Tobacco is a drug causing severe addiction amongst many people in Southeast Asia and also the developing and developed world. The addiction also kills eventually in the form of coronary heart disease and many types of cancer.

Yet, many governments make pathetic smoke screen attempts to show the world that they care - because they are able to impose much taxation on tobacco sales (the 'sin' taxes) and derive short term financial benefit (not unlike the illicit drug lords).

So, following this logic, should perpetrators of continued legal tobacco sales be also classified as drug traffickers - as they are indirectly causing the deaths or many innocent people which they warn with minuscule labels on cigarette packets? Interestingly, also, there is evidence to suggest that the prelude to hard drug addiction is often tobacco addiction.

Unfortunately, surrogate actions and outcomes lead to severe punishment or unreasonable actions in many situations in life today. For the issue of drug trafficking, someone needs to be the fall guy for a bigger problem which the authorities cannot handle or solve. Some Orwellian governments believe that intimidating people with a mandatory death sentence may work - but it appears not. And, young lives, with potential futures continue to be lost.

For the majority of drug addicts in Southeast Asian countries who do not get put away, there is usually a sense of hopelessness and forlorn with no chance of rehabilitation although many small and little publicised Christian outreach and rehabilitation programmes in these countries have been recently shown to be highly successful, though anecdotally.

Nguyen Tuong Van was a good example: through the church prison ministry he was emotionally rehabilitated and was even well-prepared for his final punishment - he was remorseful, repented and became an exemplary prisoner exhibiting good behaviour. But it did not make any difference, by virtue of a mandatory death sentence he was still executed. The clear intent is to make him a strong example and warning to others.

State manipulation

Recently, Uganda, which has had a long turbulent past with the horrendous Amin regime, saw its Constitutional Court abolish the mandatory death sentence. The learned judge and his co-judges, sitting to hear a challenge by death-row inmates on their mandatory death sentences unanimously ruled that the nature of any mandatory death sentence itself interferes with the discretionary powers of the dispensing of justice by individual judges.

In other words, they were clearly stating that mandatory death sentences are actually blatant acts of state manipulation of the judiciary. And, almost certainly, Singapore would not have that if it wished to maintain its 'social status' in the world today.

A mandatory death sentence is absolute, final, unchallengeable and irrevocable. By its nature, it is inhumane as it not only deprives the convicted person of natural justice but also, and equally important, the judicial system of dispensing it. It is absolutism and anarchy, sanctioned by parliament, put through a non-negotiable staged-process of justice being seen to be done.

The individual targeted is deprived of all humanity and is reduced to the status of an animal. Societies which accept this are either very naive in accepting their leaders' choices or are very cruel and inhuman.

What is interesting about Nguyen's case was that he never entered Singapore (by virtue of not having passed through immigration) but, yet, he was arrested in the airport transit area and all his rights stripped immediately. He was, technically not trafficking in or to Singapore but through Singapore. So, what business was it of Singapore to impose its morality on Nguyen? This is not dissimilar to secret arrests made by the CIA outside the shores of the US and their creative use of the "rendition" process - representing state but not democratically-legitimised and sponsored torture, terror and murder.

By this same argument therefore, if a heavily armed aircraft flies past, but not into Singapore airspace, should it be shot down in a pre-emptive strike like what a US government would nowadays do - just because it is an apparent or perceived threat to the sovereignty of the nation? I would say not. It would be totally inappropriate, illogical and unjust. Any obsession in preventative measures would be curbed by an international uproar in such a situation.

A more current example would be for Singapore to covertly enter the airspace of China to spray toxins to cull poultry which it believes might have been infected with the bird flu virus - in order to prevent it from spreading to others. Again, clearly, this would not work and is unacceptable in diplomatic and international justice circles.

And, the most shocking and up to date example of botched pre-emptive actions is the shooting of an innocent man deemed to be a bomber in Miami. Does this madness need to continue indefinitely?

Cambodian example

Some years ago, while traveling by plane in remote Cambodia on a medical mission just after the fall of Pol Pot, I sat next to a government official from the Justice Department and I took the opportunity to inquire about the death penalty in Cambodia. Interestingly and much to my surprise, his response was that there was none and he joked that too many people had already been killed in error.

Cambodia, with its horrific history of death and destruction appears to be the only Southeast Asian country which does not apply the death penalty - but probably for other reasons. Perhaps Cambodia's more confident and wealthier neighbours could learn from her.

Finally, if a relative of a high ranking Singaporean government official had the misfortune of some heroin deliberately planted in their hand luggage, say in a flight into Singapore, when asleep, I would be very interested to know how authorities will deal with it if this person was caught.

Surely by virtue of the mandatory death sentence, this would automatically be applied. Another similar scenario could be for the same person to be flying through Singapore and have the same drug planted into their luggage. Also, the law of the mandatory death sentence would apply. I wonder what excuse the Singapore government would then put forward to save this person?

Although gone, Nguyen has not died in vain. The processes of the unsuccessful lobby for his sentence to be commuted will become his legacy and this will live on. Nguyen will be remembered as a reformed prisoner whose execution was used as an example to intimidate others not to get involved in drugs. But, more importantly, his execution has catalysed a widespread rethink on the principles surrounding the death sentence.

Whilst I must emphasise that I am no apologist for Nguyen's actions (and his own family have publicly asserted that he was no hero or martyr), it is my belief that it is now time to seriously debate the foibles of the mandatory death sentence. This should be for all crimes defined where this is mandated and for Asean societies themselves to express their disapproval to their governments for using this as a surrogate excuse for their inability to successfully curb what they perceive to be the drug 'problem' and other issues like firearms control.

A good point for individuals interested in lobbying governments to begin is Jonathan Glover's book Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century whilst one awaits with great interest the conclusions and recommendations of a proposed Campbell Collaboration Protocol entitled 'The cost benefit and cost effectiveness of sentencing: a systematic review of the literature.'

Conflicts of interest: None: in particular, the ideas in this piece were independently conceived and I am not currently associated with the anti-death penalty lobby in any country or jurisdiction.

Yesterday: A case against the death penalthy Part 1

Dr LF Ng is a Malaysian-born medical oncologist, currently based in Australia. He was an undergraduate college contemporary of Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong at Cambridge University, UK where they graduated B.A. together in 1974. When Malaysia-based, the writer was ambivalent towards the mandatory death sentence but with time and extensive travel, his stand has moved to a more compassionate one.