Nguyen has been hung in Singapore after he was caught with nearly 400 grams of heroin while on transit in Singapore. The death penalty that killed him has been in the spotlight and is labelled as a third world practice used by a first world country to dehumanise. Yet the death penalty also exists in America and the superpower has just executed its 1000th prisoner since 1977. No one is making a fuss about it. And Singapore has had the death penalty for so long. Why is she coming under fire only now?
We are no longer in the colonial times when one country has to bend to the whims and fancies of another. Every country has a right to execute (no pun intended here) its own laws as she deems fit and other countries should not try to interfere with domestic politics or undermine her sovereignty by exacting pressure in a bid to get its own citizen off the hook, whether condescendingly or otherwise. To do it now and not in the past when the citizens of other countries faced the death penalty after transgressing the laws of Singapore is both partial and inconsistent.
Moreover, Nguyen has seen the devastating effects of heroine abuse as his own brother was an addict yet he was bringing 26000 doses of drugs to poison the country that provided refuge to him when he was a child. Surely that is mindless profiteering and ingratitude. The irony of it all!
Death is never the best solution and I can understand why some Australians are upset that their fellow countryman has to be executed in another country after exhausting all means of clemency. But might this be a better way out than having more countrymen killed if the 26000 death doses were to reach the streets of Australia?
And it has always been that Man must pay for his own transgressions.
