MalayMail/CNA-Mar 24
A man born in Singapore but granted Indonesian citizenship as a child has been convicted of dodging national service (NS), after a court ruled he could not “cherry-pick” which laws to follow, CNA reported.
Edmond Yao Zhi Hai, 47, was found guilty of failing to report for enlistment in January 1997, despite long-standing arguments that serving would have cost him his Indonesian citizenship. The case turns on a decades-long dispute over nationality and obligation, with Yao maintaining that Indonesian law barred him from foreign military service — and that he believed he did not need to serve in Singapore. His defense argued that he had been led to believe his Singapore citizenship would lapse, and that authorities had effectively treated him as Indonesian by allowing him to travel on an Indonesian passport for years. But prosecutors rejected that claim, arguing Yao — who was educated entirely in Singapore — had knowingly tried to sidestep his obligations, saying he could not pick laws “at his convenience”. The court agreed in a judgment released on Monday. According to the Singapore-based media organization, district Judge James Elisha Lee found that Singapore authorities had made it “manifestly clear” that Yao remained liable for NS as a citizen by birth, regardless of his Indonesian status. “The accused knew that although he holds Indonesian citizenship, he is also a Singapore citizen,” the judge said. He rejected claims that Yao acted under any genuine misunderstanding, ruling that the defense’s argument of a “legitimate expectation” did not apply — especially given the importance of national service to Singapore’s security”. The magnitude and importance of the role of NS to Singapore’s national security and survival” outweighed such claims, the judge said.
