In less than nine hours, a young Vietnamese-Australian goes to the gallows

for attempting to smuggle 396 grams of heroin through Singapore on his way to Melbourne. Nguyen Tuong Van said he was trying to pay his twin brother's drug debts. All appeals to the Singapore Government have failed, and soon he'll be hanged.

I really don't know what to think about this. On the one hand I've always felt drugs are bad, and that "if you do the crime, you do the time". That heroin would have ended up on the streets of Melbourne or Sydney, eventually bringing grief to addicts and their families.

On the other hand, if you believe his explanation, Van just wanted to help his brother and made a terrible error of judgement - one which will now cost him his life. By all accounts he has accepted his fate with dignity and is looking forward to "playing with the angels" in the next life. His mother and brother have said their final farewells, and he now awaits his fate. One of his lawyers said "He is completely rehabilitated, completely reformed, completely focused on doing what is good and now they are going to kill him."

Smuggling drugs is a bad, horrible thing to do, but in Singapore, Malaysia and some other countries it will cost a person his/her life. I'm not a crusader against the death penalty or anything like that, but this case is tough. In many places he would have been imprisoned for a few years, rehabilitated and set free. There, but for the grace of God.....

Something to think about.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/lastditch-bid-to-save-nguyen/2005/12/01/1133422043914.html
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1521210.htm

I don't care what he did that causes him to be guilty of a crime. If a citizen of Singapore or America commits a murder in Australia, we NEVER execute them. We have a reasonable expectation that our citizens are afforded the same minimum standard of decency. It is the ONLY insurance against bad justice being meted out in countries with bad police, bad judges, or extremist cultures.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

of the countries we visit. But this punishment is way out of proportion to the crime - Singapore thinks it's setting an example (as it's done so many times before) as a warning to others.

Period.

...the death penalty is in all cases a violation of one of the most fundamental of human rights: the right to life. As a society, we may deem fit to confine others for the safety of others, but to take life, is to seize being human.

tragedy upon tragedy - all for a dreadful error of judgement.

R.I.P.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200512/s1521407.htm

:(

?

:( RIP Nguyen Tuong Van.