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Wednesday, November 23. 2005Running drugs is bad, mmmkay?Trackbacks
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There are a few details here that I think you may want to consider (whatever your feelings towards the death sentence). Firstly, he did do what he thought he needed to do to save his brother, he smuggled drugs. Dumb, yes, but I would doubt he took that course of action lightly.
Secondly, The Misuse of Drugs Act (which he was tried under) states mandatory death sentence for those convicted of smuggling more than 15 grams of heroin, with no wiggle room for circumstances. None. Neither motive nor circumstance can even be considered by the judge, who had no option but to hand down the death sentence. On top of this, that law lays down a set of 'presumptions' that assume, amongst other things, that if you have drugs over a certain amount you have intent to traffic, and that if drugs are found on a boat of plane the Captain of that vessel or aircraft had prior knowledge of that drug. The law shifts the burden of proof so that the prosecution only has to accuse someone of doing it, and the accused has to prove otherwise. The law is grossly unfair, written specifically to guarantee convictions. There is a reason Singapore does not recognise the ICC for these sorts of charges, and that's because they would lose, hands down, every time. Thirdly, it's not that people want him released, they just don't want him executed. If he had been sentenced to life imprisonment, the story would not get the same amount of traction. Also, both the UN Commission on Human Rights and Amnesty International have repeatedly called for a moratorium on the death sentence for drug related crimes, to no avail, nor are there any evidence to suggest that the death penalty actually deters crime. I'm not really trying to change your (or anyone else's) mind on this, but I think there needs to be more information available about this case than the media has time or space to divulge. Consider these links, particularly the Misuse of Drugs Act. That one's an eyeopener. Amnesty documents on Singapore: http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-sgp/index Misuse of Drugs Act: http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/legal_library/sg/legal_library_1997-05-19_1997-43.html
A library of information as always Mr Kung - thanks :)
Again I agree with the vast majority of what you are saying, but you missed or skirted around the basic points of what I was posting. He did run drugs for a family debt. Maybe he didn't take that decision lightly, but just think about it - how far away from your life experience is that? Would you? There's probably about seven million things I would have to do before that became a reasonable option on my radar. The death penalty is the law. I don't care how fair it is (cf. Australia's manditory detention for illegal immigrants), or how it would stand up it the ICC (cf. Iraq Invasion). That is the law of that country. It has been for some time and he knew that. Will Indonesia or any other country in the world spend money to appeal our manditory detention laws? No. Neither should we spend money trying to change Singapore's laws.
but can i watch it on tv live ? or will the cricket be more important ?
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