Would you allow his mom to hug 25 year old Melbourne man before executing him today?

Off-topic
1

Would you allow his mom to hug 25 year old Melbourne man before executing him? I would. But news reports said China authorities told her no. The whole thing is quite sad to me…

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051117/wl_nm/crime_australia_singapore_dc

CANBERRA (Reuters) - Singapore will hang 25-year-old Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van on December 2, despite numerous pleas by Canberra for clemency, his Australian lawyer said on Thursday….the Singapore government confirmed the date of execution in a letter sent to Nguyen’s mother. Nguyen was convicted last year of trying to smuggle 400 grams (0.9 lb) of heroin from Cambodia.
“The letter was received at 2 p.m. this afternoon,” Lasry told Reuters, adding Nguyen’s mother would be allowed extra visits in the days leading up to his execution. Nguyen, from the southern Australian city of Melbourne, was arrested in December 2002 at Singapore’s Changi airport while in transit for Australia.
Australia had asked Singapore to reconsider clemency for Nguyen – who said he was carrying the drugs to help his brother pay off debts to loan sharks – because he had co-operated with authorities and could be a witness in future drug cases.
Nguyen will be the first Australian executed for drugs charges since Michael McAuliffe went to the gallows in Malaysia in 1993 for trafficking.
Two other Australians, Mai Cong Thanh, 46, and Nguyen Van Chinh, 45, are on death row in Vietnam after being convicted of drug smuggling.

2

Yeah, BTM, I agree. No matter what the guy did, his mother still needs to be and will always be Mom. You say the “whole thing” is quite sad? I agree again. The crime, the results, the conflict between countries, the family emotions.

3

I’m in two minds over this one. On the one hand, smuggling 400 grams of heroin into a country where you recieve the death penalty for being caught with 15 grams is not too bright. But that is in conflict with my belief that it is every person’s right to put into their bodies whatever substance/s they so desire.
pragmatism vs ideology I suppose.

I’m sure in his position though a hug shouldn’t be out of the question.

4

I’m in many minds. The whole thing is fraught with ‘problems’ for me but I’m going to try and sort them out in my head. I like a challange.

So first, I would let them hug goodbye, ofcourse I would.

Secondly, I am totally against the death penalty for any reason as I believe that no one has the right to take away the life/universe of anyone else, under almost any circumstances. So the death penalty is wrong.

Thirdly, I would expect people who come to this country to abide by the laws of my country, therefore I would extend this to all countries and expect whoever goes to a country to abide by the laws of that country and to be punished according to the judicial system of that country. So the death penalty is ‘right’.

Although I believe that the use of drugs should be legalised I don’t believe supplying should be. On one hand it is OK to subject your body to whatever you want to, on the other it is not OK to supply vulnerable people with something that may kill them. So he shouldn’t have been smuggling drugs.
He probably knew what the penalty for drug smuggling was and went ahead and did it anyway. Therefore he must have either been desperate or stupid or just believed he wouldn’t get caught.

I understand that everyone was trying thier best to save him but I don’t understand what justification the government had for getting involved. If Australia expects people to obey their laws whether they are from that country or not, why should they interfere with another country’s laws, just because they are different.

I think that’s about it.
I know you didn’t ask for all this opinion BTM, but look what you’ve done now. I just had to sort it out in my head.

To summarise the main points for those not willing to trawl through: I’d let them hug goodbye and I wouldn’t kill him in the first place because it’s morally wrong.

Cathy

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Cathwood, I tried to give you rep for that but I need to “spread it around” first. One of the best and most balanced responses to such a contentious subject I’ve read for ages.

You achieved the rare feat of leaving me with nothing else to say.

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Mike: I’ll second that! – Billy

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A rare feat indeed. Actually you usually say what I feel better than I do so this is a first!

Cathy

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Cathy,
We seem to have much the same views on the subject. I enjoyed your post, it made me run over a few things in my head that I hadn’t found the time/inclination to before.

Although I believe that the use of drugs should be legalised I don’t believe supplying should be. On one hand it is OK to subject your body to whatever you want to, on the other it is not OK to supply vulnerable people with something that may kill them.

  • This is what jumps out at me. While I believe his execution was wrong, I can’t bring myself to mourn his death like so many Australians have publically been doing.

