msolga wrote:Sorry, dadpad, but I can't agree. I believe that putting someone to death is an inappropriate & archaic form of punishment, in any country. What Nguyen did was very wrong, I'm not excusing him at all. But to die for it? No.
msolga i think you missed part of the point of my post. Look beyond your current attitude and imagine you had grown up in another culture.
You wouldnt have the attitude you now have had you grown up in one of these countries.
Nguyn would have brought those drugs back to australia and possibly killed several people or at the very least contributed to their misery.
Do the crime Do the time!
But Dad, you're punishing him for the deaths of people who haven't died.
The 'culture' excuse doesn't wash with me either. Should we endorse female castration/genital mutilation because it's culturally acceptable?
I'm against the death penalty. Period. But I'm even more against it when it's farcically applied. Certain SE Asian countries have been hanging mules and drug runners for decades. Has the traffic dropped off? Not a friggin' bit - there are more drugs everywhere and they keep getting cheaper in real terms.
I have no doubt Van is guilty - that was his plea, after all. But to make an example like this, when you've already made tons of examples, while there are accusations from the leader of the Singaporean opposition that government is turning a blind eye to , if not actually in bed with, major illegal drug cartels - then I get really uneasy. I feel that someone is dying for someone else's propaganda.
Sure if he wasn't an Australian citizen then we would never have heard about it or given a sh*t. But we have heard about and it does irk the sense of justice some of us have.
If someone in an Australian court was sentence to hang for this crime I'd be horrified and ashamed and I'd be writing rambling messages to A2K - why should I react any different because it happened somewhere else? Smells like the old "Jumbo jet crashes into New Dehli hospital - no Australians injured" news story.
This is going to be a ramble. Sorry.
On the death penalty generally. I have two objections, one based on practicality, the other based entirely on emotion. However I have also a fair dose of hypocrisy in there as well.
I object to the death penalty on the grounds that an innocent person can be found guilty. The arguments on this point are legion and well known so I won't go on about them.
I object to the death penalty because of the ritualised cruelty. That sounds sooky but I'll wear that accusation.
Now, here's where the hypocrisy comes in. There are some people who have committed horrendous crimes who would definitely improve the planet if they weren't on it any longer. Yes, I have sat and looked at reports of terrible crimes and thought that the perpetrator should be done away with. But I'm just one person ranting, I'm not a in a position to make a policy decision that sees capital punishment brought back in any Australian jurisdiction. The wiser, cooler policy wonks know that it doesn't make much of a difference whether someone is banged up for life and I do mean life, or whether they take the long drop (or needle or whatever).
On balance then I'm against the death penalty.
And I'm against it wherever it may take place. I'm not swayed by the cultural argument either. Ritual state execution - whether it occurs in Changi or Huntsville (Tx) or Beijing is simply as I've described it above.
If Nguyen were to be sentenced to life imprisonment in Singapore then I would say okay, although I think it's totally excessive, at least it's not execution. Although I am aware that no less a thinker than J.S. Mill himself once argued in the Parliament at Westminster that the death penalty was more humane than natural life in prison (the prisons back then were pretty bad places).
Quote: Should we endorse female castration/genital mutilation because it's culturally acceptable?
of course not, As i said, my argument only applies on the basis of what i know from media reports in THIS PARTICULAR case
Quote:But Dad, you're punishing him for the deaths of people who haven't died.
a driver is pulled over and breath tested he is over the limit. hasnt killed someone....... yet but still gets convicted and punished. now your gonna say "but not executed" and im gonna say the punishment is immaterial.
look let me try to reverse the situation to explain how i feel.
hypothetical
as a devout muslim living in Iran i believe that taking alcohol is against the law. if i were to come to your country or place political pressure on your government to enforce my belief that taking alcohol is a sin and force my beliefs on you personally how would you feel.
The law and/or punishment is immaterial to the argument that every country in the world should accept your and my belief system. If you wish to enforce your belief system on to another culture system then you must be able to accept the same from them.
Try leaning over your neighbours fence and telling him its time he mowed his lawn. go back 2 days later and suggest he trims his hedge oh and that tree branch. do this often enough and you will wear a bunch of 5. why?
stop interfering in other peoples/countries/cultures business where it doesnt directly impact on you.
yes there are grey areas
I don't buy the cultural/religious arguments either. It's political. And it appears the punishment is applied selectively. When was the last time a Mr Big was convicted, or met this fate in Malaysia (or Indonesia, or Thailand), if ever? Surely some of these little fish on death row must have told the Malaysian authorities something about the bigger fish who actually control & benefit most from the drug trade? Australia's last state sanctioned execution was in 1967, with the killing of Ronald Ryan in Melbourne. We can change, so can Malaysia, but that would mean political change there. And as executing offenders hasn't stopped the drug trade, perhaps Malaysians should ask themselves what purpose the death penalty actually serves? And why should it be death by hanging, for god's sake? Surely there are more humane ways of ending a person's life?
Nguyen affair inspires hasty sidestepping
November 25, 2005/SMH
Who would want to be an Australian - especially an Australian in strife abroad? What with Messrs Howard, Ruddock and Downer in charge of the shop back home, prospects for any meaningful humanity are dim to non-existent. ... <cont>
http://smh.com.au/news/opinion/nguyen-affair-inspires-hasty-sidestepping/2005/11/24/1132703312582.html
sorry dad, lives and lawns aren't equivocal.
