Singapore to execute Australian

Politics International Politics
1

I am so sick of hearing about the impending death penalty of this convicted drug smuggler. The media here in Australia is just absurd, they have gone way over the top with this case. This guy Van Nguyen was well aware of Singapore’s laws before he decided to carry the heroin and therefore, he should have to face whatever penalty the Singapore courts decide.

Do I think that sentencing a drug smuggler to death is a fair and just punishment, perhaps not.

However, it is Singapores right as an independant country to make its own laws. If foreigners don’t agree with those laws then just don’t go there.

Why can’t the Australian public and its government respect the rights of independant nations to make and uphold their own laws?? Why do so many Australians think it is their god given right to impose their own values and beliefs on other countries? I used to be a very proud Australian but my love for my country has been for some time gradually fading away.

Some of these small minded politicians who are protesting to Singapore at the moment are the same dickheads that continually whinge about Australia not being properly and officially accepted into Asia. Gee, I wonder why that is?? It wouldn’t be because we show absolutely no respect to our Asian neighbours, and their right to govern their own society, would it?? No, it couldn’t be that. Australians are such nice friendly people. Why would anyone want to bomb us??

Effectively what the Australian public and these politicians are saying to Singapore is that we don’t think that you should run your country like you are, but instead you should change your laws and you should become more like Australia. It is so so arrogant of Australian people and of the government to believe that they have the right to change the laws of an independent nation. Even though they will constantly deny it Australian people are very arrogant. They will continually criticise American arrogance but they seem totally oblivious to their own self inflated egos. Considering the difference in size and power between the US and Australia I would have to say that Australians are way more arrogant than Americans.

Australian people need to seriously examine the desperate problems within its own society before making judgements about other nations. Shouldn’t we first ask ourselves why so many young Australians are caught trying to smuggle drugs through South East Asia. Why do so many Australian have drug problems?? I don’t want to even get started on all of the other Australians currently held in Indonesian prisons for drug offences. But again their cases highlight the utter contempt many ordinary Australians and politicians hold for the legal systems and ultimately the wider societies of these Asian nations. Many Australians believe that because they are from Australia they are special and should not receive the same punishment as locals.

I have no problems with people opposing capital punishment but I have serious problems with a substantial number of Australians continually disrespecting other nations and then getting all flustered when they are not treated like kings in return. All this talk in the media about boycotting Singapore and its companies is very embarrassing. I really cannot believe it. What does this say to the rest of the world?? All this fuss over a convicted heroin smuggler. The message it actually sends to the region and the rest of the world is that Australia is a drug loving nation.

I could keep going on but I think I have said enough.

Erick

2

Not sure if this is about taking drugs to Singapore and being punished for it or about Australia and its relation to Asia, but interesting in every case.

I never knew Australia wanted to be a real accepted part of Asia. Why would anyone want that? I thought it regards itself as something like part of the Western world, anglo-saxon and stuff.

But on the other hand I do not know any Australians. Only a girl from New Zealand and she drank so much I could hardly talk to her :astonished:

We were flirting around a bit but then she got so drunk she was waving a flower into my face and said it would be a male … wang. :blush:

Um… where have we been on the topic… Death punishment for drugs. Right. Terrible, terrible.

3

I just read this interesting article from Melbourne journalist Andrew Bolt.

Drugs and death
Andrew Bolt
23nov05

SPOT the true barbarians. Is it really Singapore, about to hang an Australian?

Or is it Australia, which keeps producing such gallows fodder for Asia’s executioners – criminals so greedy or stupid as to traffic in drugs?
What the citizens of Singapore must think of us, if they heard our raucous squealing, I blush to imagine.

They could hardly think us civilised for sending out so many young traffickers – and then oinking in outrage when our neighbours catch and punish them.

I suspect Singaporeans tend to remember what too many Australians seem keen to forget – crimes must have consequences. And the clearer, often the better.

No wonder Singapore’s (government-controlled) Straits Times newspaper can hardly be bothered covering what’s front-page hysteria here – the scheduled execution on December 2 of Tuong Van Nguyen.

Nguyen, 25, is the Melbourne man caught at Changi airport in 2002 carrying 396g of heroin – or enough for 26,000 hits, any one of them possibly fatal.

Under Singapore’s law – as you are told on the plane before landing or can read on signs at the airport – trafficking in drugs means death.

