re: longdongs final request was for a banning
We can't change execution attitudes: PM
Australia cannot change the attitude of powerful nations which carry out the death penalty, Prime Minister John Howard said, as the body of executed drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van arrived home.
Nguyen's lawyer Lex Lasry, QC, said the case should be seen as a "signpost" in an ongoing campaign against capital punishment. Nguyen was hanged by Singapore on Friday for drug trafficking, despite pleas from clemency by the Australian government and his lawyers.
Mr Lasry pledged to continue the campaign against the death penalty and is calling on the Australian government to formulate a uniform policy on capital punishment in south-east Asia.
But Mr Howard said while he opposed the death penalty, a diplomatic offensive against the United States, China and other countries with capital punishment would be fruitless.
"I think we have to be realistic about what can be achieved," he told ABC television.
"We're not going to change the attitude of countries in the region about capital punishment.
"And when you talk about the region you have to include in that, of course, China.
"China executes people on a regular basis, the United States has capital punishment.
"I'm against capital punishment because I recognise that the law is fallible."
Mr Howard said he would fight any moves to reintroduce capital punishment to Australia and would always lobby for Australians on death row overseas. Two men in Vietnam and one man in China are facing execution, while the Bali Nine are on trial and could face death by firing squad if convicted.
"But I think we have to be a little bit realistic in suggesting that the government should complain as loudly as a death sentence being carried out on Saddam Hussein as we did in relation to Nguyen is a bit unrealistic," he said.
"Call it hypocrisy if you like, I think call it just normal human common sense."
Mr Lasry said his 25-year-old client's wrongs should not be glossed over.
"Van did a wrong thing, there was a very large amount of heroin in his possession when he was arrested," Mr Lasry said after stepping off a flight from Singapore.
"He was deserving of punishment, there was no argument about that, but to have killed him is to say 20 or 30 years imprisonment isn't enough.
"... So no, he is not a martyr or a hero, but he inspires by his conduct and by his fortitude. I'm very proud of him."
But Mr Lasry, who said he came to see Nguyen as a son, said the case should be seen as a "signpost" in an ongoing campaign to oppose capital punishment, which he describes as fundamentally wrong.
Nguyen was executed for importing almost 400 grams of heroin into Singapore in December 2002, with Singaporean authorities rejecting repeated appeals for clemency for the Melbourne man.
"Van may become a signpost to demonstrate the way young people who get into the situation that he was in can transform themselves," Mr Lasry said.
Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd says Australia must work with European nations through the United Nations to abolish capital punishment "for all time".
Mr Rudd said Australia must re-invigorate a campaign to end the death penalty.
Mr Rudd dismissed Mr Howard's claim that Australia cannot change the attitude of powerful nations that carry out the death penalty.
"I disagree ... there is a lot that Australia can do," Mr Rudd said in Brisbane.
"Whether it is death by hanging, whether it is death by firing squad, whether it is death by stoning ... Australia must, with the Europeans, work through the United Nations to abolish the death penalty universally and for all time."
Mr Rudd said Australia could help abolish the death penalty by convincing 150 nations to sign the Second Optional Protocol of the International Covenant of Civil and Political Rights.
"That optional protocol was drafted back in 1989," he said.
"Australia has signed and ratified that optional protocol, so have 50 other countries.
"But that leaves about 150 other countries to go around the world.
"And that is where Australia can team up with the Europeans, who have a similar attitude to Australia, to make sure that we put in every effort to abolish the death penalty.
"It doesn't matter whether we are talking about the death penalty in the United States, the Islamic Republic of Iran or in the Republic of Singapore, Australia should get behind the Europeans, through the United Nations, to put in every effort to abolish this form of punishment once and for all throughout the world."
