Need your sausage smoked..dont go to singapore

Nyck · **Need your sausage smoked..dont go to singapore -** 03-02-2004, 06:53 PM

it is BANT!

Judge defends ban on oral sex

Singapore's 77-year-old chief judge has given an earthy defence of his country's notorious prohibition on oral sex - declaring the law should be upheld to safeguard Asian standards of decency.

Jailing a 25-year-old former policeman for 12 months for receiving oral sex from a teenage girl, Chief Justice Yong Pung How said that despite growing permissiveness in some countries there were "certain offences that are so repulsive in Asian culture".

"There are countries where you can go and suck away for all you are worth," the judge said. "People in high places do it for all they're worth. I'm not an expert, but you read about it in the papers. But this is Asia."

Justice Yong was hearing an appeal by Annis Abdullah against the severity of his two-year prison sentence for receiving oral sex from a girl originally described by prosecutors as 16, but later revealed to be 15 and a minor.

Under Singapore law, oral sex, anal sex and homosexual intercourse are defined as acts "against the law of nature" and punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment.

The Singapore Government has flagged a review of the law after mounting public opposition - and international ridicule - to its continued use in dozens of cases involving consensual sex between adults.

While agreeing to reduce Annis's sentence, Justice Yong refused to admit fresh defence evidence contradicting the original prosecution case that he had seduced the girl through an internet chat room.

Defence lawyer Surinder Dhillon said the girl, who met Annis at a party, had later phoned him five times before he agreed to the "date", at which they had sex in his car.

In one of the other cases involving the same girl, the accused man was charged with receiving oral sex on two separate occasions and sentenced to eight months' jail on each count - after Annis was sentenced to two years' jail on one count by a district court judge.

Mr Dhillon revealed that the girl was involved in two other, unrelated oral sex cases.

But Justice Yong spurned arguments that the lack of aggravating circumstances made an extended prison sentence "manifestly excessive".

"This is Asia. That is why originally it was life imprisonment," said the judge.

He said Singapore's laws prohibiting oral sex and other "unnatural" acts had derived from colonial India and were "attuned to Asian conditions by the British Empire".

Justice Yong said that although some public attitudes were changing, whether or not there was consent in such cases made little difference to many people, particularly when minors were involved.

"Times have changed. Women are freer, they don't just run around the kitchen, as it were," he said.

"But ask any mother or your sisters and you'll get a different answer. No lady or woman would ask what aggravation is needed... The offence itself is an aggravation."

The judge ordered Annis, who had been on bail pending the appeal, to begin a 12-month prison sentence. He said detailed reasons for his decision would be given later - acknowledging that three other oral sex cases had been adjourned in the lower courts awaiting his decision.