Australian Executed in Singapore

A 25-year-old Australian man best known as "Van Nguyen" (I think his full name was Nguyen Van Tuong) was executed for drug trafficking before dawn in Singapore today. There has been much sympathy expressed in Australia over the last few weeks, and a concerted campaign by his lawyers, Australian politicians, and the general public to appeal to the authoritarian Singapore government for clemency. It was all useless, as that government refused even to let his mother hug her son before he was executed. After a personal appeal from Australia's Prime Minister, they were allowed to hold hands through prison bars.

In contrast to the outpouring of sympathy and grief, there has been a sizable minority view published in newspapers that he doesn't deserve sympathy because the 400g of heroin he was carrying could have killed 26,000 people were he not caught. This is absurd; heroin deaths in Australia number in the low hundreds per year. There's also a common viewpoint, which I share, that while he deserves great sympathy, he doesn't deserve clemency because the penalty for his crime was well known to him before he decided to commit it. Sure, the punishment exceeds the crime, and I wish he could have somehow gained clemency, but Singapore far from alone in administering capital punishment. He's got noone but himself to blame. Coincidentally, on this very same day the United States executed its 1000th convicted criminal since it reintroduced capital punishment in the 1970s.

This tragic event is interesting because of the moral issues that can and should be considered. Before examining those, I make the following condemnations of Singapore. First, not allowing the mother proper physical contact is inhumane in the extreme. He was not a dangerous criminal and did not need to be kept in such isolation. This punishes the mother for no crime of her own. Second, hanging is barbaric for the condemned person and especially for the family. It's not guaranteed to be a quick or painless death, and it physically damages the victim's face. Having been denied a hug, the mother is now denied a dignified display of the body at his funeral as his face will be purple and his eyes will likely be damaged. Why can't they use lethal injection? Third, while not outright condemning capital punishment (it's not sufficiently different from life imprisonment for me to get excited about it), I condemn mandatory capital punishment. If such a penalty is to be applied, it deserves the fullest consideration of an independent judge. But Singapore is an authoritarian regime, which is condemnable in itself.

OK, some moral considerations. How can I support Singapore's decision to execute him while considering execution a disproportionate punishment? That's quite simple: Singapore, and some other Asian nations, go to great lengths to ensure that travellers know the consequences of being caught with drugs. They have the right to consider drugs an important social problem worthy of the greatest imposable punishment. Having set that expectation, it's quite fair that they follow through with it. So while I would request Singapore downgrade the penalty for drug trafficking, I don't blame them for applying whatever punishment they've advertised.

Does Van Nguyen deserve clemency for the peculiar facts of his case? No. He did the deed to raise money to pay his brother's debts. Big deal; try legal means instead. He cooperated with authorities by naming other drug runners. I doubt any major arrests have been made as a consequence; the important members of drug syndicates will have ensured they can't possibly be named. In short, he was a desparate young man rather than a hardened criminal. But... what about all the warnings he ignored? Everyone knows that taking drugs into Asia is extremely risky. He was, in effect, trying to profit from precisely that risk. With greater risk comes greater reward, so they say. Well, if the reward doesn't come off, you can't expect others to bail you out. Besides, I don't entirely buy the whole nice-guy thing. Of course his lawyers would paint that kind of picture; however, his twin brother is a twice-convicted drug smuggler, and he was obviously hanging with the wrong crowd if he could avail himself of a drug smuggling opportunity.

So what about some other issues? There have been some incredibly bad instances of moral reasoning presented. I'll quote some sentences and questions from merely one day's (today's) letters to the Sydney Morning Herald.

To all those deploring the execution of Nguyen Tuong Van, will your reaction be just the same if Saddam Hussein gets the chop? Why should it be? The crimes are different; so should be the perceived reasonable punishment. Another target of comparison is Amrozi, the "Bali Bomber" who conspired in the deaths of 202 people, including 88 Australians. I've often seen it written that Australia needs to take a tough stand on the death penalty all over the world, rather than turn a blind eye as Amrozi is sentenced to death. Yeah, consistency is good, but Australia (diplomatically) and Australians (personally) are quite entitled to be more interested in the death sentences of Australians than foreigners. We simply can't get emotionally involved in everyone's state-sanctioned murder around the world.

I wonder whether 47 per cent of the public would be supporting the execution and the Prime Minister doing nothing to stop it, if it were a blue-eyed, caucasian woman facing the gallows? This appalling comment refers to: (a) Schapelle Corby, who's rotting in an Indonesian jail for trafficking marijuana which she credibly claims was planted on her; and (b) a poll showing 47% of Australians supporting Van Nguyen's execution. The problems here are that Nguyen's and Corby's cases are incomparable except they involve drugs, that the poll may be misrepresentative, and that the Prime Minister has in fact done everything he can to try to prevent the hanging. That people can write such pathetic rhetorical statements staggers me. I say the poll may be misrepresentative because poll results always depend on exactly what was asked. The letter writer has not shown enough logical ability for me to assume that he's using the poll results justifiably.

OK, so I've only quoted two letters, but already we can see some issues that are opened up when people examine this emotive issue. Probably the worst of the lot, though, is Piers Ackerman who is paid to write for The Daily Telegraph, Sydney's trashier newspaper. He wrote that instead of a minute's silence for Van Nguyen (as had been suggested), we should throw a party. What an arsehole. While I felt Van Nguyen got what was (unfortunately) coming to him, I still felt the utmost sympathy for him, and a great deal of sadness when and after his death occurred.

I hate to contribute to the canonisation of a drug smuggler, but I can't resist it: Van Nguyen, RIP.