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Think Centre - 21 October 2005 by Sinapan Samydorai
Think Centre is very disappointed that Nguyen Tuong Van faces death by hanging for a non-violent drug offence. The death penalty for Nguyen Tuong Van is unfair, cruel, inhuman, degrading and disproportionate punishment. It violates the right to life.
Nguyen Tuong Van is facing the death penalty for a non-violent drug offence. Nguyen Tuong Van, an Australian, had plead for clemency from the President of Singapore, Sellapan Ramanathan.
The death peanlty for Nguyen Tuong Van is disproportionate and cruel. Is the death sentence in the case of Nguyen just? Justice has become a victim of a law that provides for the state with a "legal framework to kill a person." Its against both the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.
Death for NGUYEN Tuong Van is disproportionate given the nature of his crime, his youth, lack of criminal history and his opportunity for rehabilitation.
Think Centre opposes the death penalty as a violation of the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Think Centre is very disappointed that Nguyen Tuong Van faces death by hanging. Think Centre had been hoping that the President will commute Nguyen's death penalty. Since 2003, Think Centre has been calling for a moratorium on Death Penalty.
Think Centre urges the President to call for a moratorium on Death Penalty and request the Singapore government seek a more humane way to overcome the problem.
Think centre calls on all concern persons, groups and organisations to light candles and host vigils in the coming weekdays - to remember those on death row, pray for Nguyen Tuong Van, and death penalty victims like Shanmugam. Pray the government, the lawmakers, will respect and consider the call for a moratorium on death penalty. Save the lifes of those on death row.
The Singapore government seems to be unnecessarily cruel without any mercy given to those who have make honest mistake. Why not give the person a second chance? This cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment has to go. The laws that permit such cruel punished has to be amended. Think Centre calls on the government, members of parliament, to abandon the use of the death penalty and seek a more humane way to overcome the problem.
In Singapore, the death penalty by hanging is implemented on Friday morning's. There are at least 8 persons on death row.
10 comments:
A harsh punishment? A disproportionate one? perhaps. But Singaporeans themselves don't complain as much. Who are They to do so?
Maybe you could post your criteria for who is and who isn't allowed to complain. We can then forward it to every person on the planet and there will be no more confusion.
No point urging the Government to abandon the use of the death penalty. Anyway, in my humble opinion, I think Singaporeans, especially the older generations, support the death penalty as the best deterence against serious crimes.
The problem is that it doesn't deter. The argument used to justify its use is incorrect. If the older generation were able to make an informed decision on the death penalty they may not be so infavour of it as many claim they are.
How do we know if Singaporeans are in favour or against the death penalty? Has there ben a referendum or a large independent poll carried out?
My final belief is that the death penalty in Singapore is clouded in secrecy. How many articles in the local media have you read this year on the death penalty?
my blog has already addressed this issue : http://happycitizen.blogspot.com
To get rid of drugs hang the smuggler. What else could be simpler?
Every country that is more or less free from the drug menace does
that - North Korea, Vietnam China & Singapore.
Death penalty definitely easier than setting up a DEA like US to fight the war on drugs. Definitely cheaper to use death penalty.
The main problem with death penalty is when foreigners are caught and needs to be sentence to death. We can easily hang Singaporeans, no problem because noboby except a few jokers from SDP & Think Centre will make protest against it - all these groups can be managed. However, when we hang foreigners especially those from fully Democratic countries, their govt will protest, their human rights groups will protest, their minister will fight for them. Simply don't understand why these people fight so hard to save the life of a criminal. In Singapore, if one of our citizens is caught and hanged say in some other country - nobody in Singapore will bother. Why should we disrupt our happy lives to fight for a criminal just because he is Singaporean? Really don't understand these foreigners.
Take the case of Nguyen Tuong Van, everyone in Australia is so worked up because Singapore is about to hang him. This Austrailian Vietnamese was forced by the triads to smuggle drugs to help his twin brother who is in debt. If he is a Singaporean nobody would have cared, time is just too precious to fight for a criminal, Singaporeans has many other more important things to do like shopping, tours and karaoke. Something is really wrong with Australians, why bother with Singapore hanging one of their citizens, they have 20 million people so much more than us. They should understand Singapore is helping them to get rid of one of their criminals - they should thank us, now that their nation is safer. Nguyen Tuong Van will obviously endangered the lives of people by his crime, why else would a "rational country" like Singapore want to hang him? These Australians and human rights group are acting so emotionally and irrationally over this.
These Ang Moh dominated countries have to be taught to understand the logic that Singapore uses. If the drugs is smuggled into Singapore, it will turn many into addicts and they might die of overdose. So drug smugglers are in fact murderers. Similarly, cigarette importers bring in cigarettes that cause people to get addicted and die of lung cancer should be considered for death penalty.
