The whole eye for an eye thing (updated)
Poor winterspel was just the recipient of some ravings of mine. I was thinking about the whole eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth thing and I find myself mulling about it further. I see the fundamental justice of the eye for an eye concept, but as I mentioned, we are flawed humans. Therefore, in many cases it's not an eye for an eye. When we are angry and enraged, we demand an eye, a leg and a foot for an eye. This happens when people are angry and grief-stricken, it also happens when the justice system is arbitrary. Maybe other people aren't like that, but I know I would be like that when I'm angry - my ability to measure 'exact' vengeance would not be very exact. In terms of arbitrary justice, what I mean is the penalty being given to Nguyen Tuong Van is the same as that which many people would think might only be suitable for someone who murdered or raped another person.
This is an extreme example I know but you only have to look at some of the discussions about Kosovo and revenge killings. It's been suggested that in Kosovo the problem of revenge killings has been aggravated by, or tied in to some extent with, the influence of the old custom of the 'blood feud'. The blood feud is revenge killing sanctioned in medieval practices. It is a practice that was codified in the Kanun, a code of law that emerged in the middle ages to govern life in the isolated north of Albania. It says that a wrongdoing must be avenged by killing a male member of the family that committed the wrong. This in turn leads to a cycle of tit-for-tat killings that put at risk all male members of the extended family. The feud can go on for years or even generations. And the children suffer in the name of the father. In other words, retaliation is taken against not just the person who committed some offense, but those who are related to him. This is regarded as just punishment for the crime. There is an extremely fascinating article here which talks about concepts of 'punishment', 'honour' and 'revenge' (section 2 relates to 'blood feuds' but section 1 is also a fascinating read because it talks about 'just punishment' for 'crimes' committed by women. Warning - it's quite distressing).
For me it's issues like that this that make me question whether I'm a moral relativist or objectivist. Each country and culture has (and should have) the right to determine its own punishment system in accordance with its own social values, customs, religions and norms. We should not say that one culture or country is superior to another. I'm from Australia, we're a multicultural society and I welcome and embrace cultural diversity. When we lose an endangered species, it's a tragedy, when we lose a language or culture, it's even more tragic. Nonetheless, there is good and bad in every culture. Part of me also wonders, at what point is it acceptable for me to stand up and I say I don't agree with what I see going on somewhere else.
When people accuse me of imposing my own values or acting as though I'm culturally superior because I'm 'judging' another country for using the death penalty, I guess I'm just exercising my own right to question and criticise. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying I guess I have the right to believe I am right and I have the right to lobby for change. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.
All the stuff about revenge and taking things into your own hands reminds me that I really love the 1987 Brian De Palma movie The Untouchables. Some of the quotes there are very interesting and remind me of what society would be like if we all took the law into our own hands when we were wronged or allowed revenge to be the primary aim in a justice system. Sure, in the end the 'good guys' notionally won, but I don't want to live in a society of condoned and formalised violence and don't forget - Molone and the poor accountant guy bought the farm.
Quotes from The Untouchables
"I want this guy dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and piss on his ashes! (Al Capone)
"You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word". (Al Capone)
"Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him". (Al Capone)
"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?" (Malone)
*sigh* At first this was public but then I restricted it. It's silly I guess. I know it's my LJ but people get offended sometimes and that's not my intention. I've made it public again, I've decided I feel too strongly about this issue.
My other posts about the death penalty are here.
Fellow Aussie amaliestar has posted a post that discusses, among other things the Nguyen Tuong Van issue. I recommend reading it because it's far more articulate than my frothing ramblings.
I've just read that New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark will make an informal protest to Singapore's Prime Minister about the planned execution of Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van. She has made it clear that she is raising the matter "independently of Australia". This means a lot - unlike some of the politicians in Australia, she is not making this move simply because of the outcry. Clearly she is compelled by personal conviction.
I'm horrified to read this post on a forum:
Australia has imported people as "refugees" into this country who have no respect for us, our culture or our laws. They have no gratitute to this country for giving them succour and their rate of criminal recidivism makes one suspect that foreign criminals see refugee programs as heaven sent opportunities to aquire rich new pastures to plunder. Only this week a Kuwaiti "refugee" was convicted of being the biggest welfare fraud in Centrelink history. Some of them despise Australians so much that they are quite happy to kill Australians, either through bombs or criminal behaviour, and these people obviously consider themselves at war with my society.
