Date: 01/11/05
Singapore's most senior official in Australia has accepted "with both hands" a petition from parliamentarians pleading with his government to save the life of an Australian man on death row.
Government and opposition MPs on Tuesday presented Singapore High Commissioner Joseph Koh with petitions from more than 100 parliamentarians and 300 parliamentary staff calling for the life of 25-year-old Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van to be spared.
Nguyen was caught trafficking heroin in 2002 and faces execution in Singapore, possibly as early as November 11, after losing a clemency appeal last month.
Liberal MP Bruce Baird and Labor MP Laurie Ferguson, both members of the Amnesty International Australia parliamentary group, took the petitions to the Singapore High Commission and met Mr Koh.
"We emphasised the case of Mr Van Nguyen himself, just saying a young guy, first time overseas, who did a foolish thing that should not be punished in terms of the death penalty," Mr Baird told reporters outside the commission in Canberra.
"We asked him to think of the boy's mother and the family and the impact it would have.
"We emphasised also that the representation was bi-partisan representation - over 400 signatures and more would be coming through to them.
"He certainly indicated that he took its significance on board and he could understand why we felt that way and he said 'I take the petition with both hands'."
On Monday in parliament, both sides of politics united to support a motion put by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley asking the Singapore government to spare Nguyen's life.
Mr Koh also met Nguyen's lawyer, Lex Lasry, QC, on Monday.
Mr Baird maintains there is still hope for Nguyen.
"There's always hope," he said.
2 comments:
As a S'porean, I find the death penalty understandable but totally deplorable for punishment of drug charges. It's just not right to take away someone's life just because he/she have x amount of x drugs on them.
Why can't the authorities just extradite all those foreigners on death row for drug charges to their home countries and let their gov't deal wth it? The costs of doing so can be borne by their embassies; taxpayers here don't have to pay a single cent then, and we won't have to 'kill' anyone. What's the point of hanging someone, risking bilateral ties and then letting their family claim the body? They're dead! What's the point of it all? To send a message that we 'kill' you before your drugs have a chance to get to the streets?! If so, we should be guilty of manslaughter for 'our opinions.'
And why can't they give our own offenders a chance - a second chance at life? Lives are precious. To hang a fellow S'porean on drug charges doesn't mean anything to me; it only means that their lives were worth nothing the moment they were caught with drugs on them. We've been educated not to deal in or have anything to do with drugs, but hey, we're trading with - and the MFA is encouraging investment! - in Myanmar despite US and UK sanctions on that country, aren't we? FOR GOODNESS'S FUCKING SAKE, Myanmar is the second-largest producer of heroin in the godamn world!! So is that a contradition or what??
Because we as taxpayers 'paid' for our country's investments - and also paying for that rope - that 'killed' people like Van Nguyen and our own.
And where does all that investments go to, ultimately, in Myanmar?
I'm not sure, but I can hazard a guess:
To their corrupted gov't, to their poppies field, to their coke-purifying sweatshops, to drug dealers, to all over the world, to consumers, to people like Van Nguyen and M Shanmugam - who we wrongly hanged.
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