Peter Hendra wrote:



The boy, a US citizen, was 16 and was convicted of graffiti in a
Singapore court. He received a whipping with a rattan cane on the bare
behind - a standard punishment. Draconian it may seem, but we never
saw any graffiti between Australia and Greece. We knew we were back in
the civilised world when we saw the tagging on the Greek trains. Oh, I
forgot the small "f***k bush" tag on the wall of an Ottoman castle on
the hill above Aden in Yemen.

I do not have the figures for last year but do know that Singapore
hanged 273 foreign nationals in 2003 regardless of country of origin.

FWIW, the last time that anyone was flogged in an Australian prison
was in 1953 - not that long ago. Thrity years ago, as a former high
school teacher in New Zealand, I was able to cane boys on the rear
end so long as I did not draw blood - it was very common in some
schools, some teachers caning someone every day.

Here it was the leather 'strap' until the late '60s.
Sometimes it didn't take much for the teacher to send you to the
cloakroom and administer 5 or 10 whacks to each hand. By junior high
the female teachers couldn't hurt you much, but a strong male teacher
could make it sting.