The world will be rid of Mr Nguyen next week and good riddance. He will be one less Vietnamese murdering Australians. Hanging a few dozen Lebanese criminals in Australia would do wonders to the present unacceptable behaviour of so many Lebs in this country.
The mind boggles. I'd like to share an article that I just read though by a journalist named Gillian Handley whose brother was murdered a number of years back. She has so much to say which makes sense to me and which I find profoundly moving. I started to bold the parts which I found particularly interesting but in the end I stopped because everything she says makes sense to me.
Nguyen Tuong Van - no ripples in the murky world of drugs
By Gillian Handley - posted Friday, 25 November 2005
A few days ago, Radio 702 raised the issue of the impending execution of Nguyen Tuong Van. It soon became clear that some people feel this young Australian should not be saved from the gallows. At least one listener rang in to announce that he, for one, felt his children would be safer if people like Nguyen Tuong Van were done away with.
My brother, David, was murdered five years ago. I can tell you from experience that when you are lacerated by grief and rage, your first instinct is for revenge - the bloodier, the better. Surprising then, that I never wanted the death penalty for my brother’s killers.
What I did want was to make them understand the enormity of their crime. Hanging was not going to do that. What I wanted was for them to know my brother - to understand him - as the person he was, flaws and all. By getting to know their victim, I wanted them to come to realise the loss that his death meant. Until they understood that, they could not appreciate the magnitude of their crime.
This may sound simplistic, but I can think of no greater punishment than to live with yourself, once you comprehend the full extent of the crime you have committed.
My brother was not a killer and he would not have expected a life for his life. A death sentence for his murderers would have diminished David’s death because as an institutionalised killing, it would, more than anything, devalue life itself.
Whatever his crimes, Nguyen does not deserve to be executed. Mandatory death sentences are particularly horrifying, as mercy - surely the badge of a civilised society - is locked out of the judicial process. Even if you regard Nguyen as the worst kind of criminal, you owe it to the victims of drugs to bring him to a full understanding of his role in their suffering - and you won’t do that by hanging him.
Nguyen received the death penalty because in Singapore that is the mandatory sentence for anyone found carrying that amount of heroin. There is no allowance for proportionality. Mandatory sentencing does not recognise any subtleties of intention behind the crime. Had a drug king been caught with the same amount of the drug on him, but with a very different intention behind the crime - in his case, to knowingly create a demand for the drug by as many people as possible, by whatever means possible - his sentence would have been the same - death. By any standards, Nguyen surely deserves a lesser punishment.
This is not to say that Nguyen should get off lightly, but rather to let the punishment fit the crime. Many Australians seem to regard prison as a minor form of punishment; as if it is not, in itself, enough. Incarcerating someone for years is a terrible thing and yet the public bays for longer and longer sentences while politicians fall over themselves to be seen as being tough on crime. Imprisonment, for Nguyen, would be punishment enough.
There are other victims in this story - drug victims of another kind. Heroin addicts drag their families down into their twilight world of violence and fear. Think of Nguyen’s mother Kim, who is living a nightmare, with one son an addict, the other on death row. She suffers all the fallout, from the agonies of the addict to the torment of the condemned - the whole nightmare of drug addiction neatly parcelled in one family. In a sense, Nguyen can be seen as a victim himself. He has seen the howling horror of an addict’s world in the eyes of his brother. It was his brother’s drug addiction that drove Nguyen to crime.
The Singapore sentencing system has denied Nguyen the possibility of mercy. The mandatory death penalty means that mitigating factors are not considered. Have a look at the transcript of the judgment and you will see legal arguments that rustle on the page like withered leaves. Principals and policies are argued. It’s all too easy to forget that there is a life at stake here. This is the effect of mandatory sentencing; the human element is removed. It is easier to send a man to the gallows when you cannot see his face.
