Boycott Singapore - Van's unfair sentance

[Doodle]

if you got 40 years in jail and someone else committed the same crime under the exact same law at the same time and got 4 months, would you be upset?

if you say no you're full of shit.

A. There is constant discrepancies between sentencing times already. That is because each case is taken separately on it merits. This is the problem with mandatory sentencing.

B. We are not talking jail sentence time here. We are talking death.

C. Your argument is ridiculous and debunked.

 

[keystroke]

40 years probably is death in asian jails.


anyway, he is going to die tomorrow and it's no ones fault but his own.


NEXT!

 

[Doodle]

^ That's an assumption.

Typical of you to turn to that emotive invoking dribble when you cannot argue the point effectively.

 

[up all night]

47% of Australians interviewed in a Morgan Poll last night declared that they thought Nguyen deserves the death penalty...

 

[silvia saint]

47% of Australians interviewed in a Morgan Poll last night declared that they thought Nguyen deserves the death penalty...

that doesn't surprise me, i suppose that number would be closer to 90% if our pro-government press was actually government owned like in singapore.

 

[silvia saint]

I am finding it rather difficult to not hate the Singaporean government and people for their actions. I have mentioned that I am disgusted, and I am, but I cannot believe a population would be so supportive of a barbaric tradition. I don't like hating things but at this time I cannot feel anything but total resentment.

hate the government, but not the people. they're just as easily misled by government propaganda and lies as are the people of america, as are we australians.

 

[hoptis]

Nguyen poll 'shows Australians hate drug pushers'
From: AAP
December 01, 2005

A POLL showing almost half of Australians believed convicted drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van should be executed reflected their hate of drug pushers, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said today.

A Morgan Poll conducted last night found 47 per cent of Australians believed the Melbourne man should go to the gallows.

But 46 per cent said the death penalty should not be carried out and seven per cent were undecided.

"What that reflects is that Australians hate drugs. They hate drug pushers," Mr Beazley said.

<snipped>

From News.com.au

Depends how you look at it. Based on some figures and reports I've read lately, Australia leads the world in drug use per capita. Maybe Australians hate drugs so much that we figure we'll shoulder the burden of wiping them from the planet by consuming it all?

Illicit drug use hits a new high: 38%

 

[plazma]

Goes to show how vastly polarised Australian society is between the conservative right wing, and the relatively liberal centre left.

Kimbo is just trying to fucking hype up shit to try and seem like a hard-ass, which is a little goddamned hypocritical given I saw the twofaced fuck at the Amnesty thing in Canberra last night with a candle.

Just watched the 7:30 Report interview with Lex Lasry, and I'm still in shock. I fucken can't believe that its going ahead. I don't want to believe its going ahead. This is so fucked up!

-plaz out-

 

[silvia saint]

hoptis, it shows society is just as full of hypocrites as a drug message board

 

[aunty establishment]

Guys - if 47% want him to die, that means the majority either *don't* want him to die or are undecided. Gosh.

Well, 13 hours to go and I already feel like vomiting. Not looking forward to waking up tomorrow morning knowing about the strange fruit on Changi's trees.

 

[Doppelganger]

I can't believe he's getting hung.. That's a brutal and inhumane way to kill someone [not that there's a humane way to go about it].

Fuck you death penalty!

 

[keej]

Goes to show how vastly polarised Australian society is between the conservative right wing, and the relatively liberal centre left.

Kimbo is just trying to fucking hype up shit to try and seem like a hard-ass, which is a little goddamned hypocritical given I saw the twofaced fuck at the Amnesty thing in Canberra last night with a candle.

Just watched the 7:30 Report interview with Lex Lasry, and I'm still in shock. I fucken can't believe that its going ahead. I don't want to believe its going ahead. This is so fucked up!

-plaz out-

What's Kim been saying exactly? I did a search on google news and couldn't find anything relevant.

 

[muzby]

what i can't stand (and i know it's irrelevant) is how is his name actually pronounced??

is it van tuong nguyen?

nguyen tuong van?

tuong van nguyen?

each news article seems to put it differently, even sometimes putting it a couple of ways in the same article..

