U.S. Envoys Chided for ‘False Reports’ on Caning

SINGAPORE — Singapore’s government said early today that it had reprimanded two U.S. diplomats because of what it termed “false reports” about how much American teen-ager Michael P. Fay suffered during a flogging for vandalism.

The two-month controversy about the Fay case, which has strained relations between the United States and one of its longtime allies, blossomed into a full-fledged war of words over news reports that the youth had been “bloodied” by the punishment.

Fay, 18, of Dayton, Ohio, was lashed four times with a rattan cane on Thursday afternoon as part of his sentence for spray-painting cars. On Friday, Fay was visited in prison by U.S. consular official John Coe, who then described Fay’s condition to Fay’s mother in Singapore, his father in Michigan and his father’s lawyer in Philadephia in a conference telephone call.

Fay’s father, George Fay, quoted Coe as saying, “Mike has been bloodied,” and then describing horizontal wounds on his buttocks where it appeared the skin was missing. In one place there was a two-inch gash, he said.

Fay’s lawyer, Theodore Simon, was quoted by Reuters news service as saying: “During the caning, blood ran down Mike’s legs, and Mike’s methods of dealing with the pain was to focus on the love of his parents.”

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In a statement published today, Kishore Mahbubani, permanent secretary of the Foreign Affairs Ministry, was quoted as saying that the reports “astonished” him.

“We thought that when we allowed the U.S. consul to visit Michael Fay, a true picture would come out. We were shocked by the tremendous amount of falsification,” Mahbubani was quoted as saying.

A Foreign Affairs spokesman was quoted as saying that Coe and U.S. charge d’affairs Ralph Boyce had been summoned to the Foreign Ministry Saturday to receive a “firm message” about the press reports. Mahbubani said they had a “moral obligation” to state that Coe had been misquoted.

Boyce confirmed today that he and Coe had been called to the ministry but said he could not comment on a U.S. consular visit under State Department regulations.

Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong was also today quoted as saying the government now considers the matter closed. “We will leave it to the U.S. to decide what they wish to do. I think our relations are robust enough to withstand whatever actions they might take against us.”

In contrast to the description given by Fay’s father and his lawyer, a statement from the prisons department described the caning in upbeat terms, saying the teen-ager shook hands with the prison official who caned him, smiled and walked back to his cell.

It also quoted the teen-ager as telling Coe that he wanted his father to “shut up” and that there had been only a few drops of blood shed during the punishment.

“Coe never related that to us,” the elder Fay said in a telephone interview. “It’s new, and bewildering. I’m at a loss to understand that if it took place.” Fay acknowledged, however, that the remarks attributed to lawyer Simon that blood ran down his son’s legs were “sensational,” and that Coe had never made such a comment.