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Death by Bureaucracy
- holoduke 5y agoIt's a bizarre world. How can a person get a death sentence from 50 grams of cocaine. What an idiot regime and or public moral you must have as a country.
- AussieWog93 5y agoThat's a really offensive and unproductive take, especially considering Asian social norms.
- programmarchy 5y agoWanton disregard for human life is an Asian “social norm”? I truly hope you are wrong.
- AussieWog93 5y agoI was referring to the social norms around criticism of authority. There is a much greater expectation of tact and constructiveness compared to the West. The Singaporean government is doing the wrong thing by executing this man, but GP's flippant remarks were not the way to express this.
- SturgeonsLaw 5y agoHeaven forbid we hurt the government's feelings while they murder someone for carrying a small amount of powder
- ayngg 5y agoIt is pretty easy to criticize social policy like this in a vacuum but really the extremely hard stance regarding drug contraband in that region is at the very least understandable given the historical context.
- EdwardDiego 5y agoWhat's the historical context that leads to hanging drug smugglers?
- sofixa 5y agoThe Opium wars.
- EdwardDiego 5y agoA law passed in 1973 and amended in 1977 was based on the British use of force in China in the 19th century to sell opium? Feels like a long bow, but go on, I'm listening. The sources I can find state: "Then Minister for Home Affairs and Education, Chua Sian Chin said (Sing., Parliamentary Debates, vol. 37, col. 34 (27 May 1977)) - unless drug trafficking and drug addiction [are] checked, they [will] threaten our national security and viability. To do this, both punitive and preventive measures must be taken. The [Misuse of Drugs] Act was thus amended to provide enhanced penalties for traffickers, including mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking and manufacturing”. So I'm wondering what was going in Singapore in the 70s.
- petre 5y agoMost likely hardlines in power. Much like early South Korea and Taiwan, who's people had fortunately broken out of this trap. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Action_Party https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Action_Party
- throw_away 5y agoIn South Korea today, you can be imprisoned for five years just for having any drugs in your system (follicle test) no matter where ingested & South Korean citizens can be punished for consuming drugs abroad where they would otherwise be legal: https://medium.com/@alexjanmaat2/recreational-drugs-in-korea-601116a32bd7 https://medium.com/@alexjanmaat2/recreational-drugs-in-korea... In Taiwan today, manufacturing, selling, or transporting Cocaine is a mandatory life (or death) sentence: https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=C0000008 https://law.moj.gov.tw/ENG/LawClass/LawAll.aspx?pcode=C00000...
- AussieWog93 5y agoFair enough. It's tone deaf and practically guaranteed to lead to zero change, but at least you - living comfortably in a country where you'll never have to deal with the real-world implications of harsh laws like this - get to feel good about being rude to someone on the internet.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- southerntofu 5y ago> I was referring to the social norms around criticism of authority. There is a much greater expectation of tact and constructiveness compared to the West. I've never been to Asia myself, but knowing some Asian people and knowing a little about Asian history i think you are wrong. Like everywhere else, Asia is filled with revolutionaries who despise authority and revolt in any way they can. Just because some people respect authoritarian figures and their abuses of power doesn't mean everybody has to show "respect". I personally don't have any respect for most governments around this planet (including France/USA), because these governments don't have any respect for human lives and freedom. I live in a country where it's illegal to criticize the police or insult the president. Some people live in a country where it's illegal to suggest the king may be wrong. People like you are just enforcing that kind of power dynamic which some of us are interested to dismantle in flames. (Also worth noting: Asia is a BIG continent and you're making a huge generalization about billions of people... which i don't think holds at all)
- holoduke 5y agoIdiot regimes with stupid social norms then. Nothing offensive about that. Rather something you want to fight against.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- nec4b 5y agoNot condoning an execution, but I do find it a lot more idiotic and morally wrong letting 10s of thousands of your citizens die every year from drug overdose.
