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SINGAPORE: A 47-year-old Singaporean man with Indonesian citizenship was sentenced to the maximum of three years’ jail on Tuesday (May 26) for failing to enlist for National Service (NS) in Singapore.<\/p>\n
The judge said Edmond Yao Zhi Hai had evaded the whole of his full-time NS obligations and his post-operationally ready date (ORD) reservist obligations by defaulting for 21 years and nine months. He said his conduct falls within the worst category of NS defaulters.<\/p>\n
Yao was also fined S$3,000 (US$2,350) for immigration offences for failing to present his Singapore passport to an immigration officer when he arrived in Singapore.<\/p>\n
In response to the defence’s arguments that Yao had travelled in and out of Singapore for years without being arrested, District Judge James Elisha Lee noted that Yao had used an Indonesian passport and had “clearly contributed to his non-apprehension”.<\/p>\n
Judge Lee found no delay in prosecution, adding that any delay in enforcement action was contributed to materially by Yao’s own actions or inaction.<\/p>\n
He intends to appeal against his conviction and sentence.<\/p>\n
Yao <\/strong>had contested the enlistment charge, claiming he believed that he was bound by Indonesian law not to enlist, since Indonesian law forbids citizens from entering foreign military service.<\/p>\n Judge Lee rejected the argument that Yao was labouring under a mistake of fact that he had been regarded as an Indonesian foreigner by Singapore.<\/p>\n He also said that Yao cannot “by any stretch” be considered to have acted in good faith, since he had been informed of his NS liabilities from the outset by the Ministry of Defence’s CMPB.<\/p>\n Yao later pleaded guilty to other charges for failing to present his Singapore passport to an immigration officer when he arrived in Singapore.<\/p>\n The prosecution had sought the maximum of three years’ jail for the Enlistment Act charge and S$3,000 for the immigration offences.<\/p>\n Yao was born in 1978 in Singapore to a Singaporean mother and an Indonesian father. His father obtained Indonesian citizenship for him and an Indonesian passport was issued to him.<\/p>\n In 1986, Yao’s mother made a deed poll stating that Yao was a minor and a citizen of Singapore. He received a national registration identity card in 1990 and studied in Singapore between 1984 and 1996 at Catholic High School, Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College.<\/p>\n He later failed to report for enlistment into full-time NS in January 1997 despite a notice from the Ministry of Defence’s Central Manpower Base (CMPB).<\/p>\n He completed his further education abroad between July 1997 and June 2001, writing to the Singapore embassy in Indonesia in October 2003 to renounce his Singapore citizenship. CMPB later said that it did not support the renunciation.<\/p>\n Yao married a Singaporean woman in January 2005 and applied for permanent residence in Singapore, but was rejected on the basis that he was Singaporean.<\/p>\n He travelled in and out of Singapore until Sep 1, 2021 when he tried to extend his short-term visit pass and was arrested for failing to fulfil his NS liability.<\/p>\n For failing to report for NS, he could have been jailed for up to three years, fined up to S$5,000, or both.<\/p>\n Yao is on bail pending appeal.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE: A 47-year-old Singaporean man with Indonesian citizenship was sentenced to the maximum of three years’ jail on Tuesday (May 26) for failing to enlist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55463,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/dam.mediacorp.sg\/image\/upload\/s--PjeaFmbM--\/c_fill,g_auto,h_676,w_1200\/fl_relative,g_south_east,l_mediacorp:cna:watermark:2021-08:cna,w_0.1\/f_auto,q_auto\/v1\/mediacorp\/cna\/image\/2026\/04\/28\/1000193201.jpg?itok=XEfep_Gf","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[15616,852,558,780,140,6445,554,1293,59],"class_list":["post-55462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-news-sg-global","tag-citizenship","tag-failing","tag-indonesian","tag-jail","tag-man","tag-maximum","tag-report","tag-singaporean","tag-years","wpcat-2-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/55463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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