Posted on 11/28/2005 9:25:27 PM PST by maui_hawaii
Time is running out for 25-year-old Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van, who is due to be executed at Singapore's Changi prison on Friday. His death sentence has sparked widespread criticism in Australia.
The Canberra government has repeatedly pleaded for clemency, as have lawyers, trade unions and church groups.
But Singapore remains unmoved, and insists the hanging will go ahead as planned.
"People have been praying for a change of heart," said Father Peter Norden, a friend of Kim Nguyen, the condemned man's mother.
"They want the Singapore government to change its heart from one of stone to a heart of flesh, as well as compassion and reason," he told the BBC.
Father Norden said Nguyen should be spared: "We believe this young man has committed a serious crime deserving of punishment, but not the loss of his life."
Nguyen was arrested carrying almost 400 grams (14 ounces) of heroin at Singapore's Changi airport in late 2002.
He said he was trying to smuggle the drugs from Cambodia to Australia to pay off his twin brother's debts.
Hardline approach
The Australian government believes Nguyen should not face the gallows because he has no previous criminal convictions. It has also argued that he could help investigations into drug syndicates if allowed to live.
But in a letter to his Australian counterpart, the Speaker of the Singapore Parliament, Abdullah Tarmugi, said there was no room for compromise.
"We have an obligation to protect the lives of those who could be ruined by the drugs Nguyen was carrying," he wrote. "He knew what he was doing and the consequences of his actions."
According to Amnesty International, about 420 people have been hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drugs offences.
If these figures are correct, they would give the prosperous city-state of 4.2 million people the highest execution rate in the world, relative to its population.
At the weekend Australian Prime Minister John Howard made his fifth personal plea to the Singaporean leadership, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta.
Mr Howard warned that Singapore should prepare for "lingering resentment" in Australia if the execution went ahead.
He has, however, rejected calls for boycotts of Singaporean companies, as well as trade and military sanctions with one of Australia's closest Asian allies.
"I believe John Howard has done as much as he could do," said Gerard Henderson, from the conservative think-tank The Sydney Institute.
"Listening to talk-back radio, there are some people who think that heroin smugglers deserve the death penalty, but I believe that the majority of Australians hold a different view," Mr Henderson told the BBC News website.
"They will be approaching Friday's deadline with a sense of dread," he added.
Little hope
Nguyen was born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1980, after his mother fled from Vietnam. The family eventually settled in Melbourne.
Several last-ditch efforts to save him have been suggested, including taking Singapore to the International Court of Justice or arranging a prisoner swap, but legal experts have said none are likely to succeed.
Simon Rice, a lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, said that Singapore was not a signatory to international human rights covenants, and there was little hope the 25-year-old drug trafficker would be saved.
"[Nguyen's] execution is a seriously tragic reminder of how far short we are of a global commitment to human rights," Mr Rice told the BBC.
Some church leaders have called on Australians to observe a minute's silence for Nguyen on Friday, but overall opinion remains mixed.
"No-one has the right to take the life of someone else," John Karousos, a 66-year-old retiree in Sydney, told the BBC. "It doesn't matter what he's done or his mistakes. The death penalty is unacceptable."
"I have a small hope that it will be stopped at the last moment," he added optimistically.
But Gilly Parminter, a 40-year-old mother, was less sympathetic.
"Personally I think if you go into a country you have to abide by their laws, and you have to live with the consequences."
"It does seem harsh but they [the Singaporeans] can't change their minds at this late stage because it will undermine their system," she said.
The last Australian to be executed overseas was Michael McAuliffe.
The barman from Sydney was hanged in Malaysia in June 1993, after serving eight years in prison for heroin trafficking.
In 1986 two Australian citizens, Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, were also hanged in Malaysia after being convicted of drug smuggling.
