A Singaporean court sentenced a Japanese man to 17 and a half years in prison and 20 strokes of the cane for "brutal and cruel" rape of a female student in 2019, reported the BBC, quoted by BTA.
Thirty-eight-year-old hairdresser Ikko Kita will be the first Japanese citizen to be caned in the city-state, the Japanese embassy in Singapore told the BBC.
Caning is a controversial but widely used form of corporal punishment in Singapore, which is mandatory for crimes such as vandalism, robbery and drug trafficking.
According to court documents, Kita met the woman in "Clark Key,", a popular nightlife district, in December 2019. The woman, then 20 years old, did not know Kita before that. She was intoxicated when he took her to his apartment and raped her. He filmed the act on his mobile phone and later sent it to a friend.
The victim was then able to leave the apartment and later that day reported the rape to the police. Kita was arrested the same day and has been in police custody ever since.
Police found two videos of the rape on his mobile phone.
The judge called the act "brutal and cruel", adding that the victim was "vulnerable, clearly drunk and unable to look after herself". The magistrate rejected the defense's argument that the victim had allegedly given an initial indication of consent to sex.
The sentencing caused a wide response in Japan and also on social networks.
Caning can leave permanent scars, the BBC reports.
According to the human rights organization Transformative Justice Collective, the stick with which the punishment is carried out is about 1.5 m long and no more than 1.27 cm in diameter.
The practice attracted international attention in 1994, when 19-year-old American citizen Michael Fay was caned six times for vandalism despite calls from then-US President Bill Clinton to revoke the punishment, the BBC recalls.