Me. Myself & i

Tot i'll write a short one before looking for facts in my mock trials, and since i managed to read the papers today. Hahahah i realised ST is easier to understand than the evening chinese papers. The colour pictures are just too distracting for me, half the time sensationalising the news, telling me everything but what really happened... Is this what chinese pple are concern about now? as the Morning chinese paper grow thinner and thinner, i wonder what is actually available for them.

Anyhow, in the very slim chinese morning papers, I read an article about Australians (pple in melbourne) opposing our death penalty. Local court had sentence a Australian-Vietnamese(Aus by Nationality and Viet by birth, i think) to death penalty because of drug trafficking. This sparked the whole debate (again) about us not respecting human rights, etc. Being pressured by his people and the opposition party over there, the PM actually requested Singapore to be lenient when sentencing. In contrary to his earlier statement that Aus will not interfere when Australians break the laws of other countries.
(NB: anything that i'm writing is based on that article that i read)

I have to agree with the author to a great extent that we should not back down on this.

We had our death penalty since 1975, why in the world should we change our law, just because a foreigner has broken it HERE, with knowledge that death penalty existed HERE?
Apart from unusual circumstances such as some gang has kidnapped his family and threatened him into doing this.
If he wanted to escape death penalty, traffic the drug somewhere where there isn't any death penalty. I bet trafficking drug to Singapore gives them a higher profit margin because of the tough penalties here. So if you had assumed the risked because of the extra profits, That is a risk he has assumed and it materialised. What do these people want? A fair drug market ah?

Secondly, the essence of death penalty is to deter, granted, there are still people trafficking drugs, hence it is not 100% successful at deterring. This might be due to reasons of higher profits and demand (mayb in some extreme cases, just for the fun...) For a reasonable person, an act that attacts a punishment as serious as death will make him think twice before doing it. So logically speaking, EVEN the death penalty cannot ensure 100% no trafficking of drugs, wouldn't lessening the penalty make it more attractive to traffic drugs here?

Thirdly, the author mentioned that these people are crying out loud for human rights. So you see us as suppressing the accused, what about when the accused sell those drugs and affect thousands of people, who's family are broken up because of all the repercussions that drug addiction brings? What about the rights of these people? Should they not be protected then? In weighing out the rights of innocent consumers (as they always assume) and those people bring the drugs in from less regulated areas. The choice has to be made by the state, and the choice is clear.
Of cos, it may be argued that human rights activists are not asking for no penalty at all, but death penalty is just not justified. Well, as i mentioned above, it is meant as a deterrance. And Singapore is famous for her death penalty for drug trafficking. There seemed to be no reason why a drug trafficker won't have knowledge of the sentence that is attached to the crime. So equiped with that knowledge, he thought he could have made it out with more money than the same batch of drugs can fetch. Unfortunately for him, he was caught. The risks he had undertook came true, he was sentenced to death. Sad, yes. But he had implied consented. (hahahah contracts...)

i'm not some cruel bitch who want to see people dead. In fact, the first time i sat in high court to listen to a murder trial, i felt bad thinking that the max sentence for that man is death penalty, regardless of what i said before trial.
However, i believe the penalty is justified for drugs trafficking than murder (except of cos a serial killer or that sort). Murder may be because of a split second of rage, but not all rage cases can come under CHNAM (culpable homicide not amounting to murder). Drug traffickers are actually earning money by selling poison..


Once again, everyone entitled to their views. I'm just writing my stand...