It’s a message that is brutally simple and Singapore ensures not even brutal simpletons can doubt it. It doesn’t want people from countries with fuzzy notions of punishment – such as ours – thinking the death penalty applies only to those who are brown, or can’t find a good lawyer, a friendly journalist, a bribe or excuse.

So those found guilty almost inevitably hang. Got the message?

Many have indeed. A decade ago, Singapore was hanging more than 50 traffickers a year, mostly foreigners. Now the number is around single figures, and the city-state has one of the lowest crime rates in the world. You’d feel far safer walking down Orchard Rd in the evening than you would in our own Swanston St.

Check the difference with us. If you got busted here with heroin, would you reckon you were gone for sure?

Ask Nguyen’s twin brother, Khoa. In 1999, Khoa was twice convicted in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court of possessing and trafficking heroin. He received a sentence of just 15 months and of that served no more than nine. In 2001 he was convicted of affray over a savage gang brawl and given a suspended sentence. He’s had some chances.

But did the family learn its lesson? Instead, Nguyen decided to pay off his brother’s legal debts by smuggling heroin from Cambodia. Or that’s his excuse and Australians do excel at them.

Indeed, the Singapore Government has heard a few of the worst from Nguyen’s lawyers and supporters.

There’s the excuse that Nguyen shouldn’t be punished much because he was just passing through Singapore. There’s the excuse that he’s since admitted everything. There’s the excuse that he could help even more by nailing the Mr Bigs if he was kept alive. There’s the excuse that his hanging will contravene “international human rights law” – law no public has ever endorsed.

Is it any surprise that the Singapore Government, having heard all this, decided, in the words of Labor’s excitable foreign affairs spokesman, Kevin Rudd, to “tell us all to go jump in the lake”?

SO now Singapore must deal with our threats, too – all so the drug trafficking brother of a convicted drug trafficker can evade the sentence for the crime for which he’s been rightly convicted.

Federal Labor is demanding a formal diplomatic protest. Others insist on trade boycotts. Deputy Premier John Thwaites is smearing Singapore by calling its death sentence “barbaric”.

Barbaric? It is true that this deliberate taking of a life is extreme, and sinful to some of the religious. I’m against it for being so merciless, and for the disrespect it shows for human life.

Yet is the execution of a drug trafficker any more barbaric than, say, the late-term abortion of a baby, or the killing of enemy soldiers or terrorists? These lines aren’t so crisply drawn any more.

Most of us who have no religion are left with little argument other than that the execution of Nguyen is out of proportion to the crime. And that killing him will hurt more than it helps. We’re arguing more about efficiency than morality.

But Singapore has made the same calculations and disagrees. Its leaders say heroin kills so many that those who smuggle it deserve their own death. And they warn that weak rules, weakly enforced, are more dangerous than capital punishment.

And, right on cue, some Australians show how it is right to fear what people may do if they aren’t raised to expect clear consequences from their actions.

You can hardly blame our young, of course. So many learned that failing at school did not mean even the repeating of a year. In fact, they barely had to sit a test.

But nowhere have consequences been so missing as in our fight against drugs. In fact, only yesterday we learned that one in eight young drivers surveyed by AAMI think there’s no problem driving while on drugs.

So when Schapelle Corby was jailed in Bali for 20 years for smuggling marijuana, no wonder young Australia howled. Jailed? For 20 years, before her appeal? For marijuana? The very notion of a punishment was shocking.

Of course, our own treatment of offenders is so much more … is civilised really the word I’m after?

Contrast the way Indonesia treated model Michelle Leslie, say, with the way we did. There were those Indonesians, jailing this poor girl for three months after two ecstasy tablets were found in her bag, but back home we have media outlets squabbling to offer her “tell-all” contracts for cash and fame.

What message does all our screeching and bleating send? It’s no wonder that even with Corby in jail, Nguyen on death row and two Australian smugglers in Vietnam also facing execution, nine of us were still dumb enough to allegedly smuggle heroin in Bali, too. They also now face death. More outrage to come.

To make this farce worse, even three Melbourne boys on a school trip to Fiji were last week caught by their teachers smoking marijuana.

Again, who are the real barbarians? If the boys had been handed over to the Fijians, they could have been jailed for a mandatory three months. How we’d have hollered about that, too.

