Senseless Violence in Disneyland with a Death Penalty

Many of you would have read by now the senseless attack by a 70 year old man against MP Seng Han Thong. The MP was attacked from behind by the man who threw thinner on him and set him alight resulting in 10-15% burns on his body. It was unfortunate that MP Seng Han Thong was also assaulted in 2006 by a disgruntled constituent.

While the two incidents are not related, it highlights how random acts of violence can occur in Singapore - one of the safest places in the world but also not immune to people who go "postal". From newspaper accounts, the attacker Ong Kah Chua, was described as having been "in and out of Institute of Mental Health" and appears to somewhat idiosyncratic, locking up his home using 10 padlocks.

The motive and rationale behind the attack would need an investigation to unearth why and what prompted Ong to commit such a horrific attack. Being burned is a terrible way to get hurt. Unlike, injuries such as broken bones or injuries from being punched or kicked, your skin has many nerve endings and is very painful when it is injured.

Having gone through 2.5 years of full-time national service and 10 years of reservist, would I have been able to handle myself if faced with a crazy person who seeks to hurt me or my family? I think the latent flight/fight response would kick in if I sensed an imminent threat to myself or my loved ones and override the thinking brain. One of the things I learnt during operations duty doing protection of installation was understanding the rules of engagement. In public, you can defend yourself if someone is coming at you with a deadly object, e.g. knife or molotov cocktail equivalent. You can probably claim self-defence if you assault the person to prevent yourself from getting seriously hurt.

In the case of someone attacking you with a flamable object, the stop, drop and roll method would help to extinguish the flames. But there is really no practical way to prevent such random, senseless acts of violence from occuring. How can you protect yourself from such incidents when the likelihood is so remote? Statistically, there is a higher chance for us to be involved in traffic accidents given our exposure as pedestrains, commuters or drivers than to be attacked in such a manner in our lifetimes.

I hope MP Seng Han Thong recovers quickly and my thoughts go out to him and his family.