Obviously, there are a great number of people within civil society that I not only greatly respect, but who I also just like as people :) I think they’d make great public servants.
Just as obviously, there are genuine concerns about three corner fights that may give BN the upper hand, as well as the willingness of Pakatan to allow anything that might dillute their power (angels? probably not).
Anyhow, jealous of the vibrant conversation going on at his site (hehe), I too would love to hear your views on such an idea :) Fire away!
Just wanted to put up my article from TMI yesterday. There’s been a lot of discussion, and of course we respect all views.
I just hope the focus will be on whether Vui Kong deserves the same second chance (which has been granted to a number of drug offenders in Singapore, contrary to popular belief), due to his personal journey both before and after his arrest.
AUG 4 — Singapore is entirely within its legal rights to execute Yong Vui Kong.
This young man’s only hope for survival is the clemency and mercy of Singapore’s PAP government, and I am here to beg for it.
I can’t say begging is something that comes particularly naturally, but I do it wholeheartedly and without reservation.
If the Singapore government might be so kind as to hear out some of the possible reasons Vui Kong should be given a second chance, those of us concerned for him would be truly appreciative indeed.
As I understand it, the President of Singapore, SR Nathan, has full discretion to pardon Vui Kong, if he feels he deserves it.
Does he?
All of us have our stories — a tale of how we got from where we were, to where we are. Here is Vui Kong’s.
As disadvantaged a background as can be
Vui Kong was born in a secluded part of Sabah that had no electricity or running water. His father left his mother and his siblings when he was three, after which the family went to live with their grandfather on an oil palm estate.
The grandfather was an abusive man who would beat both Vui Kong and his mum, and force Vui Kong to work on the estate until past midnight.
While his siblings scattered across the country, only Vui Kong stayed with his mother in this small hell, which destroyed what little emotional health the broken family had left to them.
Vui Kong finally left and took what jobs he could find. At one point, he was washing cars for RM3 a day (less than RM100 a month — even if you worked every single day). His mother would eat rice and goreng pisang that cost two sen each.
The rest of us, I’m sure, can barely remember what a one sen coin looks like.
When Vui Kong asked her why she was eating so sparingly, she said she was saving what little she had to give to her children when they got married.
Unable to bear it any longer, Vui Kong moved to KL. “I lived in a place which I am too ashamed to even mention, even now,” he said.
He continued to scrape a living together, despite being underpaid and continuing to face regular beatings from employers.
It was not long before Vui Kong found himself amongst the only people who took him in for their own reasons — street criminals and “big brothers.” VCD selling led to debt collecting; debt collecting led to package deliveries.
Vui Kong was proud to finally be able to buy his mother a small birthday present, only a few days before package deliveries would lead to an encounter with the Singapore police outside the Meritus Mandarin Hotel in Singapore on June 12, 2007.
As far as Vui Kong knew, he was not doing anything worse than smuggling cigarettes, and was not aware of the enormity of what he faced until much later. When he learnt what was going to happen, he broke down. For many days and nights, he cried not just for himself, but for his mother. His family could not bear to tell their mother, for fear it would shatter her already fragile emotional state.
In prison, Vui Kong — not a hardened criminal to begin with — underwent a transformation. He discovered Buddhism, learnt how to read and write, and began a spiritual journey of coming to terms with his condition.
He has not kept his findings to himself, but has exerted every effort through various letters to his family and others to share religious teachings, gratitude and encouragement to his loved ones to spread goodness and peace amongst themselves and others.
Vui Kong has promised that should he be granted clemency, he will personally produce handwritten copies of the sutras along with anti-drug messages. He aspires to become an advocate for drug-free, clean living, and intends to use his experience as a deterrent to others.
Does Vui Kong deserve to die?
So, we are faced with a simple enough question: Does Vui Kong truly deserve to die?
We can explore this question even just from the perspective of what is good for society: Which course of action will likely result in less drug abuse?
On the one hand, we have a potential crusader against drugs — a young man who has a unique insight and understanding into the lives of the foot soldiers in the drug war; an insight the rest of us are unlikely to ever have. A young man already moved to such repentance even without any certainty of surviving the next few weeks.
On the other, some say executing Vui Kong will serve as a deterrent to future Vui Kongs.
Ironically enough, the biggest problem faced by this argument is demonstrated by Vui Kong himself.
An illiterate boy from the most rural parts of the region is more likely to believe his “big brother” when the latter tells him he is merely doing the equivalent of running cigarettes. How would he even learn of capital punishment? Having so little in life, the desperate will risk just about anything.
There is no way a boy like Vui Kong could have been properly educated about the dangers of drug trafficking — except perhaps via the efforts of the kind of crusader Vui Kong wants to be.
The reality is that no amount of dead Vui Kongs will achieve the same amount of deterring effect as one living Vui Kong.
This, perhaps even more than the inability of death penalty advocates throughout history to provide scientific, empirical evidence that the death penalty truly has an actual deterring effect on society in the long run, is what should most persuade us to stay the hand of vengeance.
None of us want the scourge of drug abuse to continue. Some of us also hope that the considerable resources of law enforcement agencies throughout the region can be directed at capturing the multi-millionaire drug kingpins, in addition to the low level foot soldiers.
Until we arrest the bosses and cripple this ultra-lucrative black market, a death sentence will do nothing to stop the waves of Vui Kongs to come.
What if it were our son?
Questions of crime and public policy aside, I cannot help but keep coming back to the life of this one individual — the paths that he has been forced to walk, the suffering he has endured throughout his life, and the deep journey of redemption he underwent in prison.