There appears to be little hope that Nguyen Tuong Van will avoid a similar fate in Singapore this Friday.
viable point...
problem smuggling dope in places like SE Asia or Pakistan is that you can still be executed for dope smuggling in totally corrupted countries possibly by the same folks you were paying before you got pinched
Singapore is not so much like that...most folks know how serious Singapore is about everything...I liked the place but it was too staid (and very humid-hot) for me did Shangr-La and Raffles....very nice
death penalty for 14oz of boy seems hard to me but it is their country...of course that logic was not applied to the Taliban or National Socialism with the same vigor
What is the extent of the "drug problem" in Singapore and what is your source for this information?
Singapore does not have an obvious drug problem, but then neither do many cities in the US where drugs are most certainly flowing pretty readily -- drugs are rarely a visible problem in affluent regions. Statistics of drug use and annual arrests in Singapore do not look terribly dissimilar to other modern countries.
Given that ~0.1% of Singapore's population gets busted for drug offenses every year, it appears that the drug trade is alive and well in that city. My source of information, other than from the statistics the government publishes, is from being there, knowing people that lived there, and even knowing a (stupid) girl whose boyfriend there was a drug dealer. While they do have harsh laws with respect to illegal drugs, it hasn't made much of a dent in usage.
From the government of Singapore -- through their delegate to the UN, just last month...
This comports with data for Singapore's low incidence across most all categories of crime at the link I previously posted.
There is definitely a drug sub-culture in Singapore. I lived there for most of the past three years - yes, it is clean, safe, with low crime rate. But brushing aside the very effective and tight government media / image control, one will see that
(1) there is a drug sub-culture in Singapore, it's not severe or obvious like having crack addicts on every street corner, but it's there as a real presence (you wanna see pills traded in semi-open? Go to Rave parties like Zouk-out in Sentosa, the club scene in Clarke Quay and Tanjong Pagor ... etc.)
and (2) it's an on-going, sometime uphill battle for the Singapore Central Narcotic Bureau to control the drug trade in Singapore.
In fact, one of the biggest news / scandal in Singapore last year was the bust-up of a well organized cocaine and heroine network - the CNB rounded up 23 people on suspicion of drug trafficking, possession and consumption. And the 23 included some of the biggest society names in Singapore such as the alleged ring leader Max Oh, a well known event marketing planner, Cheryl Fox, a news reader at Channel NewsAsia, Singapore Tatler magazine's then editor Nigel Bruce Simmonds; Bobby Rubino's restaurant marketing manager Guiga Lyes Ben Laroussi; and Dinesh Singh Bhatia, the son of former Judicial Commissioner Amarjeet Singh and former Nominated Member of Parliament Kanwaljit Soin.
One of the under-current of foreign protest against Singapore's supposedly zero tolerance drug policy is that while Singapore do catch and hang the foreign smugglers, they are far more tolerant of domestic offenders - especially those of more privilaged background. for example, none of the aformentioned 23 will meet the hanger's noose, some got off with a mere slap on the wrist, some got sent to treatment centers, there were prison sentences, but no hanging.
when in Rome.....
Nxct time buy a NON-STOP ticket. Oh, sorry, I guess there won't be a next time.
Thanks for relating your experience in Singapore. Sorry to hear those rich kids got off so easy. IMO, it sends exactly the wrong signal and virtually guarantees more of the same.
As for foreign visitors, if they don't like being executed, maybe they should stop trashing the host country. Singapore is an important transportation/financial hub. As such, it could quickly become infested with major drug trafficking and all the corruption that comes with it. They are wise to make the place as inhospitable as possible for anybody who brings drugs through it.
It's just as well. The article fails to mention just how Nguyen's brother incurred those debts. He was busted in Australia on drug offenses and owed his lawyer $25K. On top of that, he owed loan sharks another $12K.
Nguyen had a business school education. In Australia, he could have paid those debts off honestly in no time. Instead, he chose to bring almost a pound of uncut heroin into the society that had rescued him and his family from a life of misery in SE Asia. Had he succeeded, he would have made a very tidy profit after paying off his brother's debts. And all he had to do was poison the lives of thousands of other people in his community. I have zero sympathy for this creep.
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