It’s a tough view to argue for that drug use should be legal. Although I’m not 100% certain of my views on this yet, I think I agree. I think nobody has a right to dictate what you ‘do’ to yourself as long as it’s not harming others. And that’s where it gets tricky. Obviously it will harm others in many cases as people get addicted when that’s not their intention and when you consider the impact on families of those who take the drugs too far. My gut response is that although we should somehow (don’t ask me how at this stage) reduce the impact of drug use on others, nobody has the right and nobody should have the power to dictate how somebody lives their life. I guess I’ve worked myself into a circle here because now I have to mention that I believe that authorities should have the power to put a stop to drug abuse that’s affecting families and others. Actually wait (you’re going to have to be patient here because this is the first time I’ve thought about this in any detail) - maybe I don’t think that! :slight_smile: Maybe I think it should be up to the individuals and famililes to sort out their problems and all the government should do is offer support to those who are affected. Yeah, that sounds right…I guess my belief against paternalism in governments is the strongest of all. Actually come to think of it, I realised much the same after a survey I recently did on restrictions to provisional drivers in Australia.

I understand that everyone was trying thier best to save him but I don’t understand what justification the government had for getting involved. If Australia expects people to obey their laws whether they are from that country or not, why should they interfere with another country’s laws, just because they are different.

  • The government’s ‘justification’ was that (only by a small percentage) most Australians were against the execution and they’re trying to regain popularity after a whole bunch of stupid and (eventually) unpopular decisions. Don’t get me started on war and refugees! :slight_smile:

Andrew

9

I think she should beable to hug him. I mean her son’s punishment is that he will be executed. Closure for his mother could be that she needs to hug him one last time. Why punish her more, he’s getting punished faitally, let her have the little bit of time and human contact thats left.

10

I think she did get to touch him one last time but not hug him. Moot point now, he was executed yesterday.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/0,2106,3499094a12,00.html

:frowning:

11

Andrew_Carter.
If this is the first time you’ve really thought through the issue in any detail - you did great. I’ve been thinking about it for about 15 years (ofcourse, I’ve thought of other things as well) and it’s a tough one. But I think I’ve eventually come to the conclusion that less harm would come from legalising drugs. It may be that legalising them means that more people suffer from the effects of actually taking drugs as research shows that if they are more available, more people will take them. However they do have a choice. But it will reduce the amount of people who are harmed in the criminal side of drug taking if it was sold under regulation for instance, rather than by criminals. ‘Drug crime’ would be lower and often people are caught up in this who have no choice, for instance people who are the victims of thefts for drug money.

So for me it comes down to legalising drugs gives people in general more choice about becoming involved in ‘drugs’. But we are thinking along similar lines. But it’s a tough one for sure.

Cathy

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That’s a very good point.

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Andrew [threadjack]:

So I suppose you want a return to Prohibition of alcohol sales, and add tobacco to that. ?

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Actually, you just quoted Cathy…that’s why it was in blue. Sorry, I should have quoted her properly. Did you read the rest of my post? I’m still somewhat undecided and haven’t given the whole thing enough thought. It’s a tricky one.

Andrew

Edit - I’ve been trying to think of a reason why agreeing with that quote doesn’t make me a hypocrit…so far I’ve come up with nothing. I have lots more thinking to do.

15

I abhor the notion of the death penalty as a means of punishment for a crime. It is not only pointless but antithetical to the notion of the justice system. the barbarous killing of Van Nguen will not stop the drug trade in south east asia. As long as there is a market for the substance, poor desperate people will be mules for others who make the money and run very little risk of retribution for their actions.
Van deserved to be punished, but not in a means that resulted in his body dangling from a rope in a foerign prision (which incidently was one of the japanese’s most infamous P.O.W camps in the pacific in WWII in which many “diggers” struggled for existence in- and are now revered for it).
Capital punishment fulfills the worst categories of murder we have in a legal system. It is pre-meditated, an act of passion (revenge) etc.
I found our governments interferance in the singaporian governments legal system rather unworthy. For the Australian government to really have some weight about its actions they should have done more- not prompted by the van nguen case- to prove their feelings about the notion of capital punishment, not just when it affects an Australian citizen.
Just for a minute try and put yourself in Van’s shoes, sitting in a small dingy cell awaiting your own death- not at the hand of a natural action or series of events but by the hand of a completely “rational” “civilised” people, staring at oblivion and being powerless to do anything. I just wonder what the Australian publics reation would have been if the convicted criminal was caucasion,
Mark

16

yes

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going to singapore is like stepping back into nazi germany. it’s very controlled, the punishments just don’t fit the crimes. you can get a huge fine for smoking or even chewing gum. my mom just got back from singapore and she told me about this story like it was some big deal. stupid kid should have sold drugs somewhere else, i’m sure he knew the law. i wonder how many convicted drug smugglers they execute. maybe they just have to make an example of someone from time to time.

