Singapore still hangs people??
Nguyen Tuong Van, an Australian drug dealer, is going to be hanged by the Singapore government for smuggling 396 grams (14 ounces) of pure heroin into the city in 2002. The sentence caused an uproar in Australia, where consumers, politicians and newspaper editorials criticized Singapore for being authoritarian and called for boycotts of companies including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.'s Optus unit and Singapore Airlines Ltd. Appranently, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong doesn't give a shit. Lee even had the guts to tell off the German chancellor today at a news conference.
"The government has decided that the law has to take its course, and the law will take its course. We take a very serious view of drug trafficking; the penalty is death. In this case, it was an enormous amount of drugs.''
Nguyen didn't deny anything, but said that the drugs were not for sale in Singapore. He said he was carrying them to Australia for a Sydney syndicate to help his brother Khoa, a former heroin addict, pay A$30,000 (US$22,062) in debts.
Okay. There are the facts. Now the real question is how we can just allow this to happen. The death penalty for drug trafficking? Does drug trafficking really deserve death? Even when the drugs aren't even going to be dealt within Singapore? And remember that this isn't just death. This man is going to be hanged-- one of the more barbaric and painful forms of death. Depending on the method of course, when a person is hanged, the neck is broken and they are choked to death. It is considered to be very painful and death usually isn't instantaneous.
Isn't Singapore afraid of their status as a somewhat civilized society? I realize that many other places still use hanging as an execution method, including our very own Washington and New Hampshire, but in the cases of those two states, hanging is only used if the person being executed wishes to be hanged. Other countries also have this policy, but once again, it is rarely if ever used.
And perhaps only in the Middle East and Africa is the death penalty used for a matter as relatively petty as this. Sure, drug trafficking is a major offense, and shouldn't be tolerated, but killing the person is not the answer. And it is very possible that the man being killed is a drug user himself, and in the case of many drugs, the user becomes physically and psychologically dependent. If this is the case, it isn't possible for the drug user to quit himself. Instead of killing the man, they should confisticate the drugs and send him to Australia. Then Australia can put him in jail or therapy or whatever else they think is necessary for the man.
Of course, the sad thing is that nothing can be done about this at this point. Singapore is going to kill him tomorrow, even after requests from Australia and numerous organizations to do otherwise.
I suppose there is one thing we all can learn from this: If you're a drug trafficker, add Singapore of your list of countries not to go to.
