Said the Judge: “One fact right at the outset emerges clear and undisputed, and it is this: that this uprising, call it what you will, resulted in the virtual complete destruction of Pulau Senang and the killing of its superintendent and three of the settlement attendants killed with a brutality and a callousness which it is difficult to conceive. One of the remarkable and most astonishing features of this uprising, you may agree with me, was the suddenness of its beginning, the violence and the fury of its execution and the fantastic speed and consequent shortness of time in which all its objectives were accomplished. Within a little over half an hour, Pulau Senang was destroyed, four prison officers killed, a number wounded, some seriously. It was also clear beyond dispute that this destruction and slaughter were caused by some of the police detainees detained at Pulau Senang.”
The Judge recalled that Pulau Senang was started on 18 May 1960 when the first batch of detainees arrived on the island. Dutton, as superintendent, was entrusted with the project which represented a unique and progressive experiment in the prison system development in Singapore. It was to be an open prison with the emphasis on constructive work by the detainees themselves and their rehabi-litation. They were to work and to construct and to see the result of their labour.
Dutton was given a free hand in the choice of the first batch of detainees to go to the island. It was at that time completely virgin jungle. In the years that followed, under Dutton’s drive, the island was developed. Apart from putting up buildings he had certain parts of the island cultivated. That was part of the rehabilitation programme. Livestock was brought on to the island after the first batch of detainees had landed. Subsequent batches arrived at the rate of 30 a month, and on the day of the tragic disaster, the total number of detainees on the island was 316: and there were three long-sentence prisoners.
The detainees spent a minimum of 12 months at Changi before they were sent to Pulau Senang. The period on Pulau Senang varied with each detainee. A Review and Rehabilitation Committee was set up to review cases meriting release once a month, and on an average a detainee would have to spend 12 to 18 months at Pulau Senang before his name came up for review. This committee took the place of the Visiting Justices. Names were submitted by Dutton. If the committee recommended release, the detainee was sent in the first instance to the Work Brigade at Jalan Damai Camp as part of the rehabilitation programme. And from there, if they proved themselves, they gravitated into employment by the Prisons Department in various capacities: some of them as settlement attendants. A detainee who broke the regulations or misbehaved on Pulau Senang was returned to Changi. This all the detainees disliked very much because their previous period of detention was written off and they had to start all over again.
At the commencement of the project, the detainee had to work long and arduous hours in order to get the project underway to construct shelters, accommodation, sleeping quarters, among other things.
Much had been made, the Judge said, about the hard work. “Now hard work never hurt anyone. It is idle hands that turn to mischief, and one of the prime motives of this rehabilitation programme was to physically exhaust them, to keep them working, to keep them from brooding and from thinking and planning or plotting. To keep them at it out in the sun, in the fresh air, and to send them, physically tired, to bed so that they could sleep.”
Major James had said that the word work was unknown to them: it was anathema to them… This was an attempt to show that by hard work and effort they could construct something worthwhile, which they could turn to each other and say: ‘Look at what we have done’, and to stop them from sitting in isolation in a cell, brooding over what they considered to be their unjustified detention. “It was never intended that Pulau Senang should be a holiday camp for tired businessmen, nor yet a picnic island for schoolboys and university students on holidays. It was a prison settlement for persons detained under the provisions of the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Ordinance… ”
The Judge said that the prosecution’s case was that the ensuing wholesale destruction of Pulau Senang, the killing of the four prison staff, ‘stems from the incident of the 13 carpenters who refused to work overtime on that Saturday afternoon’.
The Judge agreed with Major James that it was an ill-advised action on the part of Dutton. “To say that the subsequent action taken by the detainees concerned to avenge what they thought was an injustice was out of all proportion to the occasion is, I think, a masterpiece of understatement.”
Four witnesses said they overheard Tan Kheng Ann, Chia Yuan Fatt and Cheong Wai Sang and two others (all of whom were said to hold high positions in their respective secret societies) plot to kill Dutton on 6 July. Chia told one of the carpenters: “Do not worry. We will settle accounts with Dutton and liquidate him.” “That meeting on 6 July was where this conspiracy to kill Dutton, to carry out some incidents when he was on the island, was first hatched… ”
The defence had described the evidence against the plotters as ‘a tissue of falsehood engendered by spite and by a desire for release’.
The Judge discussed the categories of witnesses called by the prosecution. A large number of them were fellow detainees. There were also ex-detainees who had become settlement attendants ‘who had, so to speak, graduated out from Pulau Senang to the Work Brigade and were then taken back as rehabilitated members of society’. The Judge warned that evidence of fellow detainees, ex-detainees and long-sentence prisoners required careful scrutiny, attention and examination. Their evidence must be considered with care and caution. In some instances, they were members of rival gangs to which some of the accused were members. He warned that the evidence of one accomplice cannot be used to corroborate the evidence of another accomplice.
One witness, Chong Sek Ling, was not in the Judge’s view an accomplice. “He appeared to co-operate with Tan Kheng Ann when the plot to kill Dutton and destroy Pulau Senang was being hatched but only, if you accept his evidence, to obtain information to pass on to Dutton. Thereafter he took no part whatever in the subsequent uprising. The fact that he helped himself to some food in the canteen, is not in my view sufficient to constitute him an accomplice in this crime. That is a matter which you must consider… ”
“Chong Sek Ling said he saw Corporal Choo on the ground and Quek Hai Cheng using his body to cover him and protect him from the blows… Chong then went to the kitchen as he felt certain apparently at that stage that there would be no food that night, and like a sensible man, he said he wanted to equip himself for the long ordeal ahead. He had already, you may think, made a very sound and accurate appraisal of the situation. It is small wonder perhaps that he has risen to the rank of General Headman of Group 18, one of the highest ranks a secret society man can attain. You may think he was a person of considerable resource and initiative who, in any other walk of life, might have well been regarded as an elder statesman, or if at school, a head prefect, and it is a sorry reflection that he should have attained his ambition in the ranks of a secret society.”
The Judge said that the detainees had affection for Chong-trusted him… looked upon him as a sort of elder statesman in their hierarchy of gangsterism. Chong denied he was an informer. He said he was spying on the accused to inform Dutton. He gave his evidence, he told the Court, not in the hope of getting release. He said he had wanted to help Dutton because Dutton was fair in the release of detainees. Dutton gave the detainees equal treatment, ‘rich or poor, influential or uninfluential’. He admitted that the detainees confided in him because they had an affection for him.
The Judge said that Chan Wah and Sim Hoe Seng had climbed to the roof. Chan had chopped a hole with a small axe. Sim poured in the petrol and set it alight. Dutton opened the wire door and rushed out, his clothing on fire, to be confronted by four armed detainees-Chia Yeow Fatt, Lim Tee Kang, Khoo Geok San and Sim Teck Beng. They attacked him. By the time he fell, there were 10 to 20 detainees round him. ‘Let’s bury him near the jetty,’ shouted one. Another was heard to say: ‘Just kill him and set him on fire. Don’t trouble to carry him to the jetty.’