Death
so there are 3 letters in the Forum today about the case of Nguyen what's his name and the death penalty. oh... and let's not forget Howard's comments about it and Dr Chee's most sagacious views.
one letter by a Peter Lowe in particular asked 3 questions, which i reproduce here with my own answers:
who suffers after Dec 2 until the day that they die?
True, the family members are the ones who suffer, as do the family members of anyone who loses their loved ones. but whose fault is it that they are made to suffer? Singapore? or should they blame the stupidity of Nguyen for trafficking drugs? or should they blame Australian society for forcing Nguyen into having to traffick drugs to survive? or should they blame themselves for not inculcating in Nguyen the fortitude of character not to traffick drugs?
Who else is seriously offended by Singapore's actions?
obviously not every single Austrialian citizen judging by the other letter in the Forum today by John Fletcher. Mr Fletcher adopts a more moderate tone, giving a fairly balanced argument and pointing out the double standards of the criticisms levelled against Singapore. he also defends Singapore's sovereign right to enforce the laws that we have set.
How do you think Singapore and its culture are regarded by the civilised world?
Mr Lowe allows us to ponder this for ourselves. i have and i have come to the conclusion that the world would think of us as being a tough and fair nation, determined to defend our sovereign rights, doing what we think is right and not giving in to international pressure. i think the civilised world would recognise Singapore as a place where the rule of law is indeed enforced with much efficiency, thus giving the civilised world confidence that the environment in Singapore is conducive for them to come do business with us. the civilised world would also applaud Singapore's tough stance against drug traffickers, sending a strong signal to drug traffickers not to bring drugs into Singaopre. or to do so, at your own risk.
a Ms Ooi also wrote in asking whether an Aussie passport puts one above the law. i agree with her view that Nguyen is responsible for his own predicament. he knew the penalties, and he 'decided to take a gamble and, unfortunately, he lost.' Ms Ooi also brings up a good point about how Nguyen 'put aside his ethics and morals.'
while i am still undecided about the death penalty, i am certain that the people clamouring for Nguyen to escape the gallows are in the wrong. Nguyen took the gamble knowing full well the possible consequences. he lost the gamble and now he wants to escape those consequences. that's like playing a high stakes poker game only to have someone call your bluff and then refusing to pay up.
and then you have Dr Chee coming up to call for global protest. now that's sheer genius isn't it? definitely would win him the next elections! NOT! it's all fine and well that he is against the death penalty and tries to change it, but the fact of the matter is that currently, that's the law that we have in place. asking the international community to intervene against Singapore's sovereign rights to enforce the law is, in my opinion, tantamount to treason. what else would he do if he's in power? give up our sovereign rights to run our country to tree hugging hippies based in London (who probably never really been poor anyways...)?
not surprisingly, Howard was circumspect and respected our sovereign rights to enforce the law. he also took a practical view that neither countries should sabotage their economic and strategic partnership because of the folly of one man.
my thoughts on the death penalty perhaps a little later.
posted by rench00 at 8:19 PM
3 Comments:
We can choose not to sentence him to death, but we know what the President chose.
Never one to bear losing face, we claim the real issue is about sovereignty, our right to enforce the law. And we are so proud of putting our right to enforce the law above the right to life of a person. "Rights are Western constructs alien to our Asian values." Rightly we use the western concept of national sovereignty (legal right) to kill an Asian. Also never mind that we lose nothing (least of all our sovereignty) by not taking his life. It's more important for Singapore to be right than to be humane. Our being right, i.e. pride, costs more than a human life, never mind that he was a stupid foreigner. We only need foreign talents--intelligent, economically productive workers.
11:49 PM
as i said, i am undecided about the issue of the death penalty.
but the point being, we have set the laws as such, the rules of the game were, you gamble by bringing in the drugs, if you win, you get big bucks, if you lose, you lose your life. now that you have lost, you want to change the rules. it just strikes me as unfair.
also, XH has puts forth very well that the reason why these mules are paid so much is probably precisely because there's the death penalty, so that the stakes of the game are high. so perhaps we are doing the drug traffickers a favour having the death penalty.
again i must stress that i'm not sure of the value of the death penalty. i can see its strengths and its detriments. but one question does come to mind. there was another article about the hypocrisy of these 'Western values'. for Nguyen, the Aussies clamoured to revoke the death sentence. but they are deafeningly silent about the death sentence of the mastermind of the Bali bomb blast. why? because that guy's not Aussie? because he killed Aussies and thus deserved to die? and Nguyen doesn't because the drugs he was carrying most probably won't ruin the lives of Aussies? so where in lies the universality of these so called 'Western Values'?
and it is because i do think that there are times when we have to kill. for example, if we are willing to kill other animals for food in order to survive, then why not kill these disruptive elements (i.e. drug traffickers, murderers, people who commit treason, etc) so as to maintain harmony in society?
there is no such thing as good or evil, only the will to power.
3:51 AM
If society believed what it says about the deterrent effect of the death penalty, it would publicly hang death-row prisoners, broadcast the hanging on television and radio, and report the event in the news. What exemplary value is made of a covert hanging behind the Changi prison walls, at dawn, with a cursory "he will be hanged tomorrow" in the papers? How can a potential drug trafficker keep it in mind when that's all he sees? The deterrent value of the punishment depends on it being gross and sufficiently disseminated. The phrase "he will be hanged" rings no bells and scares no one.
There is no 100% certainty in science, yet we treat a person's guilt with absolute certainty, even when his life is at stake. The death sentence is irreversible once carried out. Are we erring on the side of caution when it comes to human lives? Who is calling the hypocrisy game here--we value human lives by insisting on the death penalty?
Masterminds of drug rings are rarely caught because they have carriers like Nguyen. And the people we hang are those like Nguyen--desperate, ill-informed people who will always exist. Hanging these people only cuts the weeds, not uproot them. The drug problem is better dealt with at the socio-economic level. Knowing that we can handle the problem differently, humanely (life imprisonment, tackling the social causes), yet insisting on the death penalty,is just inhumane, if not immoral.
We fail in understanding normal human psychology when we claim it is fear of death that deters. Evidently it is not for people like Nguyen. Fear of death is just a fear that can be overcome by the will, either through sheer determination or a certain amount of self-delusion by numbing oneself to reality, if not by circumstances desperate enough. And there is no lack of the latter in the capitalist world.
10:27 AM
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