Asia:
Singapore
to
Execute
Australian
for
Drug
Smuggling
Any
Day
Now
--
Amnesty
International
Issues
Urgent
Appeal
10/28/05
The hanging of a 25-year-old Australian citizen for drug trafficking through Singapore is imminent. The looming execution has aroused the international human rights organization Amnesty International, which has issued an urgent appeal to save his life. But it may be too late. Nguyen Tuong Van was sentenced to death last year after being caught with 396 grams of heroin as he transited Singapore's Changri Airport while returning to Australia from Cambodia. His final presidential appeal for clemency was rejected and his execution is expected before month's end. Australian officials had pleaded with Singaporean President Sellapan Rama Nathan to spare Van's life, to no avail. "We are very sad this has happened," said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. "We have done our best; we have done everything we can to save his life. He will be hanged as a result of this decision." Still, Downer said Australians should know better. "I'm sorry, but this is a sovereign foreign country enforcing to the full the laws plainly known and understood throughout the region," he said. But Amnesty International is both taking Singapore to task and urging it to reconsider. "Singapore, with a population of just over four million, has the highest per capita execution rate in the world," the group noted in its appeal. "More than 420 people have been executed since 1991, the majority for drug trafficking. The Singapore government has consistently maintained that the death penalty is not a human rights issue. The Misuse of Drugs Act provides for a mandatory death sentence for at least 20 different offences and contains a series of presumptions which shift the burden of proof from the prosecution to the defense. Prisoners facing execution may be granted clemency by the President, but this is extremely rare." At least three other Australians have been put to death for drug offenses in Southeast Asian: Brian Chambers, Kevin Barlow, and Michael McAuliffe. All three were hung by Malaysia, the first two in 1986, the third in 1993. Two Australians, Mai Cong Thanh and Nguyen Van Chinh, are on Vietnam's death row for smuggling heroin. Van's death sentence is "grossly out of proportion to the crime committed," his Australian lawyers said in a statement. "The only people who will take comfort from this result will be those who exploited Van for their own purposes to profit from drug-trafficking, and who now know that with the death of our client their criminal conspiracy will go unpunished." Van testified that he had acted as a drug courier to raise money to pay off debts his brother, Khoa, had amassed defending himself from drug charges. Khoa was unsuccessful in that effort; he is now also a convicted heroin trafficker.
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