A match is lit in the darkness and the room suddenly glowers with three silent faces watching their gang leader light his cigar, then slowly exhale with relish. “So you have good news,” he mutters to his three right-hand men. “Akmal Shaikh has been released, on the grounds of mental disability.” The three men nod solemnly, slowly starting to smile because the boss is now smiling.
“Good, good,” purrs the boss. “So we can proceed with our China market. “Are the next batches of heroin ready?” he asks of one of his henchmen. The henchman nods, “Yes, sir.”
“And do we have a few more …” the boss shrugs his shoulders, grins cynically, “mentally incapable” people to … um … help penetrate the market?”
“Yes sir, and they will be reassured there is no threat to their lives because of the precedent created by the case, Shaikh vs the People’s Republic of China. No threat at all.”
The boss lowers his cigar and the blue-grey smoke trails from his mouth like a cancer, chilling his final words. “We have won then. We have won. Proceed.”
Though the above is meant to be black humour, it is far from an unrealistic outcome if Akmal Shaikh had not been executed for carrying 4kg of heroin into China and instead released.
Let me be blunt about my views on the issue of China’s stance on drug trafficking into the country: It’s tough, but I agree with it. Let’s get that out the way; no beating about the bush.
Michael Trapido has just written two heartfelt blogs on the sentencing of Akmal Shaikh and I hear where the man is coming from.
Mental insanity has its place in legal process. However, having read the various articles about Shaikh’s bipolar disorders and his available biography on the net, I remain unconvinced about Shaikh’s inability to make adult decisions. He was capable of getting involved in business ventures and international travel, which meant he knew how to pack a suitcase. And 4kg is a lot of stash, a lot of lives that can be destroyed.
Yes, a lot of lives that can be destroyed. That seems to be forgotten in the debacle. I found it fascinating that nowhere in Traps’s two blogs is there any mention of what heroin is about and what it does to people. This is what it does: heroin sucks human beings into a nightmare, robs them of their dignity and bodily functions, reduces them to gibbering wrecks and then they slowly die, wreaking havoc on family and friends. Children are fed it too and those vibrant young lives go up in smoke. That is what heroin does, and I cannot emphasise it enough. Shaikh might as well have been smuggling candy, according to Traps’ blogs and other articles. The deadly substance becomes irrelevant as China’s zero tolerance policy on heroin, instead, is treated as inhumane, monstrous. What about the bloody monsters who traffic the poison with no regard for human life?
And Shaikh was not exactly found guilty one day and executed the next. From the discovery ofthe deadly substances he was carrying, and no small amount either, it was more than two years, including listening to pleas for clemency, before he was executed. I am uncomfortable with people being executed. But I am even more uncomfortable with evils like drug trafficking and terrorism not being taken absolutely seriously. They rightly should be regarded as crimes towards which a state should have zero tolerance.
What kind of people market heroin and enjoy the material wealth it brings, with utter disregard for the lives it shatters? People with zero conscience. I say fight zero conscience with zero tolerance.
Yes, I may be accused of being blunt, callous, and I realise the death sentence is a sensitive issue. But the line has to be drawn somewhere and it stays there. No shifting of the goalposts. The clear, blunt, uncategorical message of China to the bastard drug traffickers and to the world is ZERO TOLERANCE. DO NOT SCREW WITH US ON THIS ONE. The low-life thugs will think twice before trying to shatter people’s lives (including children, what do they care) in China with their filthy drugs.
The fact that I live in China does not bias me. Things go on here that I do not agree with at all as per my blog a week ago, Memories of apartheid forced removals here in China. Recently my wife was robbed in Shanghai. She was sitting in a coffee shop and her bag was stolen, including mobile phone and more than a thousand RMB in cash. The theft was recorded on close circuit TV. The police came, took her to the station and asked her questions like, ‘Where is your passport? What are you doing in China? Who do you work for? What is their telephone number?’ They took down her name and put it into a computer. The computer printed out a picture of Marion and all her current details, where she works in China, where she lives, work visa status etc. “Is this you?” the police officer asked. There seemed to be far more interest in her legitimate status in China than in her welfare and in catching the thief. (He never was caught.) I thought the way she was treated was ridiculous. I will criticise what I see happening in China if occasion demands. So it is with no bias that I grudgingly agree with China’s cast-iron rule on drug trafficking.