If you are going to kill that man, you should at least know something about him. Here is some information taken from the judgment against Nguyen. (The case against Nguyen as published here. Nguyen is speaking:
I was born in Thailand, Sonkha, in a refugee camp in 1980. My mother was a Vietnamese refugee. I did not know who my father was until November this year. He came from America to look for my brother and I. ... Shortly after I was born, (my mother, brother and I) migrated to Australia. I cannot remember much about my childhood. My mother married in 1987 to a Vietnamese Australian. My step-father beat my brother and I quite often. … I completed secondary school education … I intended to proceed with my university education at Deakin University. However due to financial difficulties, I started working instead of studying. … Around end 1999, I also set up my own business in Melbourne dealing with computer sales. There was no need for any capital. Shortly after that my twin brother got into trouble with the law and I wind (sic) up my business to raise legal fees for him. So I found a sale, research and marketing job and I earned between A$1,500 to A$2,500 a month depending on how much commission I received …
Sometime in October this year, I was in need of money. I had to pay a debt which I took to pay for my twin brother, Khoa Nguyen, lawyer fees. I owed about A$20,000 to A$25,000 in total to a friend. … He did not press me for payment but I knew he needed the money. There was also an A$12,000 loan which my twin brother took that I needed to repay on his behalf. He only had until the end of this year to pay up that loan. I did not intend to let my twin brother know that I am paying his debt. I had managed only to repay about A$4,000 for a period of 8 to 10 months already but that was just enough to cover for the interests incurred. …
It was only (in) October 2002 that I was really desperate as I had been out of work for four months and I still have to repay those loans my twin brother incurred as well as paying for house rent and expenses. I rented a house in Melbourne together with five other friends. However only (one other person) and I pay for the rent. … As such I started looking around for help. I did not manage to obtain help from anyone.
If nothing else, Nguyen’s story should illustrate the need for mitigating circumstances to be considered. Justice without mercy comes very close to revenge. There is potential in this man, and his death would mean the loss of that potential. This is a man who took on the responsibility for his brother’s debts. He has the capacity to care and it seems that he turned to crime when all other avenues of help available to him failed.
Drug addicts are victims too, of course, and Nguyen is probably guilty of dehumanising his crime - concentrating on the mechanics of trafficking and turning his face away from the end result of an addict’s agony. When you make deals with the devil, you can’t afford to look at the big picture.
Nguyen was stopped before any more drug damage was done. Ironically, had he reached his destination, he would not now be sitting in the shadow of the noose. The pushers meantime, go free. Do they care about the death of an insignificant drug mule? At the most, it’s just a small inconvenience. Another day, another debt, another mule. The supply goes on.
The death of a young man called Nguyen Tuong Van makes headlines and the Singapore judicial system and some members of our own community, are satisfied that justice has been done. But the echo of the trapdoor as it slams shut on Nguyen and the lost opportunity for redemption, causes not a ripple in the murky world of drug dealing.
This is an extreme example I know but you only have to look at some of the discussions about Kosovo and revenge killings. It's been suggested that in Kosovo the problem of revenge killings has been aggravated by, or tied in to some extent with, the influence of the old custom of the 'blood feud'. The blood feud is revenge killing sanctioned in medieval practices. It is a practice that was codified in the Kanun, a code of law that emerged in the middle ages to govern life in the isolated north of Albania. It says that a wrongdoing must be avenged by killing a male member of the family that committed the wrong. This in turn leads to a cycle of tit-for-tat killings that put at risk all male members of the extended family. The feud can go on for years or even generations. And the children suffer in the name of the father. In other words, retaliation is taken against not just the person who committed some offense, but those who are related to him. This is regarded as just punishment for the crime. There is an extremely fascinating article here which talks about concepts of 'punishment', 'honour' and 'revenge' (section 2 relates to 'blood feuds' but section 1 is also a fascinating read because it talks about 'just punishment' for 'crimes' committed by women. Warning - it's quite distressing).
For me it's issues like that this that make me question whether I'm a moral relativist or objectivist. Each country and culture has (and should have) the right to determine its own punishment system in accordance with its own social values, customs, religions and norms. We should not say that one culture or country is superior to another. I'm from Australia, we're a multicultural society and I welcome and embrace cultural diversity. When we lose an endangered species, it's a tragedy, when we lose a language or culture, it's even more tragic. Nonetheless, there is good and bad in every culture. Part of me also wonders, at what point is it acceptable for me to stand up and I say I don't agree with what I see going on somewhere else.
When people accuse me of imposing my own values or acting as though I'm culturally superior because I'm 'judging' another country for using the death penalty, I guess I'm just exercising my own right to question and criticise. I'm not saying I'm right, I'm just saying I guess I have the right to believe I am right and I have the right to lobby for change. I'm not sure if that makes any sense.
