Church in the World

Clemency plea for drug smuggler

Australasia

EFFORTS TO persuade Singapore to spare the life of an Australian condemned to death for drug smuggling continued until the scheduled time of his execution yesterday.

Earlier, Australia?s Catholic bishops appealed directly to the Singaporean premier. The president of the bishops? conference, Archbishop Francis Carroll of Melbourne, wrote to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong as long ago as last week urging him and his Cabinet to reconsider their refusal to grant clemency to Van Tuong Nguyen. The letter was delivered to Singapore?s High Commission in Canberra after the bishops? plenary meeting in Sydney and was part of a widespread campaign to save Nguyen?s life.

Nguyen was arrested at Singapore Airport in December 2002 for carrying almost 400 grams of heroin strapped to his body and in his luggage, telling police he did so to help pay the debts of his twin brother Khoa. He received a mandatory death sentence.

?We understand that under Singapore?s constitution, clemency can be granted in rare circumstances and that Van Tuong Nguyen?s case fits the criteria,? Archbishop Carroll wrote. ?He is a young man with no prior criminal conviction, with good prospects for reform ? We appeal to you and your Government to grant clemency to this young man.?

Meanwhile, the parish priest of Nguyen?s former Melbourne parish and a former prison chaplain, Fr Peter Norden SJ, has attacked capital punishment as irrational. In an article in the Jesuit magazine Eureka Street, Fr Norden said Singapore regularly executed its own citizens and foreign nationals alike.

?Singapore, which presents itself as a modern civilised State, kills by hanging several times a year, and has one of the highest rates of executions in the world, behind Kuwait, China and Iran,? Fr Norden wrote. ?Its rate of execution is seven times that of the United States and twice that of Vietnam. Most Australian citizens recognise the ir-rationality of the practice of taking the life of a citizen in order to uphold the value of human life.?

Fr Norden said his predecessor at Melbourne?s former Pentridge Prison, Fr John Brosnan, had been traumatised for life by the last execution in Australia in February 1967.

Fr Brosnan became one of the best-known clergyman in Australia at the time Ronald Ryan was hanged at Pentridge, amid public outcry, over the death of a warder during an escape from the jail in December 1965. Fr Brosnan was Ryan?s confessor and gave him the Last Rites.
Mark Brolly, Melbourne