In 2005, an Australian citizen was hanged in Singapore. It could happen again

In the very early morning of December 2, 2005, my client Van Nguyen was hanged in Singapore’s Changi Prison. His offence? Carrying 396 grams of poorly concealed heroin from Phnom Penh. The drugs were detected during a stopover in Singapore as Van tried to board a Qantas flight to Australia at Changi Airport, gate C23. From that moment, he was a dead man walking. Changi carries a meaning of suffering for many.

After his arrest, many became involved in the cause. Why? Van was an Australian citizen, and we object when foreign governments claiming to be democratic kill Australians in the name of justice. The day before Van was hanged, Lee Hsien Loong, then Singapore’s prime minister, said the death penalty “is necessary”. Nonsense.

Van Nguyen’s mother, Kim, pictured in front of a photograph of her son in 2006.Credit: Jason South

At the time, Alexander Downer was Australia’s foreign minister. He assured me in a meeting about Van’s case in 2003 that the Australian public would not be interested in Van’s fate. Van was of Vietnamese origin, the son of a refugee and a small-time drug mule. Downer was wrong.

Many Australians took the case to heart. People still tell me they remember where they were on the day Van was executed. Veteran journalist Jana Wendt told me she was in a taxi in Sydney when the driver said something like, “I suppose they have killed that young boy by now.” She cried then, and she again shed a tear later telling me the story. People nearby wondered what I had done to upset such a beautiful and famous woman.

Van Nguyen, 25, pictured after his arrest on drug smuggling charges in Singapore. Credit: AFP

Van’s mother, Kim, his twin brother, Khoa, and a large circle of close friends had fought for him, and they had lost. They were devastated.

But, of course, general interest waned. Van was dead. The fight was over.

A year after Van was executed, Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran were sentenced to death in Bali for drug offending. They were executed nine years later despite their total rehabilitation.

So-called democratic governments with an authoritarian bent maintain capital punishment because they think it makes them look strong and is a deterrent. It isn’t.

However, some good did arise from the collective outrage over these executions. In 2018, the Australian government released its strategy for the abolition of the death penalty, a bipartisan commitment opposing the death penalty in all circumstances, for all people. In Australia, the Capital Punishment Justice Project and Eleos Justice at Monash University are focused on restricting and abolishing the death penalty in Asia, given 90 per cent of the world’s executions occur in that region.

Lawyers Joseph Theseira (left) and Lex Lasry in Singapore in 2005, reading through some of the material belonging to Van Nguyen, which was delivered to them the day after his execution.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Despite this and a worldwide trend away from the death penalty for drugs, Singapore remains intransigent, continuing to kill people for non-violent drug offences.

As of November 13, 2024, there are more than 50 prisoners on death row in Singapore, most of them for drug offences. Fifteen grams of pure heroin is enough to attract the mandatory death penalty. In Victoria, the commercial quantity for pure heroin is 50 grams. In Victoria, the median sentence for trafficking in a commercial quantity of drugs is four years and nine months’ jail, while the median non-parole period is three years.

But, back to death.

In Singapore, these death-row prisoners – most pathetically poor and with a drug addiction – are kept in solitary confinement and can wait years to be killed. Since 2022, there have been 25 hangings in Singapore, mostly for drug offences. Last Friday, Masoud Rahimi bin Mehrzad was hanged after being convicted of trafficking not less than 31.14 grams of diamorphine; it was the fourth drug-related execution in November. He was on death row for 14 years.

Between 2002 and 2005 I represented Van Nguyen, doing much of the work from Australia and through a lawyer in Singapore. In 2004, I sought admission to the Singapore Supreme Court to enable me to conduct Van’s defence. That application failed, as they always do. They do not want non-compliant foreign lawyers.

To speed up the process, the threat of costs orders is waved in front of the local lawyers who might be inclined to run so-called “frivolous” arguments.

Increasingly, prisoners have had to represent themselves. Outside prison, their stories are told by brave local anti-death-penalty activists. They are volunteers who stand accused by the government of “romanticising” or “glorifying” drug traffickers. The ruling People’s Action Party’s official platform describes them in the following way: “We go back to their fondness for virtue-signalling. Highly educated and privileged, many anti-death-penalty activists are either naive at best or plagued by a saviour complex. To them, drug traffickers on death row make for the perfect underclass. Victims of circumstance with little to no agency in their actions.

“There is the activist group Transformative Justice Collective [that has] seemingly lost sight of the bigger picture and the real enemy.”

Members of the Transformative Justice Collective have also been the subject of police investigations in relation to their abolitionist advocacy. Others have also been questioned by the police over their participation in vigils for death-row prisoners who have since been executed.

So, since 2005, it’s worse. We can expect an increase in the execution rate. Singapore ignores the United Nations’ International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and its Second Optional Protocol, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty. If an Australian citizen finds themselves in the same situation as Van Nguyen, they can expect the same fate.

Lex Lasry was a criminal lawyer at the Victorian Bar from 1973 to 2007 and a Supreme Court judge from 2007 to 2024. He was Van Nguyen’s Australian counsel, leading Julian McMahon.

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