Mmm, not much to say really. Amnesty International seems to be harping on the fact that the mandatory death penalty is cruel and unusual and a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That's as may be, but that's no basis for challenging the legality of Van's conviction, or his sentence. If anything, it shows up the UDHR as the paper tiger it is, and the UN as being pretty much reduced to weakly protesting when it comes to international affairs. No wonder the neocons are unimpressed with it.
The simple reality of the matter is, drug trafficking in more than 15 grams of heroin attracts the death penalty. That's the law in Singapore, and it's not as if people like Van aren't aware of it. Now, 15 g may not seem like much, nor does the 396.2 g that Van was carrying, but consider the fact that that weight is pure diamorphine, distilled from the cut heroin he was carrying.
The street purity of heroin in South-East Asia is about 3%-5%, so at a rough guess, assuming what he was carrying was for distribution here, it would have been nearly 8 kilos of heroin. A single dose is maybe about 3 g, so that's about 2,600 doses. There's not much of a margin for error here. He admits he was carrying the drugs; it may have been to pay off debts for his father, but there's the wider issue of spreading drug addiction to consider here.
It comes down to whether you (a) believe that drug addiction is a serious problem with deadly consequences (which the government does) and (b) the death penalty is fundamentally right (which the government does). If either does not appeal to you, then of course you'd oppose Van's conviction and sentence on philosophical grounds.
It's not an easy issue to tackle. There's a whole lot of things to consider: the problem of drug addiction, whether drugs should be criminalised at all, what precisely is the death penalty supposed to be: a deterrent or an expression of societal outrage, and so on. I won't go into my views on those because it'd take too long.
But to simplify it grossly, my position on the death penalty is the same as that of Thomas Jefferson. To paraphrase, he said that he would continue to object to the death penalty until the infallibility of man was demonstrated to him. In esssence, I have no problem with capital punishment per se; I merely assert that it should not be implemented where there is the possibility of doubt as to the guilt of the perpertrator. In Van's case, there is no doubt in my mind. He played the odds, he knew the penalties, and he's going to pay the price. Like I said, it's not as if he didn't know.
no subject
The simple reality of the matter is, drug trafficking in more than 15 grams of heroin attracts the death penalty. That's the law in Singapore, and it's not as if people like Van aren't aware of it. Now, 15 g may not seem like much, nor does the 396.2 g that Van was carrying, but consider the fact that that weight is pure diamorphine, distilled from the cut heroin he was carrying.
The street purity of heroin in South-East Asia is about 3%-5%, so at a rough guess, assuming what he was carrying was for distribution here, it would have been nearly 8 kilos of heroin. A single dose is maybe about 3 g, so that's about 2,600 doses. There's not much of a margin for error here. He admits he was carrying the drugs; it may have been to pay off debts for his father, but there's the wider issue of spreading drug addiction to consider here.
It comes down to whether you (a) believe that drug addiction is a serious problem with deadly consequences (which the government does) and (b) the death penalty is fundamentally right (which the government does). If either does not appeal to you, then of course you'd oppose Van's conviction and sentence on philosophical grounds.
It's not an easy issue to tackle. There's a whole lot of things to consider: the problem of drug addiction, whether drugs should be criminalised at all, what precisely is the death penalty supposed to be: a deterrent or an expression of societal outrage, and so on. I won't go into my views on those because it'd take too long.
But to simplify it grossly, my position on the death penalty is the same as that of Thomas Jefferson. To paraphrase, he said that he would continue to object to the death penalty until the infallibility of man was demonstrated to him. In esssence, I have no problem with capital punishment per se; I merely assert that it should not be implemented where there is the possibility of doubt as to the guilt of the perpertrator. In Van's case, there is no doubt in my mind. He played the odds, he knew the penalties, and he's going to pay the price. Like I said, it's not as if he didn't know.