TAWAU: Member of parliament Datuk Chua Soon Bui has submitted a memorandum of appeal on Yong Vui Kong to Datuk Husein Hanif, the new Ambassador and Permanent Mission of Malaysia to the United Nations (UN) at the UN headquarters, New York, in July.
Chua said she briefed Husein that Vui Keong, a young Malaysian from Sandakan, who is now awaiting execution in Singapore for drug trafficking, was facing injustice.
Reference was made to Vui Keong’s counsel, M Ravi, that the Chief Justice of Singapore, Chan Sek Keong, should recuse or disqualify himself from hearing the youth’s appeal as he was in a position where conflict of interest occurred.
The Chief Justice had rejected the application despite it was validly made. As a result, Vui Keong suffered a breach of customary international law as a fair trial had been denied to him.
Vui Keong and his family had appealed to the Malaysian government to take the matter before the United Nations for adjudication in order to protect its citizen’s right to receive a fair trial.
Husein said he was well aware of Vui Keong’s case and he would, after consultation with Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry, proceed on a bilateral discussion with the Singapore government on the matter to be raised within the United Nations platform.
Vui Keong was working as a “runner” for an unidentified criminal boss. He was arrested in 2007 with 47 grams of heroin, being 19 years old at the time, which means he was not an adult (the age of majority in Singapore is 21 years).
He is also said to have been illiterate and did not know that the penalty for smuggling drugs was death, nor that the package he was carrying contained drugs.
Vui Keong was originally represented in the High Court by Kelvin Lim. Due to his young age, trial judge Justice Choo Han Teck asked the prosecution to consider reducing the charge against him (since execution is mandatory for convicted drug smugglers in Singapore). The prosecution declined, and Vui Keong was sentenced to death.
M Ravi, a human rights lawyer, took over the case and succeeded in obtaining a stay of execution. However, Chan Sek Keong, the Chief Justice of Singapore, ruled on 14 May 2010 that he would be hanged.
Defense lawyers have argued that Vui Keong’s execution violates human rights and the separation of powers in government.
M. Ravi has asked Malaysia to bring the case to the International Court of Justice.