18

From the link that Ken Looi gave about the completion of the executuion…

“Public gatherings of more than four people require a police permit in the tightly controlled city-state.”

Also since its independence 40 years ago, Singapore has had only 3 Prime Ministers…The 2nd was the first’s protege. The 3rd is the first’s son. The President became the president because his opposition opted out. Also elections don’t happen after a fixed number of years…the ruling party can decide to have one whenever they want to…Of course, in the last elections the opposition leader was sued for defamation and how in the hell are you going to launch a campaign if you need a permit, issued by the government, to speak in public…This is a dictatorship…

Not much to say about the drugs issue. Death is never right. One must follow a country’s laws.

19

Should drugs be legalised?

What are “drugs”? Mormons count caffeine, tobacco and alcohol as drugs. In Saudi, it is a crime to drink alcohol, but in England, a bottle of Whisky is a suitable Christmas present for the local vicar.

Turn the question round, then: should some drugs be criminalised?

It could be asserted that the individual’s body is his own, and he can do what he wishes with it. Our society does not accept this unreservedly: we have an age of consent for sex, a different age of consent for homosexual sex, laws forbidding assisted suicide, and laws controlling the circumstances in which abortion may be allowed. These are all contentious issues, and I don’t want to discuss them in this thread; my point is that society as a whole does not accept that an individual’s right to do as he wishes with his body is unconstrained.

OK, but taking drugs is a private matter that does not directly affect anyone else. If I published a book promoting a new meditation and breath-control techique that caused a feeling of euphoria, halucinations and a short-term increase in energy levels, who would ban it? Drugs that are illegal at present cause some or all of these symptoms.

It is the secondary effects of the drugs that are quoted by the prohibitionists in support of their cause:

  1. Drugs cause long term or sometimes immediate physical harm to the user. The treatment ultimately costs society an enormous amount of money. OK, so ban horse riding, motorcycling, unicycling (which has put me in hospital twice), fencing… and certainly ban sitting down watching TV because a sedentary lifestyle increases the risk of heart disease. No obvious justification for banning drugs here, then.

  2. Drugs can make you behave violently and irrationally, making you a danger to those around you. So can alcohol, or even too much coffee. On the other hand, no one ever went berserk on cannabis. In some UK cities, we have mobile clinics at strategic points every Saturday night to deal with the “inevitable” injuries arising from abuse of alcohol. Alcohol abuse (“binge drinking”) is a massive financial drain on the state, and results in many injuries and deaths where the victim is innocent and sober. So, to be consistent, if we ban heroin or crack, we should definitely ban alcohol.

But the alcohol industry employs thousands, is lucrative, and raises taxes for the state. The only difference here, is that heroin dealers (and their thousands of employees) don’t pay taxes.

  1. The crime that drug addiction causes - people burgling to raise money to buy drugs. This is a massive problem. (As an insurance claims investigator, I have visited thousands of burglary victims.)

So, if drugs were legal, there would be a legitimate market for them. The big companies would move in. Competition would drive prices down. Drugs would be readily available cheaply, and the incentive to commit crime to pay for them would be removed.

The organised criminals, often involved in the sex trade, and by extension with the slave trade, would lose their present source of revenue because there would be no need for drug users to buy from the criminals.

Drug users wold be de-stigmatised, and would find it easier to seek advice, rehabilitation and support.

Drugs would lose their glamour. They would be less attactive to the impressionable young. How can something you buy at Boots or Superdrug be a symbol of rebellion or social alienation?

But…

Maybe we would end up with a huge population of drug-dependent people, being financially supported by a small number of industrious tax payers.

Hmmmm. But those tax payers would have lower insurance bills, the police would have less to do so would either cost less, or achieve more, and we’d all spend less of our time in fear of burglary and mugging.

Maybe opium could become the opiate of the masses.

20

Those crazy Starbucks drug dealers. No wonder they are always so high and overly-cheery when I buy my dru…I mean coffee…from them.