Pulau Senang - Island of ironies

My Dad mentioned of Pulau Senang and with some googling, I discovered a little more about its dark secrets.

Pulau Senang Rehabilitation Settlement in the 1960s was a noble experiment of a prison without walls. Pulau Senang is located in the South Western Islands of Singapore, near to Raffles Lighthouse.

Criminals, made up of secret societies members, were brought to this island to be made good citizens again through their creativity and hard work of building up a settlement. They build their own dormitories, a canteen, roads, a community hall, terraced vegetable gardens etc. Paid 30 cents a day, they toiled and were supposed to learn how work is more meaningful than being in a gang.

These prisoners were led by Superintendent Daniel Dutton and other wardens.

Around noon time on the 12th of July 1963, a group of warders retaliated and rioted against authority, killing off Dutton and three of his wardens. They brutally set Dutton on fire and hacked him in many places. They carried on to destroy the settlement that took them three years to build. All these in less than 40 minutes. They proceeded to celebrate their victory through singing and guitar, awaiting their arrest.

Imagined, had this not happened, we could have showcased the Pulau Senang experiment as a successful method to rehabilitate criminals! :) Something that made us proud, instead of something we wished to forget. I imagine if this were the case, many of our offshore islands could potentially have been used in different ways.

This is a tragic story of Singapore's past. There was an episode of True Files in 2005 that documented this Pulau Sekang Trails. The irony is that Pulau Senang means "the island of ease", yet it was transformed into an island of hard work and painful memories. It was left empty for 5 years before being turned into a live-firing area for the army.

References
Josey, A. (1980). Pulau Senang : the experiment that failed. Singapore, : Times Books International.
Lim, K. T., C. Chew, et al. (2005). True files. E, Sr. 3, ep. 1 , [The Pulau Senang trial]. Singapore, MediaCorp Studios Pte Ltd.