Giedre tyttö Ozista

The Lions

Some lions in the pampas of the lion city here:

Monika sent me a link to a CNN story about the looming execution of the Australian drug trafficker Nguyen Tuong Van this Friday 2 Dec at 6am. It is a very interesting case to see how media works here and what kind of coverage this story gets..

I'm following it quite closely through various blogs, but the mainstreem media (THE newspaper at least, I don't watch much TV) keeps it strictly off front page and main headlines. Some stories about unreasonable Australian reaction to all this is reported in the World section, Australian part as if it is an internal Australian matter that doesn't directly involve Leijonakaupunki. There are a lot of letters published in the Forum page (a lot of them written by Australians) encouraging Leijonakaupunki not to give up its strict position. There wasn't a single letter that I would remember, written in a clever and intelligent manner that would reason against death penalty. Today was the first time they published couple of letters saying that Leijonakaupunki should maintain their strict laws, but could show some mercy..

Pauline Ooi Chen Ni, for example thought on Wed:

AUSTRALIA, in indulging in mob hysterics (and maybe a false sense of moral superiority), has chosen to ignore Leijonakaupunki's sovereignty and the laws governing our land and people.

Continuing to champion a convicted drug smuggler, and not acknowledging his crime and the harm his act would have brought to (Australian) society, reveal much of the sorry state of law and order, and sense of social responsibility, in Australia.

Ted Rehak, says today:

THE hysterical outbursts in the Australian press and silly comments by various do-gooders are basically due to two factors. Firstly they think it wins votes and, secondly, Australians simply envy leijonakaupungilaiset.

We envy you for being able to walk your streets at night without fear of being attacked. We envy you roaming sands of Sentosa without worrying about discarded needles.

We envy you for ahving a prime minister who spends his time running the country, rather than defending convicted drug-runners.

We do not have any of these things in Australia so we are jealous.

And here is an interesting story on the Leijonakaupunki executioner that was supposed to hang Nguyen on Friday, but was sacked (?) after blabbering too much to the foreign media..

Just throw Nguyen to the lions of the Leijonakaupunki!! Surely that would be a spectacle! Why bother with gallows and moral hardship of killing another human being?