everybody, say hi to the executioner

Remember the aussie fellow who was caught for drug trafficking and sentenced to the gallows recently? Our friends down under made quite a big fuss and tried to appeal for clemency for the guy since he agreed to cooperate and spill the beans on the main bad guys. They took into consideration that and his plight - he needed the money to pay off his twin brother's debt to loan sharks - but in the end all was to naught.

In my opinion? I was actually quite irritated that some aussies threatened to put bilateral relations on the line just to save that guy's life. An individual before country? Well done. Just leave the damn policies to our government for goodness sake - they own the gallows and not you (even though I don't really agree to the high execution rates in Singapore to begin with)

On a lighter note, the press down under has actually attempted to find out who was the one doing the hanging itself and it turns out that its a 73-year-old grand father who has done the job a whopping 850 times since his 46 years in prison. That's a pretty grim statistic. Anyway, its an interesting article which I'm not sure whether its published in the Straits Times already, but still a good read nonetheless (especially so if you're singaporean)

Nguyen Executioner Revealed