His distraught parents were anxious to talk about the ordeal. “I’m extremely upset,” said his mother, Randy Chan, after learning the extent of Michael’s wounds, including a reported two-inch-wide gash where he’d apparently been hit more than once. “Mike’s in pain, but he’s dealing with it OK,” his father, George Fay told NEWSWEEK. The Singaporean government offered a completely different version. Michael, they claim, “shook the caner’s hand and smiled” after his beating and was able to sit through an entire post-flogging interview. Describing this account as “ludicrous.” Fay’s father vowed to call for a boycott of Singapore-and a formal review of its most-favored-nation trade status.
But the caning never became an international incident. After pleading with Singapore’s president to commute the sentence, Bill Clinton called the punishment “a mistake,” and let it go at that. Singapore defended its judicial system. Its institutions would lose all credibility, says Law and Foreign Affairs Minister Shunmugam Jayakumar, “if its citizens see the government as having succumbed to U.S. press pressure.” Yet the media clearly had some effect, and may have helped spare Fay two additional blows. And is it just coincidence that a month after Fay’s confession, Singapore liberalized its probation act? Now first-time offenders who are 16 to 21 might be given probation or even be discharged and escape the cane entirely.
