Singaporean Alleges An Immigration Officer Tore His Passport And Threatened To Arrest Him
He did not specify at which checkpoint the alleged incident happened.
By Sadho Ram — 01 Dec 2018, 11:42 AM
On 29 November, a Facebook post by a man named Muhammad Nuruzzaman alleged that his passport was torn up by a customs officer while he was "travelling into a certain country via car"
Nuruzzaman claimed that the situation resulted in him being detained for hours after the female Immigration officer at the checkpoint refused to listen and called cops on him to have him arrested for allegedly entering a country with falsified documents.
While Nuruzzaman did not mention the name of the country where this alleged incident occurred, several news sites have since reported that it took place at a Malaysian Immigration checkpoint, given that he travelled by car.
However, it remains unclear which one of the two checkpoints (the Sultan Abu Bakar CIQ Complex on the Tuas side or the Sultan Iskandar CIQ complex in Woodlands) the Singaporean was referring to as he did not mention the name of the checkpoint.
Nuruzzaman uploaded a photo with his post that showed a Singapore passport with its cover ripped from the rest of the pages
According to him, he was driving from Singapore, having cleared the customs.
"I open up to the biometric photo ID page for the person to scan my passport in the foreign country and my passport was still intact. When I turned to see, she, in fact, tore my passport in front of me and claimed that I tore my passport and asked what's my purpose of entry to the country with that torn passport," Nuruzzaman wrote.
While he tried to defend himself, he said that he was held in an office for hours without any explanation and threatened with arrest and confiscation of his vehicle.
He said that he tried to point out that if his passport was torn from before, how would he have been allowed to leave Singapore in the first place, but to no avail.
"The female officer refused to listen and she brought me to an office and sat me down there for hours without giving me any explanations. Cops were called on me and they were ready to arrest me and also wanted to confiscate my car and said that I was entering their country with a falsified documentation," read the Facebook post.
While he was allegedly being threatened with arrest, his work colleague "came in like an angel to help" and managed to contact members of Singapore's High Commission on the phone for help
"A call was made to them and they released me in the end with much hesitations as they were adamant on arresting me. When I asked for the officer's name who tore my passport, all the officials who were present refused to reveal her name," he wrote on his Facebook post, adding that he was released at late hours to go back to Singapore.
"The feeling of coming home is definitely damn good as you know that you have your rights in your country and you know that this kind of corruption or corrupted behaviour doesn't take place in Singapore," he wrote, adding that as much as we like to visit foreign countries, this was definitely one of the worst experience which could happen.
He lamented the experienced, asking "why so much hate for us Singaporeans who are entering that you've got to tear our passports?" He acknowledged that while not everyone is the same, certain people's behaviour has caused a bad impression.