Singapore university probes mock-rape claims

Claims that students were subjected to sexually-charged orientation activities, including one simulating rape, are being investigated by Singapore's top university.

The National University of Singapore (NUS) -- consistently ranked as one of Asia's best higher education institutions - said it would take strong disciplinary action against anyone found responsible for "any behaviour or activity that denigrates the dignity of individuals," it said in a statement sent to AFP Thursday.

A report in the local daily The New Paper Tuesday triggered outrage about "sexualised" camps involving hundreds of NUS students in the past two months.

It said that in one orientation camp, a male and female freshmen were made to act out a scene where a man was raping his younger sister.

The woman had to lie on the floor while her partner kicked open her legs and did pushups on top of her, a camp-goer told the paper.

Other games had women answering questions about who was the sluttiest among them and whose bodily fluids they would drink.

The minister for higher education joined calls for an end to such practices.

"Activities can be rigorous, creative, even wild; students may push boundaries," Ong Ye Kung wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday.

"Goading others to act out a rape scene not only degrades the real suffering of rape victims, it inflicts fresh humiliation on female students," he added.

Students organise freshmen orientation activities at NUS as rites of passage into university life.