After the execution of Australian drug smuggler Tuong Van Nguyen in a Singapore prison Dec. 2, Sydney Cardinal George Pell told reporters it would be an uphill battle to persuade political leaders in Southeast Asia to change their laws about capital punishment.
"The difficulty is to be active in a way that might help our cause," Cardinal Pell told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. News. "You could very easily try to be active in this area and be counterproductive."
As Nguyen was being executed in Changi Prison in Singapore Dec. 2, the bells of his parish church, St. Ignatius, in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, tolled 25 times, once for each year of his life.
The parish had been the focus of prayers for Nguyen since his arrest in 2002 on charges of attempting to import 14 ounces of heroin from Cambodia into Australia. Nguyen had been caught in transit in Singapore, where the mandatory death sentence applies. He told authorities he had acted as a courier to clear a US$22,000 debt owed by his twin brother, Khoa, a former heroin addict.
The brothers had been part of the Vietnamese diaspora that came to Australia as war refugees. They were born to their single mother, Kim, in an overcrowded refugee camp in Thailand in 1980. In Australia, they settled in Richmond, and the boys attended St. Ignatius Parish kindergarten and primary school.
"This community has been pleased to stand in solidarity with Kim and her two boys during the difficult last weeks leading up to this fateful day," St. Ignatius' parish priest, Jesuit Father Peter Norden, said in his homily at the vigil service held just before Nguyen's death.
"Our prayers are with him as he faces his fate with great courage and faith," he said. "Our prayers are with his mother and his brother as they wait outside Changi Prison in Singapore, but our prayers are also directed toward the abolition of the death penalty throughout the world because we know that you cannot uphold the value and dignity of human life by taking the life of another."
Nguyen's body was transported to Melbourne Dec. 3 in preparation for a Dec. 7 funeral Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne.
Australia abolished capital punishment in the late 1960s, and Nguyen's fate sharply divided the population over Singapore's right to execute drug traffickers under its zero-tolerance laws. A poll published the day before Nguyen's hanging revealed that 47 percent of Australians agreed the death sentence should be carried out, while 46 percent said it should not, with 7 percent remaining undecided.
Cardinal Pell said that "illegal drugs are a scourge," but he added that punishment in Nguyen's case is "completely disproportionate to the crime he has committed."
Msgr. Les Tomlinson, vicar general of the Melbourne Archdiocese, stressed that while the church strongly opposes the death penalty it did not condone Nguyen's crime.
The priest said Nguyen openly admitted his crime and dealt with his fate by turning to God.
"There is no disputing he was guilty of a crime, and there is no disputing it should be punished," Msgr. Tomlinson said, but he added that capital punishment was not "a solution for any crime."
"Some people have mistakenly thought the church was minimizing the significance of his crime and thought the church was trying to condone or trivialize what he had done," Msgr. Tomlinson said.
Both Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II appealed to the Singapore government to show compassion in the case.
Despite public opinion being polarized over the case, Australian Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer expressed their sympathy for Nguyen and his family. At a meeting of world leaders in Malta Nov. 26, Howard asked Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to show clemency and commute the sentence.
Near the end, Nguyen's lawyers asked the federal government to apply to a U.N. court in a last-ditch attempt to save his life. ---CNS |