This is Sydney's cross city tunnel, again. After five weeks of being free the $3.56 one way e-tag only toll went back on at midnight on Wednesday. The operators saw a 44 per cent drop in custom in the first 12 hours compared to the previous Thursday. These were all the things that we could wish to make.
The Premier, the leader of the Opposition, Morris Iemma, Peter Debnam, held pressers and made statements while residents held demonstrations. William Street was a cluttered mess. They were closing off more roadways, making sure no one could weave their way through the back streets and escape. "Tunnel funnels". The state government had literally sold public streets to a Hong Kong billionaire. The outrage, and the debacle, just kept getting worse. Businesses, restaruants, were upset because nobody could get to them. Summer was officially here at last and everyone just wanted to make the dash to Christmas, enough of 2005 already.
The nation was grim in sentiment;the passing of the terror laws and the arrest of more than a dozen home grown alleged terrorists building a bomb for Sydney; the passing of the industrail relations laws, greeted with foreboding by almost everyone who is employed; the passing of the welfare to work legislation, where was was meant to be progressive came out only as draconian; and lastly, the countdown to Nguyen's execution in Singapore. He will be hung on Friday at 6am Singapore time; 9am Australian time. Australia abandoned the death sentence more than 20 years ago and numerous public figures have labelled the execution barbaric. Nguyen's family came to Australia after the Vietnam war. He was caught in 2002 with 396 grams of heroin, which he said he was transporting to make money for his twin brother's debts. Enough for 26,000 hits the enthusiasts for his hanging claimed. He was 22 then.
He's 25 now. From all reports he's faced his final days with great dignity. There has been a daily, now hourly countdown. Barlow and Chambers, executed in the eighties in Malaysia when Hawke was Prime Minister, was the last time the nation was gripped by this sad moral drama. There are pictures every day of the boy's distressed mother entering the prison. It is a different Australia that would be gripped, and show such sympathy, for a Vietnamese immigrant now one of our own. Here's the latest from Bloomberg:
Singapore's Lee Vows to Hang Australian Drug Smuggler (Update1)
Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Singapore will execute convicted Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said, dismissing calls for the sentence to be commuted.
``The government has decided that the law has to take its course, and the law will take its course,'' Lee told a news conference in Berlin today after a meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Nguyen, 25, is scheduled to be executed tomorrow.
Singapore has a zero-tolerance policy toward drugs and sentenced Nguyen to death after he smuggled 396 grams (14 ounces) of pure heroin into the city in 2002. The sentence caused an uproar in Australia, where consumers, politicians and newspaper editorials criticized Singapore for being authoritarian and called for boycotts of companies including Singapore Telecommunications Ltd.'s Optus unit and Singapore Airlines Ltd.
Nguyen admitted to carrying drugs, though not for sale in Singapore. He said he was carrying the drug to Australia for a Sydney syndicate to help his brother Khoa, a former heroin addict, pay A$30,000 ($31,460) in debts.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard asked Singapore to spare Nguyen's life and raised the issue in a meeting with Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in Malta on Nov. 26.
Appeals for Clemency
Lee ``was left in no doubt as to the intensity of feeling within Australia,'' Howard said, according to a transcript of a press conference in Malta posted on his Web site. ``I said that it would continue in my opinion to grow through the week.''
Socially, exaggeration is often whimsical. But when a government dramatically inflates numbers to help justify a death sentence, the integrity of both the trial and its governing body becomes questionable. In this case, the government is Singapore, the trial was for Van Tuong Nguyen, and the bloated number is 26,000.
ReplyDeletePress from around the world quotes Abdullah Tarmugi, the Speaker of Singapore Parliament, in writing about the potential consequences of Van's actions, "almost 400 grams of pure heroin, enough for more than 26,000 doses."
But how was 26,000 doses (or "hits") derived?
It turns out that what constitutes a hit of heroin is not an easy thing to count. There are dozens of factors to consider; contact your local Needle Exchange for a comprehensive list. However, after collecting statistics from over a dozen sources (including police reports, narcotics web sites, health information, and workers from needle exchanges), the number of hits from a gram of pure heroin averages out to little more than 14.
Van Tuong Nguyen trafficked 396.2 grams of heroin into Singapore. This is approximately 5,600 doses.
The numbers 5,600 and 26,000 are obviously incongruous, as are reports that 400 grams of heroin would "ruin 26,000 lives". In fact, 400 grams of heroin would not come close to ruining even 5,600 lives. Rather, the heroin would most likely supply people already abusing it. With a little more research, we can estimate how many lives would be adversely affected by 400 grams of heroin during one year:
As many as 67, and as few as 6.
Van Tuong Nguyen would not have sent 26,000 people to their deaths from 400 grams of heroin. Nor would the lives of 26,000 people have been ruined. Far more likely is that six people would get a year's worth of hits. And for this he was executed?
Call it dreadful, call it dense, call it incomprehensible ... but do not call it justice.