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28 October 2005
It is judicially monstrous and insane to kill an ordinary citizen for possessing 396 gms of heroin
It's pointless and meaningless for the Singapore Consulate in Canberra to announce on behalf of the Singapore government that Australian citizen Nguyen Tuong Van received a fair trial, and that he must have been aware of Singapore's unambiguous penalties for drug possession. All this begs a prior question: the judicial standing of the Singapore's penalties.
It is simply judicially insane to kill an otherwise ordinary young man for the one relatively minor transgression.
It says a lot about the mentality of a government when its cabinet cannot distinguish between the seriousness of different acts. One has substantial reason to execute a terrorist who has killed 200 people. One similarly has reason to execute the head of a drug syndicate. But one does not have reason in any conceivable way to kill a young man in Nguyen Tuong Van's circumstances.
The Singapore government is putting itself outside the bounds of civil society and the Australian government should assume a position commensurate with that position.
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