Singapore explains its new adjusted death penalty plans.
SINGAPORE – Singapore’s move to introduce changes to its mandatory death penalty for drug offences will boost its agencies’ ability to fight the growing scourge both at home and abroad, said Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean.
With the changes, agencies like the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) will be better able to get more information from drug mules, he added.
The reason: These criminals will be spared the gallows only when their information leads to the arrest of drug traffickers or the destruction of a syndicate.
That’s right. They know that the ones they’re executing are only mules, and they’ll continue to execute them unless they know enough to get someone higher to take their place.
This is the drug war. It is our drug war translated to places where freedom and human rights mean even less than they do here. This is the drug war that extremists like Peter Hitchens are talking about when they say we haven’t really fought the drug war.
This is why we fight to end the drug war. Not cheaper pot. There’s a much higher purpose. It’s about liberty and humanity. And life.
It is going to take decades to close this stupid war down.
in places…
but, as many point out, coming changes will make such fascist luxuries unaffordable. Whether economic or environmental or… or whether from the product of our growing collective loss of intelligence, we aren’t preparing for the future. And it’s (soapbox prediction) a world that will change faster, in fewer generations, than it ever has before. Katrina and Sandy showed how much we need our Nat’l Guard men and women here. Not talking about what’s coming (certain gov’t orgs – cia, military have been discussing for decades the scenarios of social change in relation to climatic change) will be a fatal flaw. And considering how large a percentage of the world’s population lives along coastlines… lots of people will be directly and dramatically affected. Drugs will become a non (or localized) problem.
Singapore is an archipelago with the highest point about 560 ft above sea level. Most of the place will be under water in 100 years. But by heck they throw litterbugs in jail and execute people for possession!
The Disney version of Sodom.
But it’s very clean there.
My father was a prisoner of war in rural Germany. Having been born and raised in army barracks in Poland – during liberation he was recruited by the US Army to head other Polish POW’s in rounding up German soldiers for interviews as to their relationship with the Nazi party.
Argentina was a favoured destination of those fascist bastards that escaped proper scrutiny. In the coming purge; Singapore looks like the de rigueur destination for our contemporary tormenters.
Right on, Pete!
There’s no way decent people should tolerate these executions anywhere.
Singapore’s execution scheme is analogously depicted by the history of torture. Certain outcomes to death threats are to be expected if the mules don’t know their suppliers, or they fear revealing their sources because their family has been threatened with death if they do.
In the first stage, the mule facing the death sentence will turn in people they dislike, or creditors they owe money to.
If threats or torture continues, they’ll accuse common acquaintances.
In the final drama, the tormented victim accuses government officials and other well-known figures in the community because they’ve run out of personal scapegoats. At this third stage, it’s generally clear to the tormenters that the testimony from a prisoner about accomplices is useless. By then, however, Singapore may have already executed the alleged accomplices.
inform to save your life. thats what “witches” in salem were told, with similar results
It was also a procedure used against religious heretics by the various inquisitions beginning with Pope Innocent IV authorizing its use by the Inquisition in 1252 in the papal bull Ad extirpanda.
The toxic consequences of making death threats to suspects, and the similar use of threatened or actual torture in inquisitorial legal proceedings, is very well documented.
The Singapore CNB (Central Narcotic Bureau) announced in September 2011 that the the 5% drop per year, which they often proudly proclaimed as proof of the effectiveness of their tough drug stance, was totally inaccurate. Arrests it seems have actually increased since 2008 contradicting Singapore’s assertion that being tough on drugs (even with mandatory death sentences) has ever been effective.
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From January to June 2011 there was a 20% increase in arrests compared to the previous year. This not only indicates that drugs are entering Singapore but also that the amount of people in Singapore using drugs is steadily and surely increasing.
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This isn’t just a problem Singapore can claim is due to chronic drug users, as a large percentage of those being arrested are first-time users — 41% in 2008, 45% in 2009 and 46% in 2010. This clearly shows that threats of caning, harsh prison sentences, and even death does nothing to deter either ‘chronic users’ or ‘first time users’.
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The Singapore government, and those who blindly support them, now have no proof whatsoever that their laws are curtailing drug smuggling or drug usage rates.
http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC110923-0000304/Actually,-drug-arrests-were-on-the-rise
Due to the embarrassment this has caused to the Singapore authorities, the original article from the above link has recently been removed. Kindly google: Central Narcotics Bureau blames under-reporting of statistics on migration to new computer system in 2008
And you have to ask: how much of this ferocity is stamped with the US’s approval?
