TOC Feature
TOC Feature, The Mandatory Death Penalty - Friday, March 19, 2010 4:29 - 0 Comments
Performing law
The following article was written by Alex Au and published on his website, Yawning Bread, on January 2007. We highlight it here to raise concerns, as Alex did back then, about the mandatory death penalty.
By Alex Au
Once more, a life is taken. Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi was hanged just before dawn on 26 January 2007. He had been caught with 727 grams of heroin in the transit area of Changi airport 2 years ago, when he was just 19 years old. It was his first visit to Singapore, to look for a position with a football club.
On the eve of his execution, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, after a long delay, finally appealed to Singapore President S Nathan for clemency. Of course it was rejected — Singapore has a machismo complex.
Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, in his reply to the Nigerian head of state said, “There are no new grounds for the case to be reconsidered and all legal avenues have been exhausted.”
Lee added that the 727 grams found in Tochi’s bag “amounts to more than 48,000 doses of heroin on the streets, enough to have destroyed many lives and families,” and that the government “takes a firm stance against drugs to deter Singaporeans and others from importing drugs into Singapore or using the country as a transit hub for narcotics.”
Not so simple.
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- No convincing reason to believe that the MDP works
- A moratorium is not an insult to national sovereignty
- Crime and punishment
- Side-stepping the death penalty
- Practices surrounding the death penalty for drugs troubling
- The legal canon of death
- The long drop and the hangman’s ritual
- TOC Editorial – A call to suspend all executions
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- Take a stand for moderation, liberty, and genuine understanding
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- MFA update on accident involving Romanian embassy vehicle
- ST Forum letter on homeless situation and official reply
- Public housing flats – Singaporeans come first or foreigners?
- Nowhere else to turn
- SERS flats to be rented out to foreigners again – this time in Bedok
- HDB’s inflexible policies will result in more homeless S’poreans
- The curious case of Block 29
- “The government’s first responsibility is to Singaporeans”
- The behaviour of little Lee Kuan Yews
- 50 years of HDB – homelessness is its biggest challenge
- Blogger Gerald Giam joins the Workers’ Party
- Copenhagen: failure or success
- PM Lee addresses Govt’s position on climate change
- Government must act against climate change
- Does Singapore have a climate change policy?
- Let’s ask the Government!
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- Addressing Climategate
- Little green applause for Singapore
- Philippines must demand deep and early cuts in GHG emissions from developed countries in Copenhagen
- Put an end to carbon colonialism, says Singaporean
- The process of the UNFCCC
- Analysing Obama
- What does China’s Climate Change target mean?
- Hopenhagen or Flopenhagen?
- How old will you be in 2050?
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