Pulau Senang is an 81.7-hectare coral-formed island in the Republic of Singapore, located about 13 kilometres off the southern coast of the main island of Singapore. Along with Pulau Pawai to the northwest and Pulau Sudong further behind Pulau Pawai, it is used as a military training area for live-fire exercises carried out by the Singapore Armed Forces. Pulau Senang is best known in the history of Singapore as the location of a former experimental offshore penal settlement that failed after only three years when an infamous riot against the small unit of prison authority broke out in 1963, resulting in the death of three officers, including the overall prison-chief.
Etymology
In Malay, Pulau Senang literally translates as the "Island of Ease".
Prison Riot
In 1960, an experimental-type offshore penal colony was established on Pulau Senang by the Singapore government. On the island, the prisoners, predominantly gangsters, were allowed to roam freely and were put to manual labour. It was envisioned that these hardened detainees could be reformed through hard work and be sent back home with an ability to seek employment afterwards. The prison-settlement was started on 18 May in 1960, when 50 detainees, sent from Changi Prison, arrived with Irish-born Prisons Superintendent Daniel Dutton, the appointed chief of the penal settlement. Over the next three years, the number of detainees from the mainland rose to 320 and together they transformed the island into an attractive settlement, albeit one for criminals still. Dutton believed that the detainees under his charge were not entirely cruel and evil and could be rehabilitated, thus leading to his rather lenient attitudes. However, despite such an outlook, he was also a strict enforcer of discipline and would not hesitate to punish those detainees who dared to challenge or defy his orders or the prison's regulations, as well as those recalcitrant prisoners who continuously broke the law. Also, with the firm belief that the tough detainees could be reformed through hard work, Dutton ordered the removal of arms from the prison-guards, believing it unnecessary for the need to maintain order via armed force. By the end of 1962, the prisoners, most of whom had begun to utterly resent Dutton's iron-fisted rule and harsh approaches in their perception, saw that an opportunity to fight back was nearing. Dutton and his prison-authority staff were aware of this and despite being warned that an uprising might occur soon, Dutton, nicknamed "The Laughing Tiger", laughed it off and took no heed. On 12 July in 1963, a group of some 70 to 90 detainees rioted and burned down most of the buildings of the prison-settlement. Just before things went out of hand, Dutton still had the chance to call for police reinforcements from the mainland as well as seek assistance with the Marine Police, but by the time he realised the situation was out of control, it was too horribly late. The prisoners went straight towards the prison-authorities' quarters and, with axes and hoes, had Dutton brutally hacked to death, mutilated his corpse, and killed two other prison-officers. Once prison-authority collapsed, the convicts began a mass celebration as though they had just conquered the island from their former captors. Shortly thereafter, police back-up arrived on the island and quickly secured what was left of the penal settlement and all of the prisoners. In the wake of the riot, 58 prisoners were accused of rioting and murdering Dutton and his staff-officers, Arumugan Veerasingham and Tan Kok Hian. Because of the large number of the accused, a special courtroom dock had to be constructed for them. The particularly-notorious case went to trial in the Singapore Supreme Court on 18 November in 1963 and lasted an unprecedented 64 days. The prisoners were represented by David Marshall. On 12 March of the following year, the seven-member jury found 18 of the accused guilty of murder, 18 guilty of rioting with deadly weapons and 11 guilty of rioting. The remaining 11 accused were acquitted. The 18 found guilty of murder were sentenced to death while those 18 found guilty of rioting with deadly weapons were sentenced to three years of imprisonment, with the rest of the 11 accused given two years of imprisonment. Most of those involved in the rioting were well-known and particularly-infamous members of local Singapore secret societies who were detained without trial and had little to no hope of leaving the island for the rest of their lives. As a result of the terrible riot, the experimental penal settlement was shut down and the programme came to an abrupt end by the end of 1964, with the island being declared out of bounds to all.
Restricted Area
Since 9 June 1989, the island, together with Pulau Pawai and Pulau Sudong, form the Singapore Armed Forces Southern Islands Live-Firing Area, a restricted militarytraining area and live-firing zone. As with all other military areas, installations and zones within the country, the entire live-firing zone is strictly off-limits to all civilians and unauthorised vessels at all times of the day and the night. In SILFA, the Republic of Singapore Air Force conducts military exercises for aerial bombing and parachute/rappelling practices, and on Pulau Sudong, there is a runway and a small control-tower for planes to land and takeoff before flying off to the nearby Pulau Pawai, on where a series of artificial ground-targets are located, for bombing exercises. While not often, the Republic of Singapore Navy occasionally uses SILFA for naval gunnery drills and exercises.