- smitty1e 5y agoThe concepts of liberty and security are in tension. One wishes harm on none, but externally forcing preferred choices on people veers authoritarian really, really quickly. Horses led to water can opt to die of dehydration, alas.
- mirekrusin 5y agoHeroine, not cocaine. It was about 500 doses.
- 8eye 5y agohaving met some people wrapped up in drugs, i can tell you that sometimes people who sell drugs are doing it to support a habit, i’ve met people who started out on prescription pain pills that they got prescribed from their doctor due to a surgery. the pills were then eventually stopped and they got desperate because for many it was the first time in their life that they felt happy, many were in extreme poverty or had mental illness before getting hooked to prescription drugs, they got locked up for something dumb or less offensive, the system put them on probation, where it made them toxic to employeers, so they turned to selling because they were already doomed as it was, the drug war just reinforces a separate class of people. i don’t agree with people using drugs like heroin but, ive met many people who actually said that oxytocin and oxycoden is way better than heroin, and that they prefer it. and i am almost certain that more people die from prescription opiates a year than heroin yet, whenever someone mentions it, the whole conversation disappears with hush money. the drug war really seems like a tax on the most vulnerable in which was fueled by big pharma and paid by the average worker (us). johnson and johnson got called out on it and got a tiny slap on the hand, and later on was trusted enough to make a vaccine. which i am pretty sure johnson and johnson also had a baby powder lawsuit over their baby powder giving newborns cancer, but the problem is, the accountability is only on the people who cannot afford to pay the bill, the real criminals work for these companies, own these companies, lobby for these companies and or pass laws for profit at the expense of a healthy society. it’s just weird, we lock up the poor but don’t punish the source. it’s legal patchwork, but i know some people on here probably work for someone like johnson and johnson and nobody wants to bite the hand that feeds them. the system here in the states needs to be fixed. it doesn’t have to be law based but it definitely has to have a better framework than what we have going on right now.
- clavicat 5y agoThey look at the West with its respect for the human rights of drug dealers and notice that it seems to suffer from tens of thousands of drug overdoses every year as well as creating tens of millions of addicts inflicting crime and squalor on their communities. They notice that the streets of Singapore aren’t littered with needles like they are in San Francisco. They think you’re the moral idiot for tolerating this societal catastrophe in the name of human rights. Singapore’s leaders believe that their severity is a small price to pay for keeping at bay the vices of the outside world. What would you say to them to convince them that they’re wrong?
- mmarq 5y ago> What would you say to them to convince them that they’re wrong? That the West is not littered with needles, so their severity is a massive price to pay for a minuscule gain.
- voakbasda 5y agoBeen to a public park in a big city lately? I have some sad news for you…
- mmarq 5y agoRome, London, Berlin, Paris and Milan in the past 2 months. I haven’t seen a used needle in decades (I saw a needle only once when I was a child)
- pvaldes 5y agoWe really want to reduce this to a littering problem? After the NYTimes, about 159000 people were killed by drugs between 2015 and 2017 just in US. 591000 Americans had problems related with Heroine abuse in 2015, how many of this people are dead now, or will end dying under a bridge? Their predators will not stop just by asking nicely. I don't agree with the punishment, but something must be done and either you send a very clear message of non tolerance with traffic or you allow the drug lords to take all, infiltrate in the government and corrupt everything in a few years. The best solution would be to legalize, tax and regulate what could be regulated but in the meanwhile I don't have a lot of sympathy for this people. Better to save it for the real victims.
- Aeolun 5y agoI was kind of waiting to hear the guy had killed someone, so that I could invalidate the whole article. But then it’s 42g of heroin on someone that was undoubtedly suckered into doing it.
- sofixa 5y agoIf he were a murderer, that wouldn't have invalidated the whole article. Even if you subscribe to an "eye for an eye" type "justice" and agree with execution for murder, giving two weeks notice, during a pandemic, for family in another country with quarantine requirements both ways is inhumane.
- Aeolun 5y ago> is inhumane So is killing other people. It’s one of the few cases in which I agree with such a penalty (in theory, in practice I’d still not want it for fear of making a mistake).