Yes, logic prevails in our death penalty implementation, we should never give in to these emotional irrational demands for us to get rid of it.
no one is advocating that drug dealers do not go to jail for a considerable period of time.
Yes they get jail time, but the government should also deal with the big fish that it allows to enter Singapore freely. Have a read through the articles related to the death penalty and the governments close links with certain individuals from myanmar.
"But that does not describe the worst of it. The Nation has learned that the highest levels of the Singaporean government, using the New York-based Morgan Guaranty Trust Company, a subsidiary of J.P. Morgan, as a custodial operative, are engaging in joint business ventures with one of the world's most notorious drug lords and with the drug-backed military dictatorship of Burma (Myanmar). This has been confirmed by corporate, government and legal documents from four countries and was contended by high-ranking US narcotics and government officials in private interviews."
from this article:
http://www.singapore-window.org/1020naus.htm
"private interviews" amount to little more than hearsay. They become much more than hearsay if they were officially documented by, for example, the US State Department, in its annual country survey on human rights, or if the legislative bodies of other countries carried out public hearings on the allegations, as the US Senate often does on issues of public interest (such as the recent US Senate hearings on allegations that a British MP had benefited illegally from the UN's Iraq oil for food programme). If serious allegations -- with international ramifications -- made in "private interviews" aren't dealt with by such official bodies then how is one supposed to treat them?
Following the news of an Australian who broke the Singapore law of carrying in more than 15 grams of hard drugs across border resulting in a death penalty, i have splited thoughts on the punishment laid down on him and as well as other similar law breakers.
Firstly, as a rather soft hearted person, i hate to see blood and therefore i'm not in favour of any form of death capital punishments. Putting a person to death to me is denying him of a chance to reflect of what wrong have he done.
I am an elder son of my four member family. I am nineteen and my only little brother is just under ten years old. Some of the things i teach my brother are the moral ethics and positive outlook of being a responsible and contributing citizen. To cite a few examples, i reprimanded him if he would to litter, i taught him to sneeze at remote places away from crowd and cross the traffic only when it is safe to cross. And some of which are things that i am guilty of not complying with. I spend time for all these little things because i don't want my brother to be exposed and mislead to wrong elements of the society.
I don't visit arcades, i don't go to pubs or KTV because i wanted to set a good example to him that those activities might are not healthy.
Is our capital punishment what have been securing the streets of Singapore and taming down crime rates? Certainly to many crimes that could have occured, the death fear factor have put down a period to the would be continuing sentence.
To love someone is a life long naturing process. I feel very upset to learn that Nguyen's family have done so much only to face disappointment. I feel more upset at why Nguyen's family did not step in earlier to help solve "the debts Nguyen had tried to clear off" in an attempt to save his brother. There could be reasons we were not told, or difficulties that could have hindered the family from alternative ways of clearing off Nguyen's brother's debt. But whatever reasons, one should not challenge death, as such trafficking drugs.
Nguyen's final verdict will most likely not be granted clemancy because the abuse of drug has really caused many serious problem to every people around the world. The singapore government has put up a strong front against trafficking of drug as it might have been the best way to minimize drug abuse. Whether or not the law is effective, i am not in the position to recommend or comment, but i will give my thoughts later.
To weed out drug abuse has been one of Singapore's many goals. We have had campaigns, movements, talks, drives, awareness programmes in various educational institutions as well as reached out to the public the issue of drugs. To have someone strapped hard drug sufficent to provide more than 20,000 doses and not be caught is an invitation to drug dealers "coast clear here". Had Nguyen not been caught, the network would have grew, the drug would have been supplied to countless abusers with each dose resulted from another crime.
Abuse of drug is far more than what i can summarise into one reading, i think the Singapore's stand and conviction of Nguyen's case has been fair. Singapore should not be a pass for drug trafficking. Do not sell drugs to our people, do not destroy the life our citizens.
I feel very sorry for Nguyen. I am not a Catholic or Christian, but i will pray for your cause. I hope that through you, we could instill a sense of awareness into people that drug abuse should be thought of carefully and never taken into consideration. If drug abuse could solve millions of problems it promised, i believe it would have long been sold out like tamiflu is.
Although said i would comment on the current practices of drug abuse, i just hope to see harsher actions passed on abusers as on traffickers.
Nothing is too fair in this world.
not because I am a vietnamese to say this. but Van death was just not right doing by the singopore. He didn't bring drug in singapore, If any, cambodia and australia should be the one that punish him, that if they found the drug in the first place. The guy only stop by singapore for a few hours to redirect fly to Australia. He have nothing to do with singapore, he didn't buy, didn't sale the drug to singapore, so why the hell they convict him by hanging. Just thing further more, the damn coutry it self are corruption, booming every corner, and they didn't give a jack ass about it, but this one. Just give them a reason to kill ppl legally. For now on, i will and hope everyone do the same, stay away from this murder country, stay way from product made from singapore, just stay away from the term singapore
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