 

[plazma]

Keej it was just in reference to what Kimbo was quoted as saying in the article hoptis posted.

I'm off to a vigil tomorrow morning outside the Singaporean embassy.

Goddamn those unfeeling fucks in the Singaporean judicial system, and goddamn our government for their inaction and stupidity. Goddamn every single country and government stupid or cruel enough to continue using the death penalty.

-plaz out-

 

[endlesseulogy]

Last days ... Kim Nguyen, right, and her son Khoa, left, enter Changi Prison to visit Van. Picture: Lindsay Moller


Nguyen, mum can hold hands
From correspondents in Singapore
01dec05

CONDEMNED Australian drug trafficker Van Tuong Nguyen and his mother will be allowed to hold hands, but not to hug, before he is put to death.

Singaporean officials today said they would grant Kim Nguyen an exemption from a total ban on physical contact with death row inmates.
Kim Nguyen had asked to be able to hug her son one final time before he is executed at dawn tomorrow morning.

But in a statement, the Singapore Government said it would allow only limited physical contact between the condemned man and his mother and brother Khoa.

"Mr Nguyen will be allowed to hold hands with his mother and brother," the statement from Singapore's ministry of foreign affairs said.

It said it had agreed to the request for contact after a personal appeal by Prime Minister John Howard to his Singaporean counterpart, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, at the recent Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta.

Nice one Hsien Loong you inhumane bastard. A touch but no hug? Pfft

"We also think that drug trafficking is a crime that deserves the death penalty. The evil inflicted on thousands of people with drug trafficking demands that we must tackle the source by punishing the traffickers rather than trying to pick up the pieces afterwards," he said. (SINGAPORE PM)"

Singapore PM

Please note the following statistics :

Alcohol death rate stood at around 1.8 million deaths worldwide in 2004 http://www.who.int/whr/2002/overview/en/index1.html

Tobacco accounts for more annual deaths than alcohol, AIDS, illegal drugs, road accidents, suicides and murders combined.

Funny though.. the first things you see when you step of a plane at changi airport, Mr. Loong, are giant glitzy duty free shops selling said products.

Therefore, following the logic you just put forward in your most eliquant and dignified political rhetoric, you should also be looking to execute the heads of tobacoo and alcohol companies for their overwhelming contribution of death and decay.

But no.. i forgot

You can look the other way when billions in tax dollars are comming through the rafters of your mansion you silly little man. Give the people their nice legal TAXABLE drugs to become addictied to.

Stop the drug war!

We want honesty, integrity and no double standards.


I just got back from the amnesty gathering in Melbourne. Good to see many people turning up and paying some sort of respect.

 

[Doppelganger]

Related reading:
http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/showthread.php?t=231807

It's fucked he can't at least hug his family. Surely if they can hold hands, a hug doesn't make ANY difference to the Singoporean system. Well.. other than the fact they clearly derive pleasure from the suffering they cause.

Petty.

 

[drEaMtiMe*@#]

so i was just sitting outside having a cigarette and thinking, and i thought about van and how it would feel to know that in x amount of hours your life as you know it would be over. suffice to say it wasn't a very pleasant thought! and it was then that i remembered reading this one particular passage in dostoevsky's "the idiot" where myshkin recollected his thoughts of the first time he witnessed an execution by guillotine in france, and i thought that it would be relevant to share here in regards to this case, and at this particular moment:

...The criminal was an intelligent, middle-aged man, strong and courageous, called Legros. But I assure you, though you may not believe me, when he mounted the scaffold he was weeping and was as white as paper… What must be passing in the soul at such a moment; to what anguish it must be brought! It's an outrage on the soul, that's what it is! it's written "Thou shalt not kill," so because he killed, are we to kill him?

