Laws protecting human rights, in my opinion, supersede national laws.

A country may have laws that allow for torture or executions, but these laws conflict with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and and carrying them out constitutes a crime against humanity.

Andrew

“Decency demands pressure be brought to bear on countries which use this unjustifiable penalty: and especially on those which use public and the more barbaric forms of execution.”

No. It is the responsibility of the populations of countries using capital punishment to bring pressure to bear on their own governments if they wish to stop capital punishment.

Keith Kennelly is guilty of cultural imperialism.

Leigh, I sometimes wonder if your enthusiasm to be contrary (on just about everything) is in realty an insufficiency on your behalf to come up with an original idea.

Following your logic(?) we should not have intervened in Germany during WW2. Some basic understanding of the totalitarian government in Singapore would immediately signal to the most ordinary of Australians that an international expression of decency is required -especially where domestic populations are gagged under fascist rule.

If there was clear evidence that Nguyen Tuong Van was innocent but still facing a mandatory execution (no discretionary powers are accorded to Judges in Singapore) would you still be so supportive of Singapore citizens taking up the call on our behalf?

That he appears to be guilty of a criminal offence does not mean his citizenship in this country and his rights as a human being are cashed in. You have a very bloody minded sense of democracy and civil society.

Nguyen Toung Van is unfortunately the victim of his own bad judgement. This issue can not be so easily laid at the feet of our politicians and the Government of Singapore. The mistake of a fool, who if successful would have added to the misery that drugs bring to any society, means that he must suffer the consequence of his own action.

The death penalty is something that should not be dismissed out of hand (my opinion only), there are cases that deserve the ultimate penalty but there should be limits on how it can be used, for what, and how a conviction was gained, e.g. circumstantial evidence should never allow imposition of the penalty.

It is perhaps popular to oppose such things, yet I believe (yes, just I), that a government is demonstrating its resolve, and its conviction to protect its citizens without bowing to a noisy lobby group. Never any noise when I see reports of Chechens cutting the heads off bound victims, Javanese settlers cutting the heads off Sulawesi schoolgirls!? Dont you find this repulsive?

I will be visiting Singapore with my family for the holidays, and funnily enough I feel very safe in this country! The law and order is well under control, the place is clean, the people are hardworking and they mind their own business. Perhaps we could become a little more like them.

So morally the 'death sentence' is unokay, yet is it not simply one of suit of deprivation, punishment and denial a court can exact on the guilty?

The outcry seems to be that of these - only the death sentence is 'barbaric'.

By what standard¿

So readily arguers argue the court’s alternate ability to authorize and exact the denial of a criminal's right to basic freedoms - by caging and demeaning those criminals into mindless and uncivilized human zoo's - relegating and confining the muck, quagmire, reptila and detritus of society to and against each other...

- as a rather enlightened ethos!

'Crikey mates!' {{sighs}} – sees;- Steve feeding a recent 6ft 3in child molester-rapist-dealer while performing cartwheels of repentance - ’What a whoppa!’...}}

......ooo00ooo.....

Surely it isn't the process of dying that is seemingly considered so horrific; for we all must die and go through some or other form of the processes of death.

The civil death sentence by whatever means say by hanging, lethal injection (and even {gosh} stoning...) is certainly a far quicker and humane process in the context of what we currently exact and invite upon those of us who are too to die.

That is, our elderly (and by proxy) ourselves? Theirs is so often a long purgatory of agony, suffering and torment by devious devices such as respiratory strangulation, prolonged angina, mental and cerebral decay amongst other ghoulish outcomes, and perhaps even {{horror of horrors}} the frightening prospect of Australian hospitalization and institutionalization.

And in this - we are not barbaric¿

......ooo00ooo.....

So the actual net effect of a death sentence is that of a circumscription 'time' (or alternatively the denial of such time at the human zoo.)

Hmmm... why is this denied 'time' so sacrosanct¿ Why should courts grant it to those who have so patently abused that, that they've already had ...

So from this perspective - to deny the most tumescent criminal further 'time', is not barbaric in the least; and is arguably a mark of humanity when compared to other customs

(Hmmm ....unwritten in the argument of those most against a death penalty is seemingly an assumption of some greater omni-being or phenomena whose shrouded precinct it is - to give and (thus causally) to take life.

The caucus of this fanciful thought finds society over-stepping its jurisdiction decidedly repugnant.

...the hidden premise is regrettably never explored, and remains hidden within its cloak of taboo.

Regrettably this avenue of debate is also vexed by determining what omni-being does in fact hold executive¿

(In the stakes of deity-arm-wrestling my appointed agent, internuncio & plenipotentiary is the ancient and ancestral Afarensis God Toth - who regrettably, is mute on these matters (...having not yet evolved speach by the time of his / her extinction.))

So sad - really