COMMENT | Singapore, please don't be cold-blooded robots
COMMENT | Today is Deepavali, the great Hindu festival of lights.
The action of the Singapore government, however, has cast great darkness over what is supposed to be a bright and happy day.
Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, 33, is scheduled to be executed on drug trafficking charges on Nov 10.
I have previously written about how Nagaenthran is documented to have an IQ of 69, which is considered by international standards to be an intellectual impairment and treated as a disability.
He explained that he became involved in this mess when he tried to borrow RM500 for his father’s heart operation and was assaulted and threatened by a man who also threatened to kill his girlfriend.
Despite these circumstances, Nagaenthran was sentenced to death for entering Singapore with 42 grams (less than three tablespoons) of diamorphine strapped to his thigh.
Public uproar
There has been a...
COMMENT | Today is Deepavali, the great Hindu festival of lights.
The action of the Singapore government, however, has cast great darkness over what is supposed to be a bright and happy day.
Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, 33, is scheduled to be executed on drug trafficking charges on Nov 10.
I have previously written about how Nagaenthran is documented to have an IQ of 69, which is considered by international standards to be an intellectual impairment and treated as a disability.
He explained that he became involved in this mess when he tried to borrow RM500 for his father’s heart operation and was assaulted and threatened by a man who also threatened to kill his girlfriend.
Despite these circumstances, Nagaenthran was sentenced to death for entering Singapore with 42 grams (less than three tablespoons) of diamorphine strapped to his thigh.
Public uproar
There has been a huge public uproar both in Malaysia and Singapore over the sheer inhumanity, on so many levels, surrounding this upcoming execution.
And now, the Singaporean Home Affairs Ministry (MHA) has seen fit to respond to the controversy, as reported by Singaporean portal Today Online.
“Responding to queries from Today Online, the MHA pointed to the High Court's findings that Nagaenthran’s claim that he had delivered the bundle under duress from someone who allegedly assaulted him and threatened to kill his girlfriend was ‘fabricated’ and inconsistent with his other accounts.
“Nagaenthran himself resiled from his claim of duress in subsequent proceedings and accepted that he committed the offence because he needed money, as opposed to having been labouring under any threat,” the MHA said.
The ministry added that the Court of Appeal found that Nagaenthran’s “vacillation between various accounts of why he had committed the offence did not aid his case at all”.
“Nagaenthran was found to have clearly understood the nature of his acts, and he did not lose his sense of judgement of the rightness or wrongness of what he was doing,” it said.
READ MORE: A Deepavali trip to S’pore to see Nagaenthran, one last time
The Court of Appeal also found that this was “the working of a criminal mind” who had weighed the risks and benefits associated with the crime.
The court said that “Nagaenthran took a calculated risk which, contrary to his expectations, materialised. It was a deliberate, purposeful and calculated decision on Nagaenthran’s part to take the chance”.
Prominent human rights lawyer N. Surendran described this response very aptly as ‘robotic’.
Poor attempt at 'logic'
Malaysians and Singaporeans have a long-standing rivalry, and we have been known to make fun of our neighbours for being too rigid, lacking soul, and such.
I must confess, seeing the compassion and generosity extended by Singaporean activists over this case and other similar ones have totally changed my perception of Singaporeans.
Sadly, the same cannot be said of their government.
Their poor attempt at ‘logic’, and their stubborn single-minded intention to snatch the life of this young man really gives the impression of a government that is clinging stupidly to an outdated, one-dimensional algorithm designed to perpetrate siege mentality and blind authoritarianism.
The statement by the MHA suggests that they are scrambling to find whatever half-past six excuses to try and wriggle out of the shame being poured upon them from every corner of the globe in the wake of the massive international scandal this is causing.
Their only credit is that they did not dispute Nagen’s IQ of 69. Is it really surprising that such a man might give inconsistent accounts of what had happened under the intense interrogation he must surely have experienced?
I am not saying that Nagen is the equivalent of, say, someone with Down’s Syndrome, but if my understanding is correct, he basically falls into a similar category, legally speaking.
Would we be confident with the ‘results’ of the Singaporean police subjecting someone with Down’s Syndrome to intense interrogation?
The MHA’s argument here is not only ridiculous, it is cold-blooded.
What kind of mentally impaired person takes ‘calculated risks’ and exhibits ‘the workings of a criminal mind’?
Has the Singaporean government become so weak and insecure that it jumps at intellectually disabled people in the shadows, imagining them to be criminal masterminds seeking to sink the island republic in a deluge of drugs?
This is insanity.
Institutions that fail to adapt will go extinct
We must also question the MHA’s basis for insisting that Nagaenthran’s story was ‘fabricated’. Exactly how did they establish this?
Was it by sending an investigation team to Johor Bahru and cooperating with Malaysian law enforcement to determine the facts of the case conclusively? If so, please do share the details and results of those investigations.
Or was it by simply badgering a poor, confused, disoriented boy who was isolated, without any true source of support, until he couldn’t tell left from right?
If there is one thing history has shown, it is that institutions that fail to adapt will go extinct.
Singapore’s governing People's Action Party has grown so used to doing business in only one way, that it risks sticking to these guns all the way to the sinking of their own ship.
If they wish to survive in a world that is evolving at breakneck speed, their best chances are to adapt and evolve - to work on the basis of compassionate justice wherever possible, and on the even simpler basis of facts, proportionality, and self-interest if their robot souls cannot achieve even that basic modicum of human compassion.
If they continue to turn deaf ears to the pleas to be humane that are coming from both sides of the causeway, then they merely demonstrate that they are no longer worthy to represent the true noble souls of the Singaporean masses.
RM500 and three tablespoons of morphine is no reason to execute a mentally impaired man.
If instead, you want to go all out to arrest the men making millions in profit by sending wave after wave of these drug mules to their deaths, you will have nothing but the full support of both Malaysian and Singaporean citizens.
Please, be human.
NATHANIEL TAN hopes for a better Deepavali for Nagen’s family next year. He can be reached at nat@engage.my.
The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.