...But the chief and worst pain may not be of the bodily suffering but one's knowing for certain that in an hour, and then in ten minutes, and then half a minute, and then now, at any moment, the soul will leave the body and that one will cease to be a man and that's bound to happen; the worst part of it is that it's certain. When you lay your head down under the knife and hear the knife slide over you head, that quarter of a second is the most terrible of all. You know this is not my only fancy, many people have said the same. I believe that so thoroughly that I'll tell you what I think. To kill for murder is punishment incomparably worse than the crime itself. Murder by legal sentence is immeasurably more terrible than murder by brigands. Anyone murdered by brigands, whose throat is cut at night in the wood, or something of the sort, must surely hope to escape till the very last minute. There have been instances when a man has still hope for escape, running or begging for mercy after his throat was cut. But the other case all hope is lost, which makes dying ten times as easy, is taken away for certain. There is the sentence, and the whole awful torture lies in the fact that there is certainly no escape, and there is no torture in the world more terrible. You may lead a soldier out and set him facing a cannon in battle and fire at him and he'll still hope; but read a sentence of certain death over the same soldier, and he'll go out of his mind or burst into tears.

 

[pete_gasparino]

^^

It's a strong piece of writing....a part of it reminds me of a Victor Hugo quote, that I read today:

"What does the law say? You will not kill! How does it say it? By killing!"

I was reflecting on the poor guy as well, a bit...its hard not to empathise with him, and I'm glad others are, and well they should. As a catholic myself, I dearly hope he can find some solace in faith and this is one instance where I hope it provides him with some comfort that he may not have had, without..

But I was thinking about the last moment, the last moment shared between Nguyen and his mother. Something my own mum said sparked that, basically, "How terrible that would be", and it really would be. Imagine touching your mother, or your child, and knowing that it is the last time you'll see them, and how fast that moment would go, and the desire for perception to slow down, just so that moment could last...

I dunno, I mean, that's just terrible for me to even think about, that concept.

But this poor guy, and poor guys just like him all over the world, still have to go through that. But what's infinitely worse, his mother will have to endure that, and has had to endure that.

And whatever you say, she didn't do a damned thing. So she gets punished, a punishment, arguably worse than death: seeing her son die, and hearing others condone it, for a purpose that no one can really understand, because it doesn't make sense.

In five hours he'll be dead, and soon after that likely but hopefully not forgotten....and maybe some day this brutality won't exist anymore because someone will realise, "Hey, who is really willing to smuggle drugs under threat of a life sentence, that wouldn't under the threat of a death sentence?"

Maybe it won't happen, but I really really hope it does, and I know others do.

I'll say a prayer for Nguyen, and I know others will, despite faith or belief or conviction - communing with destiny in the hope that something, anything, good will come of this, though what I don't know.....and in the hope that those who really loved him can find some peace.

 

[hoptis]

It could be said that not all was in vain

A slight dent in Singapore's armour
By Connie Levett, Singapore
December 2, 2005

Today's execution of Nguyen Tuong Van has forced the mandatory death penalty onto the agenda in Singapore, with the local media unable to ignore the political lobbying, threatened trade boycotts and heated public debate in Australia.

In a rare break with the government line, the broadsheet Straits Times newspaper ran an article reassessing the mandatory death penalty, despite continuing government statements that it is essential to protect citizens from the scourge of drugs and deter drug syndicates basing themselves in Singapore.

"Perhaps in the months ahead, when emotions have died down, the mandatory death penalty - meaning its case-by-case, crime-by-crime application - should be reassessed by lawyers, officials and citizens alike," political reporter Ken Kwek wrote in an analysis piece. "If that happens, we should all focus on the specific - how the mandatory death penalty might be removed for certain crimes - rather than fall for the broadbrush rhetoric calling for its complete and unconditional abolition," the article said.

A long-time resident of Singapore, who asked not to be named, said "it shows in Singapore, within the established media, there are some misgivings about this medieval form of punishment. I wouldn't see it as a signal from the government, more a signal from the intelligentsia."

Yesterday's Straits Times devoted two pages to the story, picking up the letter by Singapore's High Commissioner to Australia, Joseph Koh, justifying the rejection of clemency.

The increased coverage reflects Singapore's awareness that the region is closely watching its actions.

- with STEVE BUTCHER

From The Age

Time's up... clock up another victim of the war on drugs.

 

[Doodle]

It's a disgusting betrayal of human rights. Humanity is watered down a little more today.