/ 28 November 2005

Resignation in Australia that drug runner will hang

Australians were on Monday urged to mark a minute’s silence if a convicted drug-trafficker is hanged in Singapore this week, amid growing resignation that the city state will go ahead with the execution.

Church leaders and politicians from across the political divide have backed the call for a minute’s silence for Nguyen Tuong Van, found carrying 400g of heroin in Singapore en route to Australia in 2002.

But Prime Minister John Howard, who said he would be attending a cricket match in Canberra during Friday’s scheduled execution of 25-year-old Nguyen, would not comment on the call for silence.

”Let me think about things like that. I don’t want to pre-empt how I might respond. I’ve not heard of any such call,” he told ABC radio.

He said it was his duty as host to attend the Prime Minister’s XI cricket match, this year to be played against the West Indies, and that he believed Australians would understand his position.

Howard, who has appealed personally to Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to grant the Melbourne man clemency, said the execution was likely to go ahead as planned.

”The Singaporean government, I’m sad to say, is not going to change its mind,” Howard said.

”It strongly holds to the view, that I don’t share, that the death penalty is appropriate.”

During a meeting with Singapore’s Lee on the sidelines of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Malta on the weekend, Howard warned that domestic feelings about the execution were intense and the hanging would result in lingering resentment towards the country’s largest regional trading partner.

Calls have already emerged for boycotts of Singapore-owned companies, such as Singapore Airlines and major telco Optus.

Government backbencher Bruce Baird told The Australian newspaper that the minute’s silence was both an expression of compassion and a protest at the sentence.

”I call on all Australians to observe one minute’s silence … on Friday, to express our compassion for this young Australian and our opposition to the imposition of this barbaric sentence,” he said.

Attorney General Philip Ruddock also indicated he would observe the silence.

”I would certainly at the time it might happen have a moment of reflection,” Ruddock told the paper, adding that he did not believe the death penalty had a place ”in civil society”.

A spokesperson for Ruddock said the minister would not comment on whether a minute’s silence, normally held to mark the passing of an Australian hero or a national tragedy, should be observed for the death of a convicted criminal.

”He has indicated he will pause to reflect on the passing of somebody in a situation he doesn’t believe in, he’s certainly not suggesting there should be a minute’s silence imposed on the population,” she said.

”It’s a matter for the individual.”

Nguyen, who has said he was bringing the drugs from Cambodia to Australia to help pay off his twin brother’s debt, has been the subject of intense diplomatic talks.

An editorial in The Australian warned that trade relations with the island state were hardly a ”mere bagatelle” and that taking opposition to the execution further could hurt Canberra’s standing in Asia ”where other nations do not share our views on capital punishment”.

”Indeed, it could well cruel our participation in the new East Asia summit, into which our way was smoothed by, yes, Singapore,” it said.- AFP