Prior to Western colonial influences, most of the countries now exhibiting Draconian drug laws…certainly didn’t have them.
They had no ‘drug problem’, as usage was usually contained within cultural limits. With the coming of the Western powers, such cultural brakes were destroyed, and in far too many cases, colonial laws based upon European and American cultural mores – and the attendant neuroses they were derived from – supplanted native ones, with devastating effects.
This is not to excuse any nation’s barbarism with regards to this subject. But the fact remains that, despite many of those nations having thrown off colonial rule last century, the ‘poisons that lurk in the mud’ of the colonial prohibitions against natively used substances remained behind, incorporated into the newly freed nation’s legal systems, to be exploited by those very same ‘former’ colonial powers.
The colonialism continues, only much more subtle in its’ implementation…and a perfect example of that are the drug laws of those supposedly free nations. Uncle waves the foreign aid carrot, but also threatens with the drug law stick…and just like long ago, the indigs are still dancing to foreign tunes.
You’d think they’d get tired of it…and many have. Hence you have Morales of Bolivia spearheading the movement to withdraw from the UN Single Convention Treaty. The word is out, and other nations tired of this ‘remote-control colonialism’ are watching and waiting to see if they can do the same.
I live in Vietnam, which has a similarly barbaric drug policy, executing dozens of non-violent offenders every year.
For a long time, I was baffled by the existence of such harsh laws in so many East Asian countries, given that they have virtually no history of enforcing religious orthodoxy through violence (which I see as a natural precursor to the WOSD).
However, my Vietnamese teacher explained to me that the basis for these policies is rooted in the Chinese-propagated mythology around the Opium Wars. According to this mythology, China was “humiliated” by Western powers not due to their inferior military capacity or the inept rule of the Qing dynasty, but because the Chinese people had been weakened via the introduction of opium by various foreign devils.
Although this mythology fails to explain why opium-consuming Westerners were able to subjugate most of the known world, it is nevertheless widely believed throughout the former European colonies.
Well, I hope the mules now receive hazard pay at least.
Sadly, many Mexican mules receive no compensation. When a migrant worker is tapped by a cartel representative to smuggle the worker is told that if the package does not arrive a family member will be killed. As we all know, the cartel will live up to that evil promise. I imagine it is similar in Asia. No risk is to large when someone has a gun to your sons head hundreds of miles away.
Since the UN is not addressing these nations over their use of the death sentence and the US funds them for their anti-drug programs,,even the ones with a death sentence,,yup,,we and the rest of the world share responsibility or at least the shame of these deaths.
The more dictatorial and repressive the regime when it comes to petty drug “offenders,” the more likely the country is to be an economic beneficiaries of the drug trade, and Singapore is no exception. Here’s a link to a 1998 article about the services provided to major players in Burma’s drug trade by the government and banks of Singapore, titled The Burma-Singapore Axis:Globalizing the Heroin Trade
http://tinyurl.com/a7yfk9f
It seems that Singapore still welcomes and launders the big bucks provided by the major drug suppliers in S.E. Asia while proudly announcing the hangings of small-fry mules: http://sgforums.com/forums/10/topics/342825
check out the fascist comments below, sample: “This why I like to live in Singapore”
Anyone else find it interesting that Singapore already has the death penalty for drug offenses yet the first line of the article tells us that “the scourge is GROWING.” If that is not an emphatic answer to how the people feel about the drug war, I don’t know what is.
Just as a side note, if I was in the drug business and the punishment would be death for getting caught – exactly how long would I respect the boundaries of law before I started taking them out? If only to protect myself…now that’s a war!
Cash Hyde passed away. He was the same age as my son.
http://www.kbzk.com/news/community-mourns-death-of-4-year-old-missoula-cancer-victim/
see ya little buddy… sad news indeed.
But I thought there weren’t any substances on the naughty list in Singapore?!? Didn’t the death penalty shut down their black market?
I’m mainly a free-trade guy but in this case I’d make an exception.
We ought to disallow any trade, imports, or economic activity with Singapore until they can learn basic morality. Do they want to cane vandals/juvenile delinquents? Fine.
But the death penalty for tiny amounts of drugs? Ok, now they should lose access to the $16 trillion US economy.
It’s a devastating shame on singapore and the so called America who still sponsor their anti drug campaign, bcos in America no drug offender is ever executed for the offence. Singapore is a shameless disappointment to the whole world, and as a matter of fact UN should answer serious queries for all the nations that execute drug offenders, period.
United states sponsor almost every anti drug campaign around the globe, but how many offenders have they executed in their own soil???? That’s the million dollar question!!!!!