All the stuff about revenge and taking things into your own hands reminds me that I really love the 1987 Brian De Palma movie The Untouchables. Some of the quotes there are very interesting and remind me of what society would be like if we all took the law into our own hands when we were wronged or allowed revenge to be the primary aim in a justice system. Sure, in the end the 'good guys' notionally won, but I don't want to live in a society of condoned and formalised violence and don't forget - Molone and the poor accountant guy bought the farm.
Quotes from The Untouchables
"I want this guy dead! I want his family dead! I want his house burned to the ground! I want to go there in the middle of the night and piss on his ashes! (Al Capone)
"You can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word". (Al Capone)
"Somebody messes with me, I'm gonna mess with him". (Al Capone)
"You wanna know how you do it? Here's how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That's the Chicago way, and that's how you get Capone! Now do you want to do that? Are you ready to do that?" (Malone)
*sigh* At first this was public but then I restricted it. It's silly I guess. I know it's my LJ but people get offended sometimes and that's not my intention. I've made it public again, I've decided I feel too strongly about this issue.
My other posts about the death penalty are here.
Fellow Aussie amaliestar has posted a post that discusses, among other things the Nguyen Tuong Van issue. I recommend reading it because it's far more articulate than my frothing ramblings.
I've just read that New Zealand's Prime Minister Helen Clark will make an informal protest to Singapore's Prime Minister about the planned execution of Melbourne man Nguyen Tuong Van. She has made it clear that she is raising the matter "independently of Australia". This means a lot - unlike some of the politicians in Australia, she is not making this move simply because of the outcry. Clearly she is compelled by personal conviction.
I'm horrified to read this post on a forum:
Australia has imported people as "refugees" into this country who have no respect for us, our culture or our laws. They have no gratitute to this country for giving them succour and their rate of criminal recidivism makes one suspect that foreign criminals see refugee programs as heaven sent opportunities to aquire rich new pastures to plunder. Only this week a Kuwaiti "refugee" was convicted of being the biggest welfare fraud in Centrelink history. Some of them despise Australians so much that they are quite happy to kill Australians, either through bombs or criminal behaviour, and these people obviously consider themselves at war with my society.
The world will be rid of Mr Nguyen next week and good riddance. He will be one less Vietnamese murdering Australians. Hanging a few dozen Lebanese criminals in Australia would do wonders to the present unacceptable behaviour of so many Lebs in this country.
The mind boggles. I'd like to share an article that I just read though by a journalist named Gillian Handley whose brother was murdered a number of years back. She has so much to say which makes sense to me and which I find profoundly moving. I started to bold the parts which I found particularly interesting but in the end I stopped because everything she says makes sense to me.
Nguyen Tuong Van - no ripples in the murky world of drugs
By Gillian Handley - posted Friday, 25 November 2005
A few days ago, Radio 702 raised the issue of the impending execution of Nguyen Tuong Van. It soon became clear that some people feel this young Australian should not be saved from the gallows. At least one listener rang in to announce that he, for one, felt his children would be safer if people like Nguyen Tuong Van were done away with.
My brother, David, was murdered five years ago. I can tell you from experience that when you are lacerated by grief and rage, your first instinct is for revenge - the bloodier, the better. Surprising then, that I never wanted the death penalty for my brother’s killers.
What I did want was to make them understand the enormity of their crime. Hanging was not going to do that. What I wanted was for them to know my brother - to understand him - as the person he was, flaws and all. By getting to know their victim, I wanted them to come to realise the loss that his death meant. Until they understood that, they could not appreciate the magnitude of their crime.
This may sound simplistic, but I can think of no greater punishment than to live with yourself, once you comprehend the full extent of the crime you have committed.
My brother was not a killer and he would not have expected a life for his life. A death sentence for his murderers would have diminished David’s death because as an institutionalised killing, it would, more than anything, devalue life itself.
Whatever his crimes, Nguyen does not deserve to be executed. Mandatory death sentences are particularly horrifying, as mercy - surely the badge of a civilised society - is locked out of the judicial process. Even if you regard Nguyen as the worst kind of criminal, you owe it to the victims of drugs to bring him to a full understanding of his role in their suffering - and you won’t do that by hanging him.
Nguyen received the death penalty because in Singapore that is the mandatory sentence for anyone found carrying that amount of heroin. There is no allowance for proportionality. Mandatory sentencing does not recognise any subtleties of intention behind the crime. Had a drug king been caught with the same amount of the drug on him, but with a very different intention behind the crime - in his case, to knowingly create a demand for the drug by as many people as possible, by whatever means possible - his sentence would have been the same - death. By any standards, Nguyen surely deserves a lesser punishment.