I suppose the question all of us should be asking — whether we are the President who takes into consideration the nation’s interest, Singaporeans, Malaysians, or any of us lucky enough to walk the world freely — is: If we or one of our own children were born into his circumstances and led his life, would we deserve a second chance?
A second chance to wrong our rights, a second chance to contribute towards society even though one was born into its lowest strata, a second chance to see the sun rise another day, and to love our fellow human beings?
A 14-year-old boy has claimed that he was repeatedly slapped, kicked, and handcuffed till his wrist was badly injured by a police constable when he was arrested for no apparent reason.
The boy further alleged that during detention on Tuesday night, he was threatened and forced to sign a document to “confess” to his crime– sexually assaulting a young girl.
Recounting his traumatic experience, M Mugelen said he was taking a swim with his friends at a pool at the Pantai Hill Park condominium at about 7pm with four other friends when police approached them.
“Four policemen came up to us and one of them asked us ‘who disturbed the girl?’ and we answered we did not,” he said.
“I did not even know the girl, who is about eight or nine years old. Why didn’t they question a group of Malays who were also nearby?” said Mugelen, adding that he suspected the girl’s family had lodged a false report to stop him and his friends from swimming at the area.
Mugelen said he was subsequently slapped three times on the left cheek and all five of them, aged between 14 and 17, were brought to the Pantai police station and later the Kuala Lumpur police headquarters.
One of Mugelen’s friends, 17-year-old P Thanasegar, alleged that when he was brought there he was handcuffed to a motorcycle and not given any helmet. He was also allegedly kicked in the stomach.
“At the station, my friends were released but I was left alone at about 10pm. A constable, Yani, with the police number 140179 then asked me what was I doing at the pool. When I answered nothing, he slapped and kicked me. He also tightened my cuffs until I was in so much pain,” said Mugelen. Doctors later told him that his wrists were dislocated.
“I cried the whole time and I thought about Kugan, and I became so afraid that I would die like him. The same policeman then told me this was ‘a little bit pain only, wait till you enter prison‘,” said Mugelen. (A Kugan, a suspect in the thefts of luxury cars, was found dead while in police custody last year.)
‘Investigate the constable’
Mugelen said he was later brought to another room where he was asked to sign a document he believed was a confession.
“I was so scared that I just signed it. They told me if I did not sign I will go to jail,” said Mugelen, who stopped schooling since he was 11 as he did not possess a birth certificate then.
Mugelen was relased at 2am the next day after a RM5,000 police bail was paid by his family, but not before he was again kicked by another unknown policeman.
Glad that my MP, Lim Lip Eng, is taking up the question of hardcore poor in KL.
There’s lots of statistics and differing definitions, etc, but I think anyone who has ever walked the streets of KL knows that there is a real hardcore poor problem – regardless of what list we do or don’t appear on.
I can only hope that BN run KL (even though all but one parliamentary constituency voted for Pakatan – and we won the last one, Setiawangsa, if you don’t count postal votes) will take the right attitude towards this problem.
We should not be concerned primarily about saving face, or statistics that put us in good or bad light in the eyes of the world.
Our primary concern should be instead any human being forced to suffer immense poverty, even amidst all our mega-towers of plenty.
This comes really late sorry, but it would be remiss of me not to write a bit about the vigil on Sunday night.
I think one of the things that struck me most was the behaviour of the police, and the mindset it revealed.
I confess I was really perplexed. A simple question: Why?
Why the need to tunjuk kuasa until like that? Why are the police so scared of a little bit of wax? Why is it such a problem to gather peacefully to state an opinion?
I can’t say I’ve come up with any convincing answers.
None anyway that would explain the need to behave like territorially paranoid gorillas.
Although I sometimes wish I did, I really don’t even see the threat we pose.
The closest thing I could see to a logical explanation is: pride?
In many ways, Sunday night was a little reunion for many of us, who used to meet every Sunday night in PJ to light candles for the exact same reason: to protest detention without trial.
The cops gave us a hard time then too.
I tried so hard to put myself in the mind of whoever was calling the shots on the police side.
What was the real cause of all that chest thumping? Did they stand to gain anything besides some warped perception of ‘face’?
Do they consider the whole of PJ so confirmed going to Pakatan that they really didn’t care how bad an impression they made on the public?
One arrest was one too many, but if other states had five or less arrests, what was it about us that necessitated 30?
Including so many who were just standing about, doing nothing much.
It really is an appetite for blood on the part of the PJ police that I don’t understand at all.
They had to process 30 people, which meant the rest of us had to wait outside the police station until 5am, which meant they had to post FRU guards by the entrance in the off chance we went apeshit and decide to storm the place :|
All that effort, all those trucks, and for what?
The alternative? Oh I don’t know, let us speak our minds for an hour, chant a few slogans, and then bugger off – everyone’s gone by 9.30pm, no extra work for anyone, and Bob’s your uncle.
Sigh. I really don’t understand it. It’s like trying to deal with infants. Or wild animals.
Anyway.
Nonetheless, it was good to see everyone again (*waves* :) And even better to see some new faces – young ones who I am very optimistic will carry the torch that leads the way to a better Malaysia.
As usual, great coverage from Merah Hitam and Ummu Asiah, there’s a lot else out there too!
The Malay section editor for news portal Merdeka Review, Lim Hong Siang, had his statement recorded at the Dang Wangi police headquarters today.
This is in relation to an allegation made by Malay rights NGO Perkasa claiming that MCA secretary-general Chai Kim Seng had issued a seditious statement on a website on July 1.
Hong Siang is an old friend, and a really nice guy. And Dang Wangi, well, is a place of some significance to me.
I asked him if everything was ok, and if he needed any help or anything. His reply?
