Judicial caning in Southeast Asia must stop

In April 2026, Malaysia’s top court reaffirmed (Opens in new window), in a 2-1 decision, that judicial caning remains a constitutional form of punishment. Judicial caning is a form of corporal punishment (Opens in new window) in which the prisoner’s hands and legs are strapped to a specially designed frame, exposing the buttocks while protective padding is placed around the surrounding area. In this rigidly secured position, a caning officer delivers forceful blows with a cane, inflicting deep lacerations and excruciating pain.

The court majority held that judicial caning could not be singled out as uniquely “cruel, inhumane, or degrading” compared with other harsh but non-corporal punishments. It went on to find that the punishment’s moral efficacy or social desirability lay beyond the court’s remit.

The dissenting view, by contrast, was unusually forceful and expansive. It noted that judicial caning carries a risk of death and argued that Malaysia’s Constitution rests on a principle of proportionality in punishment, one that judicial caning violates given its potential to cause “permanent physical and psychological scars”.

The dissent also pointed to a degree of “subjectivity and disparity in execution” that violates equal treatment under law: an implicit acknowledgment that caning officers may mete out punishment with as much force and malice as their temperament dictates, with virtually no accountability.

Judicial caning is carried out in only three (Opens in new window) directly neighbouring Southeast Asian countries: Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. It is a relic (Opens in new window) of British colonialism, predating independence in all three.

But unlike other efforts to undo or erase the tainted aspects of that colonial legacy, all three countries appear determined to preserve this law – one that gives courts the extraordinary means to blur the line between just punishment and torture, defined (Opens in new window) by the UN Convention Against Torture as the infliction of “severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental,” for, among other purposes, “punishing [a person] for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed.”