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The Forum > Article Comments > Nguyen Tuong Van - no ripples in the murky world of drugs > Comments

Nguyen Tuong Van - no ripples in the murky world of drugs : Comments

By Gillian Handley, published 25/11/2005

Gillian Handley argues Nguyen Tuong Van's death will make no difference to the drug dealers.

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A well-expressed article. Nothing much will be progressed in the problem of drug trafficking by implementing the death sentence in this case.
The death penalty is just geat for communities who get a lift out of a feeling of some achievement of revenge. And if occasionally it is at the expense of the wrong person, well that is just too bad.
Its supposed purpose of minimizing the rates of perpetration of particular crimes does not seem to have worked all that well in the USA, China or elsewhere. So, putting people to death after a few legal contortions is generally nothing more than a need to display a bit of hairy-cyestedness: by those having a need to put it on display.
Neither does the death penalty seem to have worked for Singapore when it has been shown by this case to be a clearing house for Heroin: the convicted person was not caught while bringing heroin into Singapore. He was bringing it from Singapore to Australia. I wonder where the Singaporeans get it from. Do they themselves know: and if not, do they really want to know?
Posted by colinsett, Friday, 25 November 2005 10:15:29 AM
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No his death is unlikely to have any effect, he is after all just the mule.
However it seems to me various strands of the drug/death / national state rules argument are being muddled.
To simply, as is the want of politicians and others to indulge in the casuistry of failing to ask the reason for the behaviour. Is it drugs/lack of will/easy money/poverty. In this case it seems poverty.
It is fine to say no man should be put to death and maybe there are degrees of need in this espousal. Yet we, Australia and others quite happily murder (since the war is illegal) Iraqi. Politically useful like castigating drugs.
Next for a country whose leader believes in Nationalism (when it suits) to decry nationalistic behaviour is the normal political hype.
Posted by untutored mind, Friday, 25 November 2005 10:30:02 AM
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Nguyen should be saved so that Singapore can show 'mercy' - surely the badge of a civilised society¿ <-- The main thrust of the Nguyen-Gillian-Handley's argument.

Disagree:

...and civilized society must have such a badge?

...and Australia is presumably so civilized and thus adequately badged?

hmmm... lets couple the 'mercy' yard-stick to Australia's slaughter (strong word), killing (less strong), putting down (euphemistic) or termination (the technical term) of 100 000 fetuses annually?

(http://www.nswrtl.org.au/issues/abortion.htm)

Is this social custom, of a 'lustrous badge of honour society', merciful?

You'd guess not.

Is it thus not fair to suggest that Australia has a momentous 'mercy' failing.

So perhaps Australians perspective should be to back off and let Singapore act as it deems civilised, and 'terminate' whom it deems guilty, and accept the neolithic status of ethics in Australia.

Or would Gillian explain how Australia should pursue mercy in one sorry case - but not in another 100 000?

You-go-girl...(or should we save a whale¿)
Posted by denk, Friday, 25 November 2005 10:57:12 AM
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Money is not the root of all evil, lack of money is.

It is the reason that many of us are even here in Australia in the first place, stealing a loaf of bread to feed your family.

Times have changed, society has changed, the financial pressures of today forcing people in making stupid decisions.

No doubt about it, Mr Nguyen has rocks in his head for doing it in the first place. He must have balls the size of watermelons for even contemplating it, but things must be pretty bad for him to feel his hand was forced enough to do this.

People can murder and get parole in 20 years. He was bringing drugs into our country, drugs that may kill our kids, and help those embarking on the habit.

Why dont they 'tag and release' drug mules and let them find their source, then get a decent bust out of it.

If I were the government, i would put more pressure on Singapore by letting them know they are killing one of our kids. We will extradite him and he can face the consequences here. All tourists should have to be extradited instantly to face their own authorities, and let me tell you, embarrassing your country and facing legal proceedings will not be taken lightly, but it will be more how we like to see our people dealt with.

It costs Singapore many times more to trial him and hang him than to send him on his bike, and this means if a singapore man got done in Australia, he could go home to his government and face what is acceptable to his people.

Singapore should be lent on. If John Howard got on a plane, went to the PM's office in Singapore, and sat there and demanded like a man with backbone, he could free Van, but he wont even free the innocent like Shapelle. We are not a big fish, Australia, but we can be a fiesty little Rooster especially in our own backyard.
Posted by Realist, Friday, 25 November 2005 11:09:34 AM
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Gillian Handley never wanted the death penalty for her brother’s murders. She wanted the killers to face up to what they had done: she “can think no greater punishment than to live with yourself, once you comprehend the full extent of the crime you have committed.”

Gillian has more faith in peoples’ ability to repent and redeem than they deserve. It is a naivety she continues with – along with other hysterical Australians – in the matter of the execution of convicted drug smuggler, Van Nguyen.

This great Australian hysteria, occurring whenever its juvenile victims object to the laws of foreign countries, stems largely from Australia’s own lenient treatment of criminals.

Even though Gillian and others are fully cognisant of the penalties applying to Nguyen’s crime in Singapore and other Asian countries, they persist in unrealistic and futile charades knowing full well that they and the Australian Government has neither the ability nor the right to interfere in the legal system of another country.

Gillian asks us to think of the other “victims” involved. Well, the person who should have thought of them didn’t, and he is now to pay the ultimate price for not doing so. Nguyen was “driven” to playing a part in the addiction and possible death of other people because of his own brother’s addiction. Some real ‘caring’ there, Gillian.

Gillian’s “mitigating circumstances” reek of the good old Aussie ‘discounts’ for this and that handed out by judges carried away by their autonomy, leading to short prison sentences giving criminals the leisure to work out their next job.

We owe Singapore a debt of gratitude. With the increase of drug use among young Australians, and with no hope of anything being done by our weak governments and parents who have for two generations allowed kids to think “using” is a part of growing up, we have become a weak country, reliant on Asian countries to stop as many drug smugglers as they can.

We should at least have the courtesy to allow them to do it there own way.
Posted by Leigh, Friday, 25 November 2005 11:51:53 AM
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I have been following the Nguyen story with varying interest over the last few weeks and find the growing lose of perspective here more than alarming. There has been much debate and talk about capital punishment and the horrors faced by the convicted and their families. This Handley article while well written still makes little mention of the victims of drug use, the mothers, brothers, sisters, daughters, sons and so. Nguyen was the instrument of his own fate, and more than that was the instrument of the fate of so many others. Trafficking in drugs is punishable by death in Singapore. The crime was committed in Singapore and so as the dispassionate observer I believe we should let their criminal justice system deal with him. Their system is built around a philosophy that is different to our own. We have in Australia been driven by a desire to embrace diversity in all its colors, does that mean that when it comes to issues we find distasteful that we should reinstate the old ideals of closed mindedness and intolerance?

The debate has made me consider the issue in some detail and I for would be happy to keep capital punishment outside our own justice system, but I do however respect the rights of other nations to deal with this in their own way. If you don’t care for their system of crime and punishment either don’t go there or don’t break their law
Posted by Woodyblues, Friday, 25 November 2005 12:08:24 PM
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