Nude squats make a comeback

Singaporean women speak of a supper trip to Malaysia that turned ugly.

SINGAPORE: Two Singaporean women who drove to Johor Baru for supper were questioned by Malaysian immigration officials, handcuffed, thrown behind bars and made to do squats without their clothes on, the Singapore Straits Times reported today.

The two women said they had driven into Johor Baru through an unmanned immigration lane and did not get their passports stamped.

Following their 48-hour detention and the unusual punishment, they were allowed to return to Singapore with a warning.

“We thought it was a small issue, we didn’t think something like that would happen,” the Straits Times quoted one of the women, a manager in an insurance company who wanted to be known only as Chang. She is in her late 30s. Her companion was Lim, a property agent about 10 years younger.

A Malaysian immigration spokesman in Johor Baru confirmed that two Singaporean women were detained for an immigration offence.

The two left Singapore for Johor at about 1.30am last Thursday, the Straits Times reported. Lim was driving her new Nissan Latio. It was the first time she was driving across the Causeway, according to the Singapore newspaper.

“We just wanted to go for supper, polish my car and explore a bit,” Lim said. “I just bought my car a month ago; so we thought we’d make it an adventure.”

At the Malaysian immigration side of the Causeway, they drove into a lane that was not manned.

“There wasn’t anyone at the station and the green light was on,” Lim told the Straits Times.

“I pressed the intercom and couldn’t hear anything because of the static; so I just continued driving when the barrier opened.”

Biometric system

Chang told the daily they drove on because they thought that Malaysia’s newly introduced biometric system – which has been in the news – would be ahead.

The women soon realised that they were proceeding without getting their passports stamped and immediately did a U-turn.

By 2am, they were back at the checkpoint and explaining their mistake to the officers there. But they said the officers did not buy their story, although they pointed out that their Singapore passports would show that they had just entered Malaysia, the newspaper reported.

According to the report, the two women were left on their own in a room for about two hours before they were taken to another meeting room.

Chang said an officer spoke to them at about noon, saying they would have to pay a fine of RM3,000 each. 

Another officer had earlier said they could be fined up to RM10,000 and jailed for five years for illegally entering Malaysia.

They said they signed a statement in Malay, and asked to be taken to an ATM. They waited for three hours but no one came for them, they told the newspaper.

At about 5pm, they were told that they would be transferred to the Pontian Remand Centre and held there for up to 14 days.

At the remand centre, they were told to surrender their belongings. They were patted down by a female officer and handcuffed.

“They asked us to strip, take off all our clothes and underwear, and then asked us to stand up and down while pulling our ears,” Lim told the Straits Times.

Warning letter

After doing 10 squats, the women were told to put on their jeans and were given T-shirts. They were then locked in a cell three quarters the size of a basketball court with 50 other women, mostly from Indonesia, China and the Philippines.

The women spent the night in the cell. At about 5pm the next day, they were told they would be released, and were driven in a six-seater van back to the immigration checkpoint at the Causeway, where they received a warning letter.

Both told the Straits Times they would never go back to Malaysia.

A similar incident happened in November 2005. A video circulating on the Internet showed a woman doing nude squats. She was apparently forced to do so by Malaysian police.

An investigation revealed that the woman, Hemy Hamisa Abu Hassan Saari, who worked as babysitter, was arrested during a drug raid at a nightspot.

The incident, which drew intense public criticism, led to the formation of an independent commission chaired by former chief justice Dzaiddin Abdullah. It recommended that the practice be stopped.