This is not to say that Nguyen should get off lightly, but rather to let the punishment fit the crime. Many Australians seem to regard prison as a minor form of punishment; as if it is not, in itself, enough. Incarcerating someone for years is a terrible thing and yet the public bays for longer and longer sentences while politicians fall over themselves to be seen as being tough on crime. Imprisonment, for Nguyen, would be punishment enough.
There are other victims in this story - drug victims of another kind. Heroin addicts drag their families down into their twilight world of violence and fear. Think of Nguyen’s mother Kim, who is living a nightmare, with one son an addict, the other on death row. She suffers all the fallout, from the agonies of the addict to the torment of the condemned - the whole nightmare of drug addiction neatly parcelled in one family. In a sense, Nguyen can be seen as a victim himself. He has seen the howling horror of an addict’s world in the eyes of his brother. It was his brother’s drug addiction that drove Nguyen to crime.
The Singapore sentencing system has denied Nguyen the possibility of mercy. The mandatory death penalty means that mitigating factors are not considered. Have a look at the transcript of the judgment and you will see legal arguments that rustle on the page like withered leaves. Principals and policies are argued. It’s all too easy to forget that there is a life at stake here. This is the effect of mandatory sentencing; the human element is removed. It is easier to send a man to the gallows when you cannot see his face.
If you are going to kill that man, you should at least know something about him. Here is some information taken from the judgment against Nguyen. (The case against Nguyen as published here. Nguyen is speaking:
I was born in Thailand, Sonkha, in a refugee camp in 1980. My mother was a Vietnamese refugee. I did not know who my father was until November this year. He came from America to look for my brother and I. ... Shortly after I was born, (my mother, brother and I) migrated to Australia. I cannot remember much about my childhood. My mother married in 1987 to a Vietnamese Australian. My step-father beat my brother and I quite often. … I completed secondary school education … I intended to proceed with my university education at Deakin University. However due to financial difficulties, I started working instead of studying. … Around end 1999, I also set up my own business in Melbourne dealing with computer sales. There was no need for any capital. Shortly after that my twin brother got into trouble with the law and I wind (sic) up my business to raise legal fees for him. So I found a sale, research and marketing job and I earned between A$1,500 to A$2,500 a month depending on how much commission I received …
Sometime in October this year, I was in need of money. I had to pay a debt which I took to pay for my twin brother, Khoa Nguyen, lawyer fees. I owed about A$20,000 to A$25,000 in total to a friend. … He did not press me for payment but I knew he needed the money. There was also an A$12,000 loan which my twin brother took that I needed to repay on his behalf. He only had until the end of this year to pay up that loan. I did not intend to let my twin brother know that I am paying his debt. I had managed only to repay about A$4,000 for a period of 8 to 10 months already but that was just enough to cover for the interests incurred. …
It was only (in) October 2002 that I was really desperate as I had been out of work for four months and I still have to repay those loans my twin brother incurred as well as paying for house rent and expenses. I rented a house in Melbourne together with five other friends. However only (one other person) and I pay for the rent. … As such I started looking around for help. I did not manage to obtain help from anyone.
If nothing else, Nguyen’s story should illustrate the need for mitigating circumstances to be considered. Justice without mercy comes very close to revenge. There is potential in this man, and his death would mean the loss of that potential. This is a man who took on the responsibility for his brother’s debts. He has the capacity to care and it seems that he turned to crime when all other avenues of help available to him failed.
Drug addicts are victims too, of course, and Nguyen is probably guilty of dehumanising his crime - concentrating on the mechanics of trafficking and turning his face away from the end result of an addict’s agony. When you make deals with the devil, you can’t afford to look at the big picture.
Nguyen was stopped before any more drug damage was done. Ironically, had he reached his destination, he would not now be sitting in the shadow of the noose. The pushers meantime, go free. Do they care about the death of an insignificant drug mule? At the most, it’s just a small inconvenience. Another day, another debt, another mule. The supply goes on.
The death of a young man called Nguyen Tuong Van makes headlines and the Singapore judicial system and some members of our own community, are satisfied that justice has been done. But the echo of the trapdoor as it slams shut on Nguyen and the lost opportunity for redemption, causes not a ripple in the murky world of drug dealing.