Thursday, October 27, 2005
what the fuck possessed me to write this???
some people ask me what exactly it is tt i talk about with the boy since our careers/future careers are or will be intertwined. well. below is an email i sent him while in the midst of writing my research paper. and no, i still don't know what the fuck possessed me to write it.
"Hey baby.
I've just started writing for my 30 page research paper on Singapore. I'm taking my sources from places like The Economist.com and other newspaper agencies to build up a holistic picture of what exactly entails the "Western" and the "Eastern" cultural blends. Now that I've started it's a little more difficult to organise than I thought because there is such a wealth of information and such overlaps between each sector tt sorting them all out is a headache. But hopefully I'm still on the right track and I am not turning cultural conflicts into political ones per se.
But nonetheless on my research, I came across this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Apparently we're going to execute this guy called Nguyen Tuong Van this Friday for trafficking 396 g of heroin from Australia into Singapore. Interestingly, the name caught my eye coz last year, PP v. Nguyen Tuong Van was a case tt we studied in my Public Law course regarding the intepretation of Singapore Law and what we meant by the legal vs. the moral intepretation of the law. Because in law, there's this dual argument about whether a legal provision should be intepreted acording to the letter (i.e. technical black-and-white) or to the spirit (i.e the purpose behind the statute, and whether it is just or not) of the law. In the case the judge (can't remember his name) said tt the death penalty was a mandatory one based on legal guilt, not moral guilt. Basically you know the drill - 15 g of heroin or more and you are presumed to be trafficking. Presumed to be trafficking and you hang.
But the facts of tt case were such tt Nguyen Tuong Van isn't actually a trafficker or a consumer or an addict or anything (if the evidence is to be believed). Apparently, there were mitigating circumstances, because he was carrying the drugs to Cambodia to help his twin brother repay off debts to loan sharks. (But I know tt this defence won't hold water under SG law). However, the argument tt the defence has was tt he wasn't trafficking heroin into Singapore. He was trafficking heroin into Cambodia from Australia, and had not passe through immigration. He was in the airport transit lounge when he was searched and arrested. So does this mean tt as long as your at a Singapore checkpoint like the airport, you are on Singapore land and subject to Singapore laws, even before you enter immigration? Should there be a distinction between people who are entering a country, and people who are merely transit? It makes me wonder about the passenger terminus at the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. Once you enter tt station and board the train, you're on Malaysian territory and no longer subject to state laws, even if you are physically still in Singapore.
I'm surprised tt when I checked out Channelnewsasia, I did not see any news about Nguyen Tuong Van or the protests from the Australians on it at all. I applaud and I still stand by the stance of our government, because I still believe tt we should not allow ourselves to be subject merely to international law and relations with other countries (I'm reading international law now, and I find the arguments advanced by the Australians tt Singapore is breaching international law standards unreasonable and unjustified because there is no one set way with which to intepret international law standards, and while countries like Canada might say tt we should intepret the law "in good faith" and with as broad an intepretation as possible, I believe tt Singapore should continue with a dualistic system and not allow itself to be bamboozled by other countries so easily). But I'm just surprised tt this isn't receiving very much coverage by our national media, when it seems to be pretty huge to the Australians, at least.
And tt the reporter who was writing about this (his own opinion, of course) is advocating a boycott of Singapore, and our companies, and our airlines, and our airport, while the Australians are at it.
But anyway I don't know why I'm writing this. I wanted to ask for your opinion on the whole subject and whether you'd heard about it, but I assume you might have. But I don't think I actually asked a question, so I don't know if you can provide an answer. I'm still undecided as to my views on state-sanctioned killing. On one hand, before I signed on the dotted line, I didn't believe in it. But now tt I have and I'm seeing how it can be necessary in some cases, I believe it should stand, or at least I want myself to beliebve it should, but on the other hand I still feel like there is a miscarriage of justice in a case like this, even though it can be argued perfectly in black-letter law and all the technical details tt it is perfectly legitimate."
and of course, this in much greater succinctness, is his reply:
"First things first...
Nobody likes our laws...
American tried to bend us with Micheal Fay..
we caned the bastard....
Phillipines tried with Flor Contapcion..
We aced the Post mortem and the Forensic evidence...
It's the whole Human rights thingy...
They say we are inhuman...
and do you want to know why it aint on ChannelNewsAsia or anything..
If lucky..
He gets a small colum in the Straits Times...
Cause it is no big deal to us..
For us,
you do the crime, you do the time...
It's a system that works...
It's a system that keeps our streets safe...
They dont like it cause it's a slap in the face for them...
cause we get it done...
that's why I hate them...
But our govt knows our stand in all this...
and they dont really fuck us up cause
half the time we dont give a shit....
Oh well,
You'll see this more in the future..
Anyway,
the bastard's guilty as far as I am concerned...
