April 3, 2025
Singapore – A man was dismissed by the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) after secretly filming a boy in a public bath in Tokyo in 2024. The man was convicted in 2024.
Christopher Simsion Chye was fired on April 2.
Sim, 56, was a counselor to an experienced foreign service official when the Singapore Embassy committed crimes in Japan.
On February 27, 2024, he was captured with a smartphone filming a male teenager taking off his clothes in a men's locker room in a public bathroom.
Searching his phone found footage of a naked boy, as well as multiple male customers who appeared to be filmed in the public locker room in Bath.
Japan's national broadcaster NHK reported that the boy was a 13-year-old junior high school student.
Sim had admitted to investigators that he had taken such photos in other public bathrooms.
When he was arrested, at least 700 images were found on his cell phone.
SIM deleted the image on site.
However, Japanese police were unable to detain him at the time because he was exempted from prosecution of diplomats.
In mid-April 2024, he returned to Singapore after completing his job journey.
On May 2 of that year, the MFA said it was ready to waive his diplomatic immunity to promote investigations by the Japanese authorities.
SIM has also been suspended from serving as aiding investigations.
A few days later, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department made a request to the Singapore Embassy through the Japanese Foreign Ministry to bring the SIM back to the country.
According to the Asahi Sinbonne newspaper, Sim returned to Japan on June 9 and was questioned by Japanese authorities.
To quote him, he did it out of remorse and his own will.
He was later fined 300,000 yen (S$2,700) for violating the bathroom and violating the Tokyo government's regulations on public harassment.
Sim is a professional diplomat and the author of the publication. He wrote a book about traveling in several countries between 1995 and 2004.
He joined the MFA in 1993, according to a 2011 publication by the Department of Public Services.
