No better than Bush, Howard or Blair - Singapore's bombast
People in Singapore and elsewhere have made the case for compassion and clemency in what remains today Singapore's anachronistic persecution of the death penalty. I won't try to match these writers, they've put the case beyond any doubt. Instead I'll speak of the leadership of Singapore in only slightly more respectful terms than I would use for our leadership in the West, particularly in Australia where I live. This ability to speak one's mind in good faith is a freedom we hold dear in Australia, and may be the one right - at least the greatest right - that our friends in Singapore envy us.
The ruling party of Singapore and its friends allow the Straits Times, "His Master's Voice" in Singapore, to speak for them in its by now infamously conceited tone. The Straits Times thrives in Singapore because of its supine flattering deference to its masters, while journalists who would take a less fawning line are jailed, threatened or ruinously fined.
Says the Times in its editorial of 25 Nov 2005, "South-east Asian countries maintain a lordly indifference to the spectacle of Australia's wilder media acting up whenever travelling Aussies trip up over the region's drug laws ...... The drugs trade is a destroyer of lives and of society, vividly so in this region. Australians who have an imperfect understanding of this can only learn to educate themselves. As much as Singaporeans make no judgment on a value of jurisprudence which has served the Australian commonwealth well, Australians show their breeding by learning to accept what the Singapore situation requires".
The government of Singapore speaks, in its lordly voice through the Straits Times, as one to the manor born does it not?
"Rehab. Renew. Restart" says the website of Singapore's Prisons Service at http://www.prisons.gov.sg where Singapore claims it is not barbaric or a police state, that indeed it gives people the chance to mend their ways before condemning them to death. The website lies - Singapore can and does kill people, including foreigners who cannot possibly be expected to understand its nature as clearly as would Singaporeans themselves, for a first offence against its harsh laws. Foreigners from countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia which may take quite a different approach to the prosecution and punishment of offenders for some crimes.
As I said, better people than I have made the case for clemency from Singapore. It's mostly not about the one man who will die this time, of course, but of a matter of principle.
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Sent to getup:
It seems that for all their presumptions of superiority over the West, and the condescension with which they lecture the world both directly and in the voice of their organ the Straits Times, the reality is that Singapore's simplistic "black and white", "the law is the law" pious cant is no better, for example, than George Bush's "you're either with us or against us" childishness.
Like the lies of Bush that took his country and Australia into war on Iraq, Singapore's talk of the warnings on its disembarkation cards and around the entrance halls of its airports is nothing but meretricious disinformation. Nguyen wasn't trying to enter Singapore, he was trying to fly from elsewhere in SE Asia to Australia. However Singapore's success as a port and trade centre means that Nguyen was unfortunate enough to find himself having to pass through Singapore on the way. He didn't want to visit there and he wasn't trying to smuggle drugs into Singapore, he was trying to carry them between two entirely different countries, with different penalties for his crime. Are Singaporeans to arrogate for themselves the role of "law enforcers" for the rest of SE Asia? By the time Nguyen saw or heard any of it he was in Singapore, with the drugs, and it was too late - the liars and hypocrits of the Singapore government were going to hang him, despite the plausible sentiments of their Police Service's website with its promise to "Rehab. Renew. Restart".
All lies, just like the demonised West.
The ruling party of Singapore and its friends allow the Straits Times, "His Master's Voice" in Singapore, to speak for them in its by now infamously conceited tone. The Straits Times thrives in Singapore because of its supine flattering deference to its masters, while journalists who would take a less fawning line are jailed, threatened or ruinously fined.
Says the Times in its editorial of 25 Nov 2005, "South-east Asian countries maintain a lordly indifference to the spectacle of Australia's wilder media acting up whenever travelling Aussies trip up over the region's drug laws ...... The drugs trade is a destroyer of lives and of society, vividly so in this region. Australians who have an imperfect understanding of this can only learn to educate themselves. As much as Singaporeans make no judgment on a value of jurisprudence which has served the Australian commonwealth well, Australians show their breeding by learning to accept what the Singapore situation requires".
The government of Singapore speaks, in its lordly voice through the Straits Times, as one to the manor born does it not?
"Rehab. Renew. Restart" says the website of Singapore's Prisons Service at http://www.prisons.gov.sg where Singapore claims it is not barbaric or a police state, that indeed it gives people the chance to mend their ways before condemning them to death. The website lies - Singapore can and does kill people, including foreigners who cannot possibly be expected to understand its nature as clearly as would Singaporeans themselves, for a first offence against its harsh laws. Foreigners from countries such as Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia which may take quite a different approach to the prosecution and punishment of offenders for some crimes.
As I said, better people than I have made the case for clemency from Singapore. It's mostly not about the one man who will die this time, of course, but of a matter of principle.
----------
Sent to getup:
It seems that for all their presumptions of superiority over the West, and the condescension with which they lecture the world both directly and in the voice of their organ the Straits Times, the reality is that Singapore's simplistic "black and white", "the law is the law" pious cant is no better, for example, than George Bush's "you're either with us or against us" childishness.
Like the lies of Bush that took his country and Australia into war on Iraq, Singapore's talk of the warnings on its disembarkation cards and around the entrance halls of its airports is nothing but meretricious disinformation. Nguyen wasn't trying to enter Singapore, he was trying to fly from elsewhere in SE Asia to Australia. However Singapore's success as a port and trade centre means that Nguyen was unfortunate enough to find himself having to pass through Singapore on the way. He didn't want to visit there and he wasn't trying to smuggle drugs into Singapore, he was trying to carry them between two entirely different countries, with different penalties for his crime. Are Singaporeans to arrogate for themselves the role of "law enforcers" for the rest of SE Asia? By the time Nguyen saw or heard any of it he was in Singapore, with the drugs, and it was too late - the liars and hypocrits of the Singapore government were going to hang him, despite the plausible sentiments of their Police Service's website with its promise to "Rehab. Renew. Restart".
All lies, just like the demonised West.
posted by nort at 10:24 AM
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