:)"
for some reason, i'm reminded of tt song by U2. the distance between a man and a woman. but yeah. in an environment where it's all soft human rights law and so-called ethics, i'm convinced.
now playing: hotel costes - cafe de flor
"Hey baby.
I've just started writing for my 30 page research paper on Singapore. I'm taking my sources from places like The Economist.com and other newspaper agencies to build up a holistic picture of what exactly entails the "Western" and the "Eastern" cultural blends. Now that I've started it's a little more difficult to organise than I thought because there is such a wealth of information and such overlaps between each sector tt sorting them all out is a headache. But hopefully I'm still on the right track and I am not turning cultural conflicts into political ones per se.
But nonetheless on my research, I came across this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. Apparently we're going to execute this guy called Nguyen Tuong Van this Friday for trafficking 396 g of heroin from Australia into Singapore. Interestingly, the name caught my eye coz last year, PP v. Nguyen Tuong Van was a case tt we studied in my Public Law course regarding the intepretation of Singapore Law and what we meant by the legal vs. the moral intepretation of the law. Because in law, there's this dual argument about whether a legal provision should be intepreted acording to the letter (i.e. technical black-and-white) or to the spirit (i.e the purpose behind the statute, and whether it is just or not) of the law. In the case the judge (can't remember his name) said tt the death penalty was a mandatory one based on legal guilt, not moral guilt. Basically you know the drill - 15 g of heroin or more and you are presumed to be trafficking. Presumed to be trafficking and you hang.
But the facts of tt case were such tt Nguyen Tuong Van isn't actually a trafficker or a consumer or an addict or anything (if the evidence is to be believed). Apparently, there were mitigating circumstances, because he was carrying the drugs to Cambodia to help his twin brother repay off debts to loan sharks. (But I know tt this defence won't hold water under SG law). However, the argument tt the defence has was tt he wasn't trafficking heroin into Singapore. He was trafficking heroin into Cambodia from Australia, and had not passe through immigration. He was in the airport transit lounge when he was searched and arrested. So does this mean tt as long as your at a Singapore checkpoint like the airport, you are on Singapore land and subject to Singapore laws, even before you enter immigration? Should there be a distinction between people who are entering a country, and people who are merely transit? It makes me wonder about the passenger terminus at the Tanjong Pagar Railway Station. Once you enter tt station and board the train, you're on Malaysian territory and no longer subject to state laws, even if you are physically still in Singapore.
I'm surprised tt when I checked out Channelnewsasia, I did not see any news about Nguyen Tuong Van or the protests from the Australians on it at all. I applaud and I still stand by the stance of our government, because I still believe tt we should not allow ourselves to be subject merely to international law and relations with other countries (I'm reading international law now, and I find the arguments advanced by the Australians tt Singapore is breaching international law standards unreasonable and unjustified because there is no one set way with which to intepret international law standards, and while countries like Canada might say tt we should intepret the law "in good faith" and with as broad an intepretation as possible, I believe tt Singapore should continue with a dualistic system and not allow itself to be bamboozled by other countries so easily). But I'm just surprised tt this isn't receiving very much coverage by our national media, when it seems to be pretty huge to the Australians, at least.
And tt the reporter who was writing about this (his own opinion, of course) is advocating a boycott of Singapore, and our companies, and our airlines, and our airport, while the Australians are at it.
But anyway I don't know why I'm writing this. I wanted to ask for your opinion on the whole subject and whether you'd heard about it, but I assume you might have. But I don't think I actually asked a question, so I don't know if you can provide an answer. I'm still undecided as to my views on state-sanctioned killing. On one hand, before I signed on the dotted line, I didn't believe in it. But now tt I have and I'm seeing how it can be necessary in some cases, I believe it should stand, or at least I want myself to beliebve it should, but on the other hand I still feel like there is a miscarriage of justice in a case like this, even though it can be argued perfectly in black-letter law and all the technical details tt it is perfectly legitimate."
and of course, this in much greater succinctness, is his reply:
"First things first...
Nobody likes our laws...
American tried to bend us with Micheal Fay..
we caned the bastard....
Phillipines tried with Flor Contapcion..
We aced the Post mortem and the Forensic evidence...
It's the whole Human rights thingy...
They say we are inhuman...
and do you want to know why it aint on ChannelNewsAsia or anything..
If lucky..
He gets a small colum in the Straits Times...
Cause it is no big deal to us..
For us,
you do the crime, you do the time...
It's a system that works...
It's a system that keeps our streets safe...
They dont like it cause it's a slap in the face for them...
cause we get it done...
that's why I hate them...
But our govt knows our stand in all this...
and they dont really fuck us up cause
half the time we dont give a shit....
Oh well,
You'll see this more in the future..
Anyway,
the bastard's guilty as far as I am concerned...
:)"
for some reason, i'm reminded of tt song by U2. the distance between a man and a woman. but yeah. in an environment where it's all soft human rights law and so-called ethics, i'm convinced.
# posted by Kitana @ 10/27/2005 04:31:00 PM 
