Being a European I have been raised looking at the world with a certain perspective. Therefore, joining a discussion about the influence of colonisation on a normal Monday night in Singapore turned out VERY interesting. I know that the English influenced Singaporean culture, the French influenced Vietnamese culture and that development of infrastructure came with colonisation. What I didn’t think of before is that laws, regulations and a range of customs and ways of thinking came with the same colonising powers. However, back in the days when Europe was colonising the world, laws and regulations were not in the state they are in today and many of the laws that have been long gone in Europe are, thus, still present in the Singaporean law enforcement. Whether this is a result of the evil coloniser’s need to enforce European culture on Asian countries or whether the Asian population have been ignorant in not following the development of the judicial system in Europe is a debate that kept us awake until fairly late that night.

My European eyes find the Singaporean laws and punishments very hard and to a certain extend inhuman, just as the European laws and punishments in the 19th century, in my perspective, were unnecessarily humiliating and barbaric. It is interesting, though, how a population of 4.2 million people live under these hard and inhuman laws finding them fair and necessary and not inhuman as I do. For the readers who don’t know about the Singaporean judicial system, I can inform you that capital punishment is quite common and that an even more common punishment is caning (i.e. stokkeslag). I know that the stick doesn’t kill, but I find it difficult to draw a line between beating another person with a stick and stoning which is a common punishment in the Sharia law. What on earth makes it alright to beat someone else? Does the uniform do the trick? I know that most Singaporeans would argue that the laws in Singapore are purely preventive and that it actually works. The crime rate in Singapore is very low, but I wonder if it would have been as low if the punishment was less inhuman?

Not only the governmental laws and regulations carry the footprint from the European colonisers. The customs in disciplining children have also stayed in Singapore. I have had endless discussions with close friends about the issue because I find it absolutely unnecessary to whip children and discipline them with a cane. Physical disciplining has been illegal in Denmark for decades, but finding a whip or a cane in a parental shop in Singapore is as easy as finding dog food in a pet shop. I am glad to know, though, that the custom is dying out. My friends do not want to physically discipline their children and I sure hope that the new generation will follow in their footsteps – not because I want to force Western standards on Asian customs, but because I believe that children can learn without being punished.