Joseph K H KOH, High Commission to Australia of the Republic of Singapore
Fax (02) 6273 9823

December 1, 2005

Mr Koh,

I grew up a couple of miles from where you live, there, in the comfort of Australia, far from the heat and bustle of Singapore. I know, Canberra is a boring and dreadful place, in many ways, but being a resident in it sure does beat being a simple citizen at the whim of, say, your own government. But you have risen above that, and now can look down on the mere pawns of your government’s own game of oppression and anathemization of the citizenry, all in the cause of the comfort of the government’s selected, unelected few.

Your government’s draconian imposition of the death penalty on your country’s powerless proceeds from the same base of brutality and subjection that has been indulged in for millennia by the few and the powerful. Physical, mental, emotional, and ultimately spiritual terror are always the methods that your power-mongering colleagues and forebears choose. Whether you choose the lash or the noose, the goal is always the same. Of course, you always lose in the long run, and humanity wins out, but that is no consolation for the living and the executed.

So, it’s with disgust and disdain that I read in the Sydney Morning Herald, this morning, your comments about your government’s upcoming, planned murder of Van Nguyen. Of course, you put your views so diplomatically. You care for Van Nguyen’s family and friends: “We are all touched by the pain and anguish shown by Mr Nguyen's mother.” That’s indeed very big of you, sir. But, of course, if your comments were sincere, you might pause before, and oppose, the government murder of hundreds of Singaporeans, each year, and now of Mr Nguyen.

You say, of Australians’ anger: "I respect that. I know where they are coming from.” Again, this is simply very easy for you to say. In fact, it is merely your job to say this, because a high commissioner is not a person, but a pawn, a simulacrum. How unfortunate. I can only hope that you try, as a Singaporean citizen, to exert some influence on the ironclad power mongering that you have inherited from your country’s dictators.

You say, of Australian protesters, "But I hope they will also accept that Singapore has a responsibility to protect the many lives that would otherwise be ... destroyed by the drug syndicates.” But you know, from many news reports, that Mr Nguyen was attempting to save one life already nearly destroyed by a drug syndicate - his brother’s. You also know that peddlers are not the problem, drug syndicates are. And yet, your country’s record is not one of hunting down syndicates, but of killing extremely small players, such as Mr Nguyen - people who are among the very victims of the forces you claim to be protecting them from. Ah, so now your equation is clear: You think that killing people saves them from themselves.

Thank you very much for your blithering condescension. But, again, that is your job, as a pawn in the game.

Sadly, and with deep disdain, because blood is on your hands,

To: The Editor, The Singapore Strait Times
Re: Singapore’s terrorizing death penalty

In all the Singapore government's righteousness about killing people who possess even minute quantities of drugs, and in all the Australian protests about the Singapore government's impending murder of an Australian, the broader point seems to be overlooked. This is that the Singapore government's actions, like those of tyrannous rulers throughout history (including, e.g., the government of several US states such as Texas), is designed not to enhance public safety. It is, instead, a brute imposition of power designed to subject and anathemize the local population. The Singapore government murders convicts in great numbers, just as it subjects even mild political protesters to brutal suppression, all in contravention of agreed international standards of decency. The goals of such actions seem, in fact, remarkably akin to those of terrorism.

To: Mike Rann, Premier of South Australia
Re: Singapore's murder of Van Nguyen

Mr Rann,

If you are correctly quoted by the ABC, you believe that "Van Nguyen is not Florence Nightingale, Van Nguyen is one of a number of people who want to peddle death to our young people and make money out of it and it doesn't come much lower than that."
Your response is sadly inadequate, and ignorant. For a start, there is the well-documented fact that Mr. Nguyen wished to save his brother from drug criminals (whom the Victorian police have managed to cast a blind eye to, in their usual, fraternal fashion). Then, we also know that Mr. Nguyen was not creating a demand, and he was not forcing anyone to take the drugs; he was abetting a trade that, however unfortunate, is a fact of life in Australia, as elsewhere, due to the constant and almost unwavering demand and appetite for illicit drugs, as for excessive indulgence in legal ones (abetted enthusiastically by legal providers).
The fact that “young people” take the drugs with sometimes dire consequences is obvious, but Mr. Nguyen clearly was not intent on harming “young people.” In the case of heroin, “anyone” is, you should note, generally a middle-class, 30-45-year-old suburbanite, with money. By saying he was willing to “peddle death to our young people,” you are melodramatizing, either through ignorance or a desire to peddle righteousness to your possible voters - and that is pretty low.
For you to say that Mr. Nguyen intended to “make money out of it” is inexcusable, because you must know what he was trying to do: not to make money for himself, but to recoup his brother’s unfortunate indebtedness. Haven’t you been reading the newspapers? This is what “extenuating circumstances” are.
Or perhaps your statement is clouded by emotionalism and spectacularism that you, as your state’s elected leader, would do well to hold better in check.
Most unfortunate is that your statement grants validity to Singapore’s intended actions. When you say: "If they aren't aware of what the laws are now then they must be living in some other planet," you allow, in effect, that Singapore’s draconian death-penalty laws have some kind of validity simply because they exist and are inflicted on Singapore’s population by the tyrants who run the place. Singapore’s governors primary concern, it is obvious, is to traumatize and terrorize its population into submission, a goal it has ably pursued for decades, to the point that most Singaporeans have become complacent and compliant about the slaughter of their own citizens by this regime.
I’d suggest that you ponder the realpolitik of Singapore before you jeopardize those judged to have breached the overpunished crimes written into the country’s grotesque criminal-justice system.
That, ideally, would kickstart you into recalling that, before you and your other peddlers of right-wing expediency rose to power, Labor was intent not on selling out to capital and to power, but on treating people humanely.

Sincerely,

To: Peter Costello, Treasurer of Australia

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reports:
...Federal Treasurer Peter Costello has warned against threatening Singapore over the pending execution of [Van] Nguyen.
Former Labor prime minister Gough Whitlam is reported today as describing Singapore as a "Chinese rogue port city".
Federal Opposition Leader Kim Beazley has told Southern Cross Radio that the Prime Minister should discuss Singapore's stand when he meets with other Commonwealth leaders.
... Mr Costello has hit back, saying persuasion is the best way forward.
"But threatening Singapore in my opinion is unlikely to have more effect than trying to persuade it," he said.


Mr Costello,

You say you will keep trying to save Van Nguyen’s life. You say that efforts to try to save him are futile. You characterize comments like Gough Whitlam’s, which seem eminently sensible and suitably rhetorical, amount to “threatening” Singapore.

Are you kidding? All of your rhetoric, like that of Mr Howard and Mr Downer, signals to the Singapore tyrants that they can carry on murdering their citizens, and anyone else they please, with impunity. That is simply a pathetic stance. Who does Australia wish to befriend? The tyrants who run the place, or the citizens who comprise the country and who live under the conditions that Australian citizen deplore?

For christ’s sake, man, step up and show some courage. This is not a time for your wheedling “diplomacy.” You say “persuasion is the best way forward.” Well, tell that to Van Nguyen. Tell that to his traumatized mother, family members, and friends, and to all Australians and other citizens of good grace and appropriate compassion. You have some gall to claim to represent us when you speak in this mealy-mouthed way.

Act, or Singapore will plainly know it can depend on the cowardice of its neighbours!

With appropriate disgust,

To: Alexander Downer, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs
Re: Singapore Government's plans to murder Van Nguyen on December 2, 2005

You say Labor and other parties are "childish" in the way they press for Australians to try to assist Van Nguyen. The Prime Minister wrings his hands while assuring us that this is all a good lesson in why drugs aren't good for us, and why being naughty in countries with laws of their own is a bad idea (duh!) (in making statements like this, he merely strengthens the Singapore despots' hand, by allowing for the validity of their brute enactment of their own ill-gained power). Perhaps you and Mr Howard are sincere in your expressions of sympathy, etc. etc. But when are you going to act like men? At the moment you merely insult us by staking some self-congratulatory high ground of "dignity," rather than stand up to the Singapore government and its real intent, through its draconian legislation and wholesale murder of prisoners with relatively minor convictions: simply to anathemize and terrorize the country's citizenry. That, plain and simple, is what their laws are about, as the self-justifying, self-empowered murderousness of despots always is. It seems that either you know that, and are being disingenuous, or you don't see that because you are blinded by some belief in the ultimate rightness of power and its exercise.
Whatever the case, your failure to make that point – to shout it out to the government of Singapore in a way that gives heart to the oppressed people of Singapore, let alone some hope to Van Nguyen and his family and friends that his life may be spared – speaks less to your "adulthood," surely, than to your cowardice or moral myopia.
Please stop wringing your hands, and ACT!

To Lee Hsien Loong, Prime Minister of Singapore

Mr. Lee: Of course, your government's intended murder next month of Van Nguyen, as of so many other relatively minor criminals, including those like Mr. Nguyen whose crimes were committed with clear and evident extenuating circumstances, has nothing to do with justice. It is in keeping with the behaviour of so many governments that anathemize and terrorize their own citizenry in the exercise of brute power, pure and simple. You, Mr. Lee, claim to be a civilized man - when you listen to your classical music, of an evening, do you spare any thought for the men your government has coldheartedly killed, that day? Do you spare any thought, at all, for the many people associated with the murdered man who are permanently and grievously wounded by your righteous actions?