- ido 5y agoEven if he was a murderer is that a reason to not give his family more than 2 weeks notice? They didn't murder anyone.
- Animats 5y agoHe'd been on Death Row for over a decade. This wasn't sudden.
- ninjin 5y agoFair point, but are you really suggesting that it would be reasonable for his family to be on call for a potential two-week notice for over a decade? It seems to me to be a very clear power imbalance here between the parties, where one party with only minimal effort (giving maybe two or three months notice) would make matters substantially easier (and humane) for the other party.
- programmarchy 5y agoI didn’t know you could be put to death for non-violent crimes. Article says he was only charged with drug possession. This happened in Singapore, but according to Wikipedia “large-scale drug trafficking” is a capital crime in the US, too. Transporting 42g of heroin doesn’t sound even close to large-scale, but I can imagine getting swallowed up by a legal labyrinth anyhow, especially if you’re disadvantaged. I don’t understand why more lawyers aren’t up in arms about the severe sentencing happening in the US. Guess it’s a similar situation to engineers being paid through the nose while pretending Big Tech is working for the greater good.
- tomjen3 5y agoThe US killed the Rosenbergs for espionage. That was technically a nonviolent act, although furnishing atomic secrets to the USSR could be seen as an accessory to mass murder. Killing somebody for heroin? That is an entirely new level of depravety.
- dustintrex 5y agoLegislation in the US allows the death penalty for drug trafficking alone, although AFAIK this has never been applied without violent offences as well.
- redis_mlc 5y ago> The US killed the Rosenbergs for espionage. Yes, but it was also a response to the massive number of other spies in both the US and Britain. I can think of a dozen, and I'm sure there's a lot more. Britain had files spanning years for some, yet did nothing, even allowing them to escape to Russia. (In some cases it was restrictions on their intelligence services, like no power of arrest, but also the embarrassment factor was sometimes too much.) It destroyed the trust between the US and the UK.
- temikus 5y agoNot defending this at all but this does show you’ve never visited Singapore. Before entering you repeatedly get many many notices of a death penalty for drug traffickers regardless of the quantity and type. It’s even written in large bold letters on the immigration card.
- lkrubner 5y agoIn 2019, in a very different situation, I was worried about the hospital bureaucracy that almost killed my mom. My mom was struggling with pneumonia and the antibiotics were not yet having any effect, but they scheduled her for surgery on her eye, and once the surgery had been scheduled, it was very difficult to try to stop it, the momentum to stick with the schedule was incredible, even though it seemed unlikely she would survive the surgery. I kept asking, can't we wait a week and do the surgery when she's recovered from the pneumonia? But there was a feeling, no, we must operate on her eye now, even though there was nothing to gain from the surgery, as they said they were unable to restore her eyesight. But I was able to stop the surgery and my mom is still alive today. I wrote about this in some detail in Regarding The Death Of My Father: https://www.amazon.com/Regarding-Death-Father-Lawrence-Krubner-ebook/dp/B08NV1WFXS/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3ASY1FNB1TQAC&dchild=1&keywords=regarding+the+death+of+my+father&qid=1635652173&qsid=133-3563921-1189561&sprefix=regarding+the+death+of+my+father%2Caps%2C204&sr=8-1&sres=B08NV1WFXS%2C1734297719%2C0306921464%2C1614685398%2C1555719856%2C1950948617%2C0393245586%2C178623615X%2C0679762051%2CB00OZ0TM32%2C1501168398%2CB004P5NXVO%2C0717181286%2C1785357646%2CB01GW2FJUA%2CB06X18BPR6&srpt=ABIS_BOOK https://www.amazon.com/Regarding-Death-Father-Lawrence-Krubn...
- jessaustin 5y agoGod bless all of these activists. They've made it possible for this family to visit their son, whose death is so capricious, and so capriciously scheduled. I'm in tears.