Instead, they were whisked home to be given just one week of suspension from school. Good old Australian consequences.

So, lesson learned? Everyone clear? Or will we merely ramble on to our next drug sensation – yet another Australian caught overseas with stash in hand. And his country in hissing, spitting uproar to find that some people – not us, for sure, really, really do mean what they say when they warn: “Or else…”

4

Being a white young female helps:

singapore-window.org/sw05/050714re.htm

First we talked about death punishment, but then she came free after 3 years. Not pure quality they said finally…

5

[quote=“Erick Morillo”] I used to be a very proud Australian but my love for my country has been for some time gradually fading away.
[/quote]

I’m still happy with Australia.

I was embarrassed back in the Pauline Hanson days when I travelled to Asia and people asked about our her.

No idea what happened to her. Hopefully she went back to the fish and chip shop.

6

Erick, I understand your position but remember that most of the outrage comes from people who think that a civilized country should abolish the death penalty. It’s not just the Aussie media that’s at fault. I agree that Singapore is an independent country, but it can’t just do anything it pleases.

The city-state is run by a bunch of crypto-fascist cunts who want people to stop chewing gums, believe in eugenics as a form of family planning, and take newspapers to their phony courts for libel on a whim. The court system is tainted and has been faulted in the past for torturing people to extract confessions.

You know how apartheid in S. Africa ended? Not because the rest of the world respects S. Africa’s sovereignty.

Australia is Singapore’s largest trading partner in S. East Asia. Australians have spoken out against neo-Confucianist barbarism, as is their right to do so in a free country. It boils down to this: if you want to trade with us or if you want Singapore Airlines to have open air access to Australian air space, then you better listen to what people are demanding. It didn’t take guns or bombs to end apartheid in South Africa but ordinary people who demanded companies and their governments to stop doing business with a racist regime.

Taiwan has the same death penalty for drug trafficking; the law is still on the books but I don

7

Ironman,

Thanks for bringing up Pauline Hanson. It seems as though in some peoples eyes she is somewhat of a celebrity in Australia these days. I have seen her on television in this show called “Dancing with the Stars”. So she is a star, is she?? I thought she was just a rascist pig who deserves about as much respect as a dog turd. I am very embarrassed that she would be invited on to a television show like that after her disgraceful past. I think after she spent a short while in prison some stupid twats actually have more sympathy for her. Her television appearances have in my opinion promulgated her to a somewhat higher position among some elements of our society. I think it is a disgrace that someone like her is shown to be a “normal respectful” Australian woman. Why does such a racist, divisive figure like her now receive favourable treatment from the Australian media and sympathy from much of the Australian public??

Whiskas2,

There are many “civilised” countries throughout Asia and the rest of the world that have the death penalty. Why doesn’t Johnny Howard tell Mr Bush from Texas that he should stop the use of capital punishment in his home state?? Why didn’t Johnny Howard, Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Bob Brown complain when the Bali bombers were sentenced to the death penalty?? I didn’t hear much opposition to their sentence. Why would that be?? Let me think. Oh yes that’s right, they killed Australians and they are Indonesians so that’s a fair punishment.

Aparteid V Death Penalty for Convicted Drug Smuggler

“Good comparison”

Do you think any decent normal person would believe that a country should respect a government that believes in aparteid?? Of course not. Aparteid was a massive social injustice that continued for way too long and unfortunately still does to a certain degree in some parts of the world. But making a comparison like that is just as ridiculous as making a comparison to the genocide of Jews. They are both huge social injustices which affected so many ‘law abiding’ people all over the world. They cannot and should not be compared to the case of a convicted drug smuggler.

Erick

8

Aw geez Mother T, that’s too damned cynical. Anyway, it’s past tense now.

Candles light Van’s darkest hour

[quote]Nguyen Tuong Van went to the gallows this morning amid silent protests in Australia and a vigil by his twin brother at Singapore’s Changi Prison.

The Australian drug trafficker was hanged at 6am local time (9am AEDT) after the Singapore government ruled out any last-minute reprieve.

“The sentence was carried out this morning at Changi Prison,” Singapore’s Home Affairs Ministry said in an emailed statement.

The Melbourne a church where Nguyen went to school tolled its bell 25 times - once for every year of his life.

