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two motives for graffittizing singapore
Read, Dwight ANTHRO (Read@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU)
Sat, 23 Apr 1994 09:49:00 PDT
In reply to Foss:
The LA Times has recently reported that (1) the law under which Fay has been
charged arose as a means to prevent political slogans from being written on
walls; apparently Fay is the first person to be charged under the law for
malicious defacing of property, (2) several other Singapore teenagers
are also being charged and one of them has received twice the sentence of
Fay--the Singapore teenager who has been sentenced is the son of a
prominent person in Singapore, (3) another Sinagpore teenager who
spray painted a car (I believe in an unrelated instance) was only charged
with malicious behavior and so will not be subjected to caning and (4) (if
memory serves me correctly) there is at least one other westerner who is
awaiting the outcome of charges against him.
Let me throw out a question for whatever it is worth: Is the "human
rights" issue a means to rationalize what is in fact a racist reaction:
namely, Its ok for the local folks to be caned, but Americans are too good to
be caned? My sense is that a lot of the discussion in the media about human
rights is only concerned with Fay as an American, not human rights applied
to Singapore teenagers.
D. Read
READ@ANTHRO.SSCNET.UCLA.EDU
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