This letter was originally published in The Straits Times on 28 February 2020.

I welcome the latest efforts in addressing family violence and urge for particular attention to be paid to the vulnerabilities of foreign spouses.

Out of the 2,811 personal protection order applications received by the Family Justice Courts in 2016, 203 applications, or 7 per cent, were filed by foreign wives against their husbands. Half of these orders were issued.

There is no comprehensive public data on the rate of spousal violence experienced by women, so comparison across citizenship status is not possible.

Still, we can reasonably expect foreign spouses to be in a particularly vulnerable situation. Many experience violence at the hands of the very people they depend on for the right to stay in the country.

The Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware) regularly receives calls from foreign wives through the Women’s Helpline.

About a quarter of these callers said they had experienced some form of family violence, including having their spouses threaten to cancel their visas to prevent them from seeking help or reporting them to the police.

Fear of losing their right to remain in Singapore, among other factors, forces these women to stay in abusive marriages.

Foreign spouses whose Long Term Visit Pass (LTVP) get cancelled or not renewed by their citizen spouse cannot be sponsored by any other party as long as they remain married.

As a result, they may be forced to make a decision between staying in Singapore or escaping an abusive relationship.

In situations where their passes expire or get cancelled, the non-resident spouse will usually be put on a Social Visit Pass (SVP), which has to be renewed every month at the Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA).

However, renewal is completely at the ICA’s discretion. This can be stressful for the foreign spouse as there is no guarantee of her right to remain.

The stress is compounded if she has Singaporean children, as there is a risk of separation. At any rate, the SVP does not accord a right to work or entitlement to any public benefits.

The Government should consider making special accommodation for abused foreign spouses to renew their LTVP independently of the abusive citizen spouse.

This protects their access to work and benefits, and provides them with more resources to leave an abusive relationship.

Chong Ning Qian

Senior Executive, Research

Association of Women for Action and Research