Yong Vui Kong: The Tenth Letter - Drugs and the Death Penalty

Yong Vui Kong

Yetian,

You once asked me to write about drugs and the death penalty, but I said that I did not have the right to discuss such an issue because I myself have been sentenced to death because of a drug offence. Also, I had not really thought too deeply about this question.

You asked me again about this issue.

Everyone here has been sentenced to death. Most of them are sentenced to death for drug offences. There are some who are older, but most of us are young. They have all been through their trials and lost their appeals. Some are waiting for responses from the President, others are just waiting for their “time” to come. They all have their own stories.

My brother mentioned another inmate; his name is Chun Yin. I believe the newspapers have reported his case before. Every Monday Yun Leong will see Chun Yin’s father. Once, outside the prison, Chun Yin’s father even asked Yun Leong to sign his petition.

My lawyer Mr Ravi also mentioned him before. His story is like this: after Chun Ying’s parents divorced, Chun Yin stayed with his father, helping his father run stalls selling clothes and VCDs in morning and night markets. He got to know a regular customer. This regular customer convinced him to go overseas and bring gold bars into Singapore. All the arrangements were made by this customer. But it turned out that hidden in the bag were not gold bars, but drugs. Chun Yin did not know that it was drugs hidden in the bag until the police ripped open the lining. He told the court all the details of the matter, and also revealed the identity of the customer and his phone numbers. But the judge did not believe him. My lawyer told me that the police had not done their best to trace this customer, and the judge did not think that it was important.

I am not a lawyer, but I cannot understand, why didn’t they trace this man? Often it is because of people like him that we are in such a situation. If this man was found, wouldn’t we be able to find out if Chun Yin was telling the truth or not? Chun Yin is currently locked inside here, how can he find the truth himself?

I am beginning to wonder, are there really people who have been wronged? Are all the sentences really fair? If a person has been wronged and hanged, isn’t it very tragic?

I have mentioned my next-door inmate before. He was very young, and he has already died. We talked about a lot of things. He never mentioned his case, but I feel that he was a very naïve, very ignorant kid. He could not face death. That morning at 3am, he was dragged out. His crying really made my heart ache. I kept chanting, hoping that his suffering would be decreased. I wonder, how could a person like him be a drug trafficker out to harm society?

After that time, I told the warden that even though I am at fault, so is the person who was behind the scenes making all the arrangements for me. I wanted to stop him from harming more people, so I told the police who this person was. I don’t know what happened next. I heard from the lawyer that he has been detained, but there is no evidence, so he has not been charged.

There is still one more thing that I must talk about. About 2 months ago, there was another inmate. He was older. His appeal was successful and he has been released. I asked my lawyer why; isn’t it very difficult to appeal? Isn’t it true that only a few people win their appeals? The lawyer told me that the Court of Appeal’s decision is like this: this person brought in many different types of drugs, and one of these was heroin. He told the court that he did not know that one of these drugs was heroin. The court believed him and said that he really didn’t know he was carrying heroin, and so he was released. The lawyer even jokingly told me, if only Chun Yin had said that he knew he was carrying drugs, just not that the drug was heroin, he might have had a chance.

My lawyer also takes the opportunity to explain to me the law regarding drug offences, saying that as long as drugs are found on you guilt is presumed, and if you are carrying more than a certain amount you will be presumed to be trafficking, etc. I don’t fully understand, but I think that this is very important. Many people don’t know about this, and because they fall on the wrong side of this law, they are sentenced to death.

Learning about these cases, I find it very strange. How is it that the court can believe this person but not that person; what is the standard and attitude adopted towards drug cases and the death penalty? My lawyer has tried to explain it to me, but it is too complicated and I don’t quite understand, so I don’t dare to talk about it here.

I suppose what I can say here is to encourage all the readers to go and understand this law!

Vui Kong

21/6/2011

**Note: The man Vui Kong mentioned to have won his appeal did not get acquitted. He only had his death sentence overturned, and received a different sentence.

Source: Save Yong Vui Kong (Facebook page), June 28, 2011

Click here to sign an online petition urging Singapore's President to commute Yong's death sentence to a prison sentence and thus grant him a second chance.

_________________________

Use the tags below or the search engine at the top of this page to find updates, older or related articles on this Website.

Comments

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

China Executed 2,400 People in 2013, Dui Hua

A Chinese police officer lights a last cigarette for an inmate moments before his execution. The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide. Dui Hua bases its 2013 estimate on data points published in Southern Weekly that are consistent with information provided to Dui Hua by a judicial official earlier this year. The mainland magazine reported that a former senior judge of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) stated at a seminar in July that the number of executions had reached 1/10 of the highest number recorded since 1979. In 1983 - the 1st year of the Strike Hard campaign during which the power to approve capital punishment was given to provincial high courts - 2...

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

US | Federal judge upholds constitutionality of nitrogen gas executions

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday ruled that execution by nitrogen gas does not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, rejecting an Alabama inmate’s claim that it causes excessive suffering. The ruling came after the first bench trial in the country to examine the constitutionality of the execution method that has now been used to put eight people to death, seven in Alabama and one in Louisiana. The ruling clears the way for Alabama and other states to continue with the method and is a setback for critics who hoped a fuller examination of Alabama’s protocol would halt its use.

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog