Two-and-a-half hours after I post this diary, Australian Nguyen Tuong Van will be executed by hanging in Singapore’s Changi Prison.
Van was arrested with 396.2 grams of heroin while transiting through Changi Airport en route from Cambodia to Melbourne on 12 December 2002.
Last year, the Singapore High Court sentenced him to death, a mandatory sentence under Singapore law for a drug offence of this kind.
Van and his twin brother Khoa were born in a refugee camp in Thailand in 1980. Soon after, the family moved to Australia.
Why Van was carrying the heroin isn’t completely clear. He’s said that he was trying to raise money to pay debts incurred by his brother. I’ve also heard from a local journalist that he has a criminal record involving drugs here in Australia.
But that’s not the point of this diary. I’m up early this morning because I’ve found it hard to sleep these last few days thinking about this case. The Australian media have faithfully tracked each heartbreaking step in the story as Van’s mother Kim and his brother have flown to Singapore to say goodbye. Sensation sells, of course, and there’s nothing like a distraught mother facing the hopelessness of knowing her child will die at an appointed time and place.
Australia’s Prime Minister Howard has been his usual calculating self. Keeping a weather eye to public opinion, he has carefully sent out some sympathetic signals such as raising the case with Singapore’s Prime Minister at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting. As Australian lawyers and civil liberties groups raised potential legal avenues to halt the execution, the Australian Government has ‘studied’ these and rejected them as unworkable.
Taking Singapore to the International Court of Justice and extraditing Van to face charges in Australia have both been rejected. Our Government has been very clear that it opposes the idea of consumer boycotts against Singapore and that it will not endanger the official bilateral relationship.
I don’t know Nguyen Tuong Van. He may or may not have a criminal record. Smuggling heroin isn’t something I support.
But I think capital punishment is barbaric.
And I think it is hopelessly unjust to impose a mandatory death penalty for any offence. I understand that this is contrary to international law, as it does not allow punishment to be imposed on a case-by-case basis to fit the circumstances and severity of a crime, and also fails to take into account contrition and cooperation by the accused. Not to mention the fact that you can’t undo the sentence if the wrong person is convicted.
Van has apparently cooperated with Singapore’s authorities and is a genuinely reformed character after reflecting on his crime for several years. As one of his lawyers said yesterday after a last visit “he is completely rehabilitated, completely reformed, completely focused on doing what is good, and now they’re going to kill him”.
One of his Melbourne school friends who has flown to see him has spoken movingly of the fact that Van is bravely accepting and facing his fate, and mainly concerned for his mother’s welfare.
Amongst the hand-wringing ‘actions’ from the Australian Government has been the request that Singapore’s strict prison code be relaxed to allow Kim to hug her son for a last time. Singapore’s authoritarian Government, which usually does not show any sign of weakness, only relented to the extent of allowing mother and son to hold hands. Later today, Kim will receive her son’s body and will fly home to Australia with it.
I’m not sure what the moral of this story is, or how to finish the diary. Perhaps just to say, if you visit Singapore, don’t carry any chewing gum (illegal), don’t have male homosexual relations (also illegal) and most certainly don’t carry any drugs. You’ve been warned.
Update [2005-12-1 22:23:20 by canberra boy]:
As Oui has kindly commented below, the execution was carried out as scheduled. Immediate political reaction in Australia is summarised here, most notably involving further hand-wringing by John Howard, who criticised Singapore again for denying a final embrace, but not for the execution. Presumably his polling tells him that disengaged outer-suburban swinging voters think that Van got what he deserved. That pretty much sums up Australia today: the politics of self interest. I’ll say more about the politics of capital punishment in the comments. Personally, I’m going to take the advice of Greens Senator Bob Brown (see last link) and hug my family and the friends I see tonight.
This case has been preying on my mind for several weeks now, as appeals for clemency, possible legal action etc etc have all been raised and failed. I’ve thought all along that there was no chance Singapore would relent. It’s just so awful seeing the whole thing played out in the media. No mother deserves to bury her child – certainly not in such a premeditated way.
Forgive me if I don’t respond to comments for a few hours: have to get through the daily routine just beginning here.
I’m so sorry for you and your countrymen who are living this tragedy in the media.
We’re with you on the mandatory death sentence. There’ve been some powerful movies about how SE Asian countries deal with drug smuggling.
There’s a very old Australian TV mini-series that starred the as-yet Australian-only actress Nicole Kidman. I watched it years and years ago. My daughter checked but there’s no DVD yet — too bad since we’d like to watch it again. It was good drama.
Your government, like yours, needs a major overhaul. Sigh.
.
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — Singapore executed Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van today after the government declined requests from the Australian government to spare his life.
The 25-year old Australian citizen was hanged this morning, Singapore’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement. Church bells rang out in Nguyen’s home town of Melbourne at 9 a.m., when he was scheduled to be executed.
Singapore, which has a zero-tolerance policy toward drugs, sentenced Nguyen to death after he smuggled 396 grams (14 ounces) of pure heroin into the city in 2002. His execution ignited an uproar in Australia, where newspapers criticized Singapore for being authoritarian and consumers called for boycotts of companies including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.’s Optus unit and Singapore Airlines Ltd.
“This was a drug case and Singapore has been steadfast with this rule,” said David Cohen, director of Asian economic forecasting at Action Economics in Singapore, a research company. “Australia would be sacrificing something too by denying themselves trade with Singapore. Deep down, the Australians probably recognize what’s at stake.”
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
.
SINGAPORE – An Australian man was executed by hanging for drug trafficking, Singapore announced, hours after his lawyer said he had a “beautiful last visit” with his family.
(AP Photo/Wong Maye-E)
Khoa Nguyen, second from left, and his twin brother’s Lawyer Julian McMahon is surrounded by the press as they arrive at the Singapore Changi Prison to support Ngyuen Tuong Van just about an hour before his execution, today in Singapore.
The Singapore Government rejected repeated appeals for Nguyen’s life to be spared despite clemency appeals by Canberra, after being convicted for trafficking almost 400grams of heroin while in transit from Cambodia to Australia at Singapore’s Changi Airport in 2002.
Changi Prison – Save A Life
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
.
He was hanged in Singapore’s Changi prison on the 23rd of September 1994 after what seemed to be undeniable evidence of trafficking about 4 kilograms of heroïne, although there is some conspiracy theory. As far as I’ve understood, he was also the first second non-Asian to be executed there. Years ago I’ve read a detailed proceeding of his last minutes while browsing a book in a bookshop written by the man who supported him. The vivid picture painted in my mind will never go away.
When I was in Singapore about two years later, I told the story to the extremely nice couple who drove me me back to Changi Airport [yep, close to the prison, on my request we drove by]. Their response was something like: “He would have been smarter than choosing Singapore as transit”.
Well, that does make some sense: on the immigration forms handed out in the aircraft is a little, but clear stamp with only seven green words: Death for drug traffickers under Singapore law. This is the current immigration leaflet [pdf].
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼▼▼ READ MY DIARY
Thanks for these comments, Oui.
The last execution performed in Australia was in 1967. Capital punishment was abolished from 1922 in one State, for federal offences in 1973, and in all Australian jurisdictions by 1985.
Since then several Australians have been executed in Malaysia for drug offences, each time causing some outcry in Australia and creating difficulties for the bilateral relationship.
On this occasion we have seen such extensive publicity surrounding the horror of the case for the family that I think some life has been breathed into the idea that Australia should join the EU international campaign against the death penalty.
The Australian Government is going to face multiple cases like this over the next couple of years.
At least one Australian is on death row in Vietnam. Nine Australians are facing capital charges in Indonesia after being caught in a major drug bust. Another is in jail in Bali after fortunately being given a lesser sentence. That case, involving an attractive young woman, fascinated the country for months: or at least our media thought it did.
To date the problem has been tackled case-by-case, with the strength of our Government’s protest depending on a weighing-up the force of domestic sympathy for the condemned person against the economic benefit of the relationship with the other government. The economics have won each time – so far.
Hopefully it will dawn on the Howard Government that it would be sensible to put pressure on our Asian neighbours to abolish the death penalty altogether rather than to keep fighting one-off cases. A campaign as part of a concerted international effort would be much less embarrassing than doing it by ourselves.
We shall see. The two lawyers who handled Van Nguyen’s case for a couple of years on a pro-bono basis seem to have been energised to broaden the fight. They have lots of prominent supporters.
.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) 10 minutes ago — A convicted murderer was put to death today in the nation’s 1,000th execution since capital punishment resumed in 1977.
Kenneth Lee Boyd, who was convicted of killing his estranged wife and father-in-law, received a lethal injection and was pronounced dead at 2:15 a.m.
“The execution of Kenneth Boyd has not made this a better or safer world,” his attorney Thomas Maher said. “If this 1,000th execution is a milestone, it’s a milestone we should all be ashamed of.”
In his final words, Boyd asked his daughter-in-law to take care of his son and grandchildren and said, “God bless everybody in here.”
The Supreme Court in 1976 ruled that capital punishment could resume after a 10-year moratorium. The first execution took place the following year, when Gary Gilmore went before a firing squad in Utah.
We The People – Doing My Duty …
The President’s Yes Man
The Colosseum with lighting protesting the death penalty, sponsored by the UN and the Italian government, in Rome, Italy. AP GraphicsBankCities for Life: Celebrating Life, Fighting the Death Penalty
A CANDLE FOR LIFE
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY
One week from Monday, California will almost certainly execute Tookie Williams, a former gang leader who was convicted of murdering four people. Some say he should get life without parole instead because he has led efforts to convince young men not to follow his path. I don’t think the state should be in the murdering business, regardless of whether some guy is rehabilitated. His fate is up to the Governator. I am not hopeful.
I do hold out some hope, actually. I don’t like Ahnuld, but he does surprise at times. I could see him granting clemency.
Let’s hope.
I don’t know if anyone pointed this out, but the only clemency granted in Singapore with these death penalty cases has been to six Singaporeans.
It’s a little more complicated than that. The only people to ever receive clemency in Singapore I think have all been women with children. One was quite young, and was convinced to ‘fess up her partner, who hanged in her stead.
It’s an awful totalitarian regime there.
But perhaps what is most pertinent is that Singapore’s and many other country’s draconian laws on the death penalty, sedition and severe limits on the right to public protest and gatherings are all leftovers of the British colonial era. It gives quite the insight when you reassess in a modern era, just what nasty litttle dictatorships Britain ran all over those areas of the globe that were once shaded pink. And what a charming legacy it left for indigenous self-serving elite to pick up and use as the rod to break the back of their fellow people.
British colonialism left a stain on 1/3 of the globe; – yet most interpretations of history still insist that the British rule of law was a boon for these countries.
I agree. I think that Singapore and Malaysia are the more extreme examples of this, though, where repressive colonial-era laws have been made yet harsher. Ethnic unrest and the communist ‘threat’ in the early post-colonial period served as good justifications for repressive governments. Another feature of the British legacy is ethnic tensions created by the importation of either a workforce or an administrative elite from elsewhere in the empire, and the creation of artificial ‘nations’. So we have politically repressed ethnic Indians in Fiji, Malays and Indians in Singapore, Chinese in Malaysia, Asians in Uganda (at least up to Idi Amin’s rule)and the Biafran and Bangladesh wars of independence for which to thank the Brits. No doubt we could catalogue a whole lot more.