It has happened. 6 am this morning this young Australian man's life
was taken to pay for his crime of smuggling heroin into Singapore.
I was following this story and have read about many others in the
past, who had been sentenced for various crimes like murder, drugs.
However in this case, unlike before, I started to ask myself whether
any crime, however heinous, deserves the this sort of punishment.
I still remember vividly watching videos of the beheading victims in
Iraq and how it left a sick feeling in my stomach. I could not
understand how these militants could just slice off the heads of their
prisoners and hold them up proudly, all in the name of their cause.
In the video, you could literally hear the prisoner's pleas to spare
their lives and then hear their gurgling screams in between choking on
their very own blood a few seconds later.
Somehow, I felt this familiar sickening feeling in my stomach once
again in relation to the impending execution of Nguyen.
The setting was different, but the plot seemed the same. In both
instances, the "captors" believed that their prisoners had committed
crimes that deserved them a death sentence. In both instances there
were pleas from their own countries to spare their lives and many
people held vigils to pray for their safe return. In both instances,
the death sentence was carried out.
I could not help but draw parallels between these 2 scenarios simply
because for those that carried out the beheadings were called
terrorists, unlawful barbarians and the latter, was an act that was
within the boundaries of a lawful civilized society. It's a matter of
perspective I guess, but I'm pretty sure that in both cases to each
party, they had carried out lawful executions according to their own
laws and beliefs.
I woke up early this morning at 5.40 am and said a prayer for Nguyen, not because I supported what he did, but because he was another human being after all, who had made serious mistakes and had to pay for it with his life.
So is the death penalty justifiable in any society today? In my view, no.
Father Peter Norden, a priest from Nguyen's home said it pretty well, "We reject the power of the state that destroys human life."
What would it prove? Absolutely nothing. Would it deter future drug syndicates from sending their couriers through Singapore? I seriously
doubt it. I doubt it because as long as there is a high enough price
tag attached to the job, someone will take the risk, as we all know,
Nguyen did.
What we need to do is to punish them by taking them out of circulation
for a very long time. Many societies are realizing that now and we see
increasing numbers of countries, states and cities abolishing the
death penalty.
Anyway, Nguyen is dead and has paid for his crimes. I pray for his
soul, that he is in a better place..