I can see where you are coming from but how do i decide where doesnt "it directly impact on" me. I tend to think that's ethical cowardice - what if your daughter or son was in Van's positon?
Very mixed up about this, GF acknowledgement of justified capital punishment rings true and I'm ashamed...
Howard and his lot are just doing this for the cameras. They had/have no intention of pursuing this issue with any real forcefulness. There's too much at stake for them. The life of one person means nothing when compared with issues of trade, military co-operation and so on. Thus we see the increasingly farcical attempts to symbolically be seen to be "doing something" while frantically trying to send signals to the Singapore Government along the lines of "of course we don't really mean any of this".
And it will work. By the time of the next election it's won't only be "Van who?" there will have been a rash of callous and sick jokes, passed around to mollify us.
Singapore was founded as a British trading colony in 1819. It joined the Malaysian Federation in 1963 but separated two years later and became independent. It subsequently became one of the world's most prosperous countries with strong international trading links (its port is one of the world's busiest in terms of tonnage handled) and with per capita GDP equal to that of the leading nations of Western Europe.
Me thinks they can take care of themselves and dont need us to tell them how to run their country.
Part of the war on terror has its roots in the very inability of western nations to accept that other cultures dont wish to live a western lifestyle.
Actually its all about power.... or lack of it. The powerlessnes of different cultures to halt the onslaught of western cultural ideas and (Mores are strongly held norms or customs.)
What you people are proposing, if we extrapolate, is that Australia should assert its own cultural rules and mores on another country to save a criminal from a punishment these people in their wisdom have deemed to be suitable. What i want to know is why the bloody hell should they. What makes your/our interpretations/beliefs more valid or more right than theirs. In the end it comes down to what you believe and what they believe. So you tell me whos right you or them and how far are you prepared to go to convince them that you have the high moral ground.
is what you believe correct
or is what they believe correct.
is might right
or right might
yes we can apply a gentle amount of persuasion and over a period of time they may come to accept our view but if we try to force the issue they will just get their backs up.
Anybody got teenage kids?
It isn't just an Australian concern, dadpad .... it's an issue for anyone opposed to the death penalty, worldwide. Amnesty International has made appeals to Singapore. Yesterday I heard that the NZ prime minister would be making a private appeal, too. It's a shame that this issue was not raised by our government at the CHOGM meeting in Malta. Other human rights issues were discussed there, so why not this one?
No, I don't have teenage children.
(I've just realized that I've called Singapore
Malaysia in at least one post. I don't dare search back further to discover other mistakes ... Just goes to show - a person shouldn't post when a person is tired & lacking concentration. I'm getting out of here quickly now, before I confuse JH with KB!
)
Trade Relations indeed msolga - sums it up nicely. Yes, I am getting very, very cynical these days.
No teenage kids here either. No kids at all.
No worries about confusing JH with KB msolga - fortunately I'm starting to see policy differences. I am heartened
Hi again Dad. You're extrapolating wildly. I'm not saying we tell them how to run their country I'm saying we tell them we don't think the death penalty is warranted for this charge on one of our citizens - that's not disrespect, in my book.
You're example of the drink driver actually supports my point - we charge them for drink driving, not for the deaths of the people they might have killed.
I enjoyed the history lesson Singapore - but I don't care civillized/democratic/blah blah blah a nation and it's government is, if I perceive an injustice I will protest (at least in some small way) - should I keep my mouth shut on Diego Garcia (http://www.antiwar.com/orig/pilger.php?articleid=3702) just because it was done on a handshake between the US and the UK?
No kids either - what's the relevance? Because I'd support killing drug mules? Or because I'd have more empathy with Van Nguyen's mother?
At first I didn't believe this, but then I thought about it and it fits with his hubris.
Quote:PM to be at cricket on hanging day
28nov05
PRIME Minister John Howard will attend the PM's XI cricket match on the day of Australian Van Tuong Nguyen's scheduled execution, and he believes Australians will understand.
Mr Howard says he has a duty to attend the game, in Canberra, and it is not his decision to schedule the hanging on that day.
The PM's XI match, this year against the West Indies, is an annual match with a strong tradition behind it. The Prime Minister of the day sits on the selection panel for the match.
"I have a job that involves many responsibilities. It wasn't my decision that the execution take place on Friday," Mr Howard said on ABC radio.
"I have a duty as the host to go to that match.
"I think the Australian people will understand that I didn't set the date of this man's execution. I wish there was no date set for his execution.
"The idea of not attending the game or of abandoning it, I don't think it's something the Australian people would necessarily believe I should do."
Mr Howard said he had not heard of a call for a minute's silence at the time of the execution.
"Let me think about things like that. I don't want to pre-empt how I might respond. I've not heard of any such call," he said.
Nguyen is almost certain to hang at dawn on Friday after the failure of numerous clemency appeals, including a fifth and final plea yesterday by Mr Howard.
The 25-year-old Melbourne man was caught with almost 400 grams of heroin at Changi airport in late 2002.
Yesterday, church leaders and Liberal MPs, including Attorney General Philip Ruddock, reportedly supported a campaign for a minute's silence on Friday. Liberal backbencher Bruce Baird also called on Australians to reflect.
"I call on all Australians to observe one minute's silence at 9am on Friday, to express our compassion for this young Australian and our opposition to the imposition of this barbaric sentence," he said.
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