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A man with dual citizenship who previously pleaded guilty to breaching his national service obligations (NS) has been sentenced to four months and three weeks in jail.
Basil Lim Boon Hoh, 28, is a citizen of both Singapore and Malaysia. The court heard that Lim, who is Singaporean by birth, was transferred to Malaysia when he was about a year old, but eventually returned to serve his NS in 2018.
By then, he had been in default of his obligations to the National Society for almost 10 years.
Lim was sentenced on two counts under the Enlistment Act. Two other similar charges were taken into account in the sentence.
Court documents state that Lim had been out of Singapore without a valid exit permit for nine years, 11 months and 16 days.
His mother is Malaysian, while his father, with whom he is no longer in contact, is Singaporean.
While Lim was granted Malaysian citizenship in 2001, his mother still applied for a Singapore NRIC on his behalf in 2007 because she wanted him to have a choice in the future, according to court documents.
Lim’s father informed him of his obligations to NS before he was 10 years old, but his mother told him when he was 16 that he could ignore these obligations as he had Malaysian citizenship.
In 2009, two notices were sent to an address in Malaysia that Lim’s mother had provided to the Central Manpower Base (CMPB) of the Ministry of Defense (Mindef).
The notices required you to register online for your NS and informed you that you had to report to CMPB. Lim didn’t do it both ways.
The court heard that during his time away from Singapore from 2009 to 2018, Lim had studied in the UK at Imperial College London from 2010 to 2014, earning a master of science major in physics.
Lim’s attorney also wrote to CMPB in 2016, requesting that Lim be allowed to renounce his Singapore citizenship. This request was rejected.
Lim then returned to Singapore in March 2018 and enlisted in August of that year. He completed his NS in August of this year.
The court heard that Lim now wants to keep his Singapore citizenship because he does not speak Malay well. He also intends to work here.
At a previous hearing, Assistant District Attorney Sean Teh urged the court to imprison Lim for five months and 18 days. DPP Teh argued that Lim had informed CMPB at his own time, and that his surrender was “tactical and calculated”, and not out of “genuine remorse”.
Meanwhile, defense attorney Lim Kia Tong said in his mitigation statement that Lim’s mother had withheld her son’s NS obligations from him because she did not want him to return to Singapore.
Lim will begin serving his sentence tomorrow and is currently out on $ 10,000 bail.
A total of 15 NS offenders, including Lim, have been incarcerated since the High Court established a sentencing framework for such offenders in 2017.
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