Credits for Sex’ Scam Victims Lose $1.25 Million From January To May

The warnings to stay sharp against cybercheating appear to have fallen on deaf ears for some, as men have been cheated of more than S$1.25 million in sex scams in the first five months of the year.

After receiving at least 500 reports on “credits for sex” scams, the police have arrested a 22-year-old connected to such scams. The suspect will be charged in court with cheating-related offences today.

The scams involved women befriending male victims through social media platforms such as WeChat, and offering dates or sexual services in exchange for online shopping credits, said the police in a media release yesterday.

The scammers would typically ask the victims to purchase cards from AXS machines, and send images of the receipts together with the personal identification numbers (PINs) for the cards to designated email accounts for them to claim the credits. In some cases, other members of the syndicates would contact the victims and ask them to make more purchases.

Earlier this month, a variation of the scam emerged: Victims were asked to hand over their ATM cards and their PINs before they could meet the women. They were instructed to leave their ATM cards at public locations, and told that their cards would be returned to them after they met the women.

The cards were then collected by unknown persons and the monies in the accounts linked to the cards were pilfered. On some occasions, these accounts were used to receive funds from other victims of crime.

As more cases were reported, the police issued warnings. Choa Chu Kang Neighbourhood Police Centre (NPC) sent an SMS alert earlier this month to residents urging vigilance against such scams. Between January and April, 373 victims fell for the scam and the sum cheated totalled S$812,000, with one of the victims made S$43,137 poorer, they said.

Cybercheating cases have been an area of concern in recent years, with a three-fold jump in the number of such cases between 2009 and last year. E-commerce cheating or extortion on cyberspace crimes continued to rise from 510 cases in 2013 to 1,659 cases last year.

Most of the cases were shoppers who were duped into making multiple payments for purported online bargains. Crooks would put up advertisements for products at low prices but ask for payments repeatedly on the pretext that the goods would be delivered eventually. Internet scams also emerged in the form of fake gift cards or virtual credits being peddled online.

Responding to TODAY’s queries about the scams flagged by the Choa Chu Kang NPC, a police spokesperson said preliminary investigations show that the latest credits-for-sex scam appeared to originate from overseas, and the police are working with its foreign counterparts to trace the perpetrators.

Members of the public are advised to be wary of strangers they befriend online, as well as avoid providing personal details about themselves when engaging other Internet users. They are also advised not to share their payment receipts containing details such as PINs with anyone.

Source: www.todayonline.com

June 18, 2015