In Singapore and in cities across Australia, there were protest vigils to mark the first execution of an Australian since Michael McAuliffe in Malaysia in 1993.[/quote]

Oh, and you’d best believe that fascist island nation would and have executed white folks. Malyasia too. Michael McAuliffe, Barlow and Chambers are three Aussies stretched by the Malays. Expect the Indonesians to off at least two of the Bali nine sometime soon.

By the bye, there really didn’t seem to have made much distinction in the Australian media about Nguyen’s Vietnamese background. Aside from the Aboriginal population, we’re all effectively fairly recent float overs.

HG

9

don’t we already have a thread about this???

10

Erh, yeah . . solly.

It’s here: forumosa.com/taiwan/viewtopi … 9&start=50

:smiley:

HG

11

Maybe you should ask the three white Australians that have been hung already. Barlow Chambers and McAuliffe

12

Not just Aussies either:

From Amnesty International’s SINGAPORE
The death penalty: A hidden toll of executions

5.1 Executions of foreign nationals

Although the Singapore authorities have not published figures for the number of foreign nationals executed in recent years, the total percentage is believed to be very high. Out of 174 executions recorded by Amnesty International from press reports between 1993 and 2003, the number of foreign nationals totals 93, which is more than half. Many of them are believed to have been migrant workers. They have included nationals or citizens of the following: Malaysia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Ghana, the Netherlands, United Kingdom and Portugal. According to one source who had been informed by the Ministry of Home Affairs, 44 foreign nationals were executed between 1996 and 2000, out of a total of 157 executions which took place during that period (see table on the previous page).

HG

(Mods, suggest a merge with the Gough thread.)

13

jdsubmitstoyourwill :notworthy:

14

Hanged. Past tense of…

Sorry, had to do that.

Phew!

15

Cheers JD. . .

Hate the term hanged for some reason, hung sounds much better. Maybe it’s because of my convict streak?

Which reminds me . . . an oldie but a goldie:

CONVICT STREAK - Dave Warner . . take offence if you must, but it is in fact a great satirical dig at Aussie racism.

Maybe it’s because of our Convict Streak
We wanna fight everyone we meet
Anzac Day is our day of the year
We march our march, we drink our beer

We don’t like Slopes, we don’t like Yanks
I’d personally like to blow up
every Commie tank
We’re only few but we fought in 'Nam
Packed our guns alongside Uncle Sam
Ask any of us, it were no sin
The only crime was that we didn’t win

(chorus)
And … The Poms are weak as piss
The French are queer
The Germans are wankers,
but they make good beer
Don’t criticise what you don’t understand
If you think I’m talking shit
you don’t belong in this land

I’m Australian, we all are
We watch the telly and we drive our car
But don’t you ever SAY WE’RE WEAK
Or you’ll learn all about our Convict Streak

The world began with Adam and Eve
But Australia started at Gallipolli
Our fathers put the Desert into Desert Rats
Their uncles slipped the boot in,
up in Lambing Flats. (Ouch!)

Don’t criticise what you don’t understand
It’s not that we’re behind the times,
we’re in a different land
We might be slobs but WE’RE NOT WEAK
Maybe it’s because of our Convict Streak

(chorus)

I’m Australian, so are you
It doesn’t matter if you’re Ding or Jew
Just remember, while you’re here
You march our march and you drink our beer

HG

16

[quote=“whiskas2”][The city-state is run by a bunch of crypto-fascist cunts who want people to stop chewing gums, believe in eugenics as a form of family planning, and take newspapers to their phony courts for libel on a whim. The court system is tainted and has been faulted in the past for torturing people to extract confessions.

.[/quote]

I hope the Singaporean government isnt reading your posts :blush: :blush:

cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoic … -bloggers/

17

[quote=“sojourner”]Hanged. Past tense of…

Sorry, had to do that.

Phew![/quote]

He could be hung as well. Who’s to say? :idunno:

18

Moderators,

I was just wondering why you felt it necessary to change the title of my Original Post??

19

[quote=“Erick Morillo”]Moderators,

I was just wondering why you felt it necessary to change the title of my Original Post??[/quote]

I merged your thread with another, which was started I gather, because no one knew what yours was about. :slight_smile:

My apologies. I should have PMed you. :blush: The title was changed for clarification purposes.

news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051202/wl_ … stralia_dc

20

Just say it’s done, it’s over … hanged or hung … :s