Saturday, October 29, 2005
a fair voice (imho)
article taken from http://www.singapore-window.org/sw05/051028au.htm.
"Don't ask Singapore to make an exception"
Australian
October 26, 2005
OPINION: Asad Latif
A 25-YEAR-OLD man risks his life to help pay the debts of his drug-addicted twin brother. He is discovered, tried and sentenced to death. What is to be made of this outcome? He is a hero. This is what brothers are made of, or should be. Their lives belong to their siblings. They do not just live in families but for their families, and are prepared to die for them as well. They are role models.
A hero is what Nguyen Tuong Van would be today, except for one crucial, deadly detail: drugs. Nguyen is not a hero but a criminal who, notwithstanding that he was driven to desperation by concern for his brother, trafficked in the substance responsible for destroying the life of his brother, others' brothers and sisters, others' sons and daughters, others' wives and husbands.
Drugs kill.
This said, a debate is possible on the humanitarian aspects of Nguyen's case. What is surprising, though, is how those aspects appear to have been subsumed by condemnations of an upstart city-state for having dared to condemn to death a citizen of an island-continent.
Look at the discussions on the internet, for example, and one theme that emerges prominently is that Nguyen should be spared because he is an Australian whose country does not impose the death penalty for drug trafficking. How dare tiny Singapore question the laws of Australia with its own laws?
This is the wrong approach.
Australians have the right - indeed, they have the responsibility - to be concerned about what happens to one of their own beyond their shores. They have the right, if they so wish, to argue that their laws are better than those of Singapore.
But - and this is the critical caveat - no one has the right to expect, let alone demand, that Singapore bend its laws to suit the laws of another country. Sovereignty, then, is a key issue in this case. The Australian Government understands and respects it, but some of the less circumspect voices commenting on this affair do not.
The fact is that Singapore, as with other sovereign states, has the right to apply its laws within its borders. Those laws are very clear and well known when it comes to drug trafficking, and an essential part of the clarity lies in the reminder that the death penalty applies to foreigners as well as to Singaporeans. It cannot be otherwise. To argue that foreigners who are in Singapore or are passing through it should be exempt from the functioning of its laws would be to make a mockery of the republic's sovereign right to apply its laws to everyone within its jurisdiction.
Incidentally, expecting special treatment for foreign criminals reveals a sense that their lives are more precious than those of Singaporean criminals. Where is the justice in that view? The converse argument, too - that Nguyen should not have received the death penalty because he was carrying drugs meant for Australia, not Singapore - is disingenuous. Is it right for Singapore to offer its airport transit facilities to criminals who would make Australians vulnerable to a deadly vice, a vice from which Singapore's tough laws protect its own citizens?
But these are side arguments. The main issue is that of sovereignty. The laws of Singapore prevail in the land called Singapore.
The second issue has to do with consistency. If Singapore were to make an exception for a citizen of a close and important partner, as Australia certainly is, which countries should be excluded from the ambit of exceptions? Would it be right for Singapore to hang desperate people from poor nations with which it has hardly any trade or political ties because their media or other institutions could not be bothered to turn the faraway conviction of a citizen into a public issue?
Surely this cannot be the case. Laws applied in some cases but withheld in others lose the legitimacy of law. They become instruments of expediency.
The third issue, insistence, follows on from consistency. The city-state called Singapore has laws that prevail today because it has insisted on applying them.
In the late 1960s, Singapore executed two Indonesian marines who had entered the island during a period of unrest and exploded bombs that killed civilians.
A recently independent country inhabiting a region of tensions and danger, Singapore understood that it was not a propitious time to refuse to bow to external pressure, including a personal request for clemency from Indonesia's president Suharto.
But Singaporeans also understood something larger than passing dangers: that a country whose sovereign right of action is held hostage by external forces will soon have little sovereignty to protect. Singapore upheld its law and its right to be taken seriously by other nations with their own laws.
I am sorry if my arguments sound harsh or churlish. My intention is not to fly the Singapore flag over the impending fate of a young man who had his life ahead of him. I still think that Nguyen is an excellent brother. What a pity that this embodiment of fraternal care and concern should have done what he did. I only hope that his terrible story will deter other people from following in his footsteps.
The laws of Singapore are not to blame. Drugs are.
Asad Latif, a former senior reporter with the Straits Times, is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He is the author of, among other books, The Flogging of Singapore: The Michael Fay Affair (1994). This article is written in a personal capacity.
now playing: hotel costes - cafe de flor
"Don't ask Singapore to make an exception"
Australian
October 26, 2005
OPINION: Asad Latif
A 25-YEAR-OLD man risks his life to help pay the debts of his drug-addicted twin brother. He is discovered, tried and sentenced to death. What is to be made of this outcome? He is a hero. This is what brothers are made of, or should be. Their lives belong to their siblings. They do not just live in families but for their families, and are prepared to die for them as well. They are role models.
A hero is what Nguyen Tuong Van would be today, except for one crucial, deadly detail: drugs. Nguyen is not a hero but a criminal who, notwithstanding that he was driven to desperation by concern for his brother, trafficked in the substance responsible for destroying the life of his brother, others' brothers and sisters, others' sons and daughters, others' wives and husbands.
Drugs kill.
This said, a debate is possible on the humanitarian aspects of Nguyen's case. What is surprising, though, is how those aspects appear to have been subsumed by condemnations of an upstart city-state for having dared to condemn to death a citizen of an island-continent.
Look at the discussions on the internet, for example, and one theme that emerges prominently is that Nguyen should be spared because he is an Australian whose country does not impose the death penalty for drug trafficking. How dare tiny Singapore question the laws of Australia with its own laws?
This is the wrong approach.
Australians have the right - indeed, they have the responsibility - to be concerned about what happens to one of their own beyond their shores. They have the right, if they so wish, to argue that their laws are better than those of Singapore.
But - and this is the critical caveat - no one has the right to expect, let alone demand, that Singapore bend its laws to suit the laws of another country. Sovereignty, then, is a key issue in this case. The Australian Government understands and respects it, but some of the less circumspect voices commenting on this affair do not.
The fact is that Singapore, as with other sovereign states, has the right to apply its laws within its borders. Those laws are very clear and well known when it comes to drug trafficking, and an essential part of the clarity lies in the reminder that the death penalty applies to foreigners as well as to Singaporeans. It cannot be otherwise. To argue that foreigners who are in Singapore or are passing through it should be exempt from the functioning of its laws would be to make a mockery of the republic's sovereign right to apply its laws to everyone within its jurisdiction.
Incidentally, expecting special treatment for foreign criminals reveals a sense that their lives are more precious than those of Singaporean criminals. Where is the justice in that view? The converse argument, too - that Nguyen should not have received the death penalty because he was carrying drugs meant for Australia, not Singapore - is disingenuous. Is it right for Singapore to offer its airport transit facilities to criminals who would make Australians vulnerable to a deadly vice, a vice from which Singapore's tough laws protect its own citizens?
But these are side arguments. The main issue is that of sovereignty. The laws of Singapore prevail in the land called Singapore.
The second issue has to do with consistency. If Singapore were to make an exception for a citizen of a close and important partner, as Australia certainly is, which countries should be excluded from the ambit of exceptions? Would it be right for Singapore to hang desperate people from poor nations with which it has hardly any trade or political ties because their media or other institutions could not be bothered to turn the faraway conviction of a citizen into a public issue?
Surely this cannot be the case. Laws applied in some cases but withheld in others lose the legitimacy of law. They become instruments of expediency.
The third issue, insistence, follows on from consistency. The city-state called Singapore has laws that prevail today because it has insisted on applying them.
In the late 1960s, Singapore executed two Indonesian marines who had entered the island during a period of unrest and exploded bombs that killed civilians.
A recently independent country inhabiting a region of tensions and danger, Singapore understood that it was not a propitious time to refuse to bow to external pressure, including a personal request for clemency from Indonesia's president Suharto.
But Singaporeans also understood something larger than passing dangers: that a country whose sovereign right of action is held hostage by external forces will soon have little sovereignty to protect. Singapore upheld its law and its right to be taken seriously by other nations with their own laws.
I am sorry if my arguments sound harsh or churlish. My intention is not to fly the Singapore flag over the impending fate of a young man who had his life ahead of him. I still think that Nguyen is an excellent brother. What a pity that this embodiment of fraternal care and concern should have done what he did. I only hope that his terrible story will deter other people from following in his footsteps.
The laws of Singapore are not to blame. Drugs are.
Asad Latif, a former senior reporter with the Straits Times, is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. He is the author of, among other books, The Flogging of Singapore: The Michael Fay Affair (1994). This article is written in a personal capacity.
# posted by Kitana @ 10/29/2005 05:51:00 AM 