Here in Shanghai, China, the children are safe, healthy and happy. (I am only speaking for Shanghai and realise there are severe welfare problems in China, such as those that arose after the Sichuan earthquake.) They have a vibrancy and a love for life I have never experienced before as a teacher in my 20 years of teaching, mostly in my private business capacity as a sort of motivational coach. I know, I teach Chinese children nearly every day and I have taught in a variety of schools over the last few years in Shanghai.
The welfare of Shanghai’s children is taken very seriously. Parents need not fear drugs. Drugs are rife in many Western countries, where, coincidentally, the rights and mental state of perpetrators of serious crime seems to be over-emphasised and obscures the grievous harm they have done. Drugs are a huge problem in the UK and the USA, especially among children. Then there is tik in South Africa, the black fruit of which leaves bereaved parents and shattered families. Somewhere the line has to be drawn on serious crime like drug trafficking. China’s line is utterly clear and the fruits of it in Shanghai’s society are happy children who bring a joy to my life and Marion’s. Nearly every evening we have stories to tell around our kitchen table.
*** Shaikh’s execution was a harsh conclusion. However, clemency and custodianship of the human race — and heroin in one enemy — comes before clemency for the individual. Soren Kierkegaard would argue the teleological, temporary suspension of even the ethical for the universal good. And the over-emphasis in the West on the human rights of perpetrators and abettors of serious crime, could lead us to the following reduction ad absurdum:
Jefferson squints through the telescopic sights of his rifle at the man with bombs strapped around his waist under his jacket, who is strolling around the crowded shopping mall. Near the bomber, children are playing on a jungle gym. Jefferson whispers into his radio, “Sarge, I gotta clean bead on the perp. Do I have a green light?”
“No can do, Jefferson.”
“Why the hell not?”
“New human rights rulings on criminals and terrorists — pleas for insanity and mental disability.”
“What the hell has that got to do with this perp? He’s right next to a bunch of children, I can easy — ”
“That’s a negative, soldier! New infrared equipment we are using just did a MRI scan of the perp’s brain. He’s a bipolar with schizophrenic tendencies.”
“Well, so what else is new?”
“Yeah yeah but we gotta hear from the Human Rights Commission guys first. We can’t just take him down. Human rights, soldier, THINK! Human rights!”
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43 Responses to “Akmal Shaikh and China’s zero-tolerance policy on heroin”
Your argument is stronger than Traps.
We still have the convicted fraudster S Shaik shopping, playing golf and breaking his parole conditions. This despite the fact that he was let out of jail on the principle that he was terminally ill and had the right to be with his family in his last days.
This is now some two years ago.
Maybe we need to redefine “terminally ill”. Ask the Chinese for advice.
I fully agree with you on this one; Bi-polar does not make you stupid, it is not a “mental disability” like Downs or Autism. 4KG’s? Life’s a bitch and then you must die….But still Rod, I wonder about your bias. To some degree this article was “reviewed” by “authorities” before being posted?
In a way i envy you.The experiences in South Africa
have changed.Black SAPS officials are far worse
asking bribes&abusing their position.The youth of
China are changing POSITIVELY and you obviously
have an influence.Here teachers i meet that work
in government schools have no hope.The SA youth
have a far bigger atitude of entitlement them their
parents.
Yo, Rod, the same justice you want for your wife is the same justice Akmal Shaikh was asking for. He, his family, his defenders wanted to have their day in court where they could present a case to show he wasn’t fit to stand trial. Whether that case would stick wasn’t the point. like your wife, they just wanted to be heard.
China has a point. You have to draw a hard line when it comes to drug trafficking issues. Unfortunately, the King pins are the ones that don’t get their hands dirty and will just send in another stooge. They really don’t care about the welfare of their mules.
Ron
A rather crass and stigmatising view of