- vadym909 5y agoWow- reading this I was like- well he shouldn’t have murdered his victim then. And then I realized he was being killed for possession of drugs. Wtf the headline should read- death for possession not the stupid complain of the bureaucracy involved in killing him
- eynsham 5y agoHan and her usual readers are well aware of the many unjust executions that have taken place in Singapore. The complaints about bureaucracy aren’t ‘stupid’—they’re actually quite important, since tempering the procedural aspect is more likely than eliminating the death penalty for possession, and they also might help to show Singaporeans the underlying bureaucratic tendencies that lead both to the use of the death penalty and the specific infelicities listed.
- beebeepka 5y agoKilling people for possession of drugs is a sign of having sociopaths running the place. Big pharma propaganda is largely responsible for much of this
- mise_en_place 5y agoWhenever I read articles like this one, I try extremely hard not to view it through an Orientalist lens. But sometimes it's extremely hard to do. I was born in the US, but whenever I'd visit Asia or relatives in India, I couldn't help but notice there is something "broken" about the psyche of Asians. The upper echeleons of society are typically the most degenerate, at least from what I've observed. They like to drink, gamble, do drugs, etc...but God forbid if the lower classes even do a fraction of what they do. They will thrown down the hammer of social and moral superiority. The modern Asian is still chained by the shackles of colonialism.
- oblio 5y ago> They like to drink, gamble, do drugs, etc.. Westerners do all of that. Otherwise major sports teams, at least in Europe, wouldn't have as sponsors betting companies, drugs wouldn't be a multi billion dollar industry and drinking wouldn't be more widespread than anywhere in the world. Maybe Westerners don't flaunt it as much.
- petre 5y agoAnd the solution to this is executing mentally impaired poor buggers fir caring 50 grams of dope? Not even Russia does that today, they just throw you in jail for 10 years.
- zaptheimpaler 5y agoThe boomer Western is still chained by the shackles of stereotyping. You see a pattern and fit it to one dimension (race/nationality) but miss that the pattern may be better explained along other dimensions (rich kids gambling and drinking in any culture maybe?). You take a week/month long tourist trip in a country and presume this tiny sliver of experience represents an entire culture.
- dustintrex 5y agoSingapore inherits its penal code from the British, and most locals find drugs abhorrent because they're acutely aware of both the Opium Wars in China, and the former extent of drug addiction and gang violence in Singapore itself.
- csee 5y agoThis could be racism driven, even though SG is known to be heavily authoritarian against drugs regardless. East Asian countries tend to be very racist towards brown Asians (South East Asia and South Asia). "His IQ is only 69" Never had a chance
- maccolgan 5y ago>East Asian countries tend to be very racist towards brown Asians This is the most nonsensical statement I have ever seen on HN. By the lens of racialism (which is also scientifically invalid), Indians would be Caucasian, not Asian, East Asian countries being racist against Asians would not be racism at all, it'd some kind of ethnic discrimination.
- csee 5y agoYou mistakenly think that "ethnic discrimination" is distinct from racism when it's not. Racism: "prejudice, discrimination ... against a person ... on the basis of their membership of a particular racial or ethnic group."
- sharken 5y agoDrugs should be decriminalized and later legalized with varying degrees of regulation. It's happening with Cannabis now, but there is still a long way to go with drugs such as Heroin and Cocaine.
- maccolgan 5y agoYou want heroin and cocaine to be decriminalized and legalized?
- sharken 5y agoAbsolutely, but with stricter regulation than cannabis. Having authorized vendors where you can give advice to the buyer is much better than the current state of affairs. For Europe the outlook is quite gloomy without any regulation: https://insightcrime.org/investigations/colombian-cocaine-shift-europe-business-no-brainer/ https://insightcrime.org/investigations/colombian-cocaine-sh...
- rishabhd 5y agoReminds me of the timeless piece by William Gibson on Singapore, “Disneyland with the Death Penalty”. ref : https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/ https://www.wired.com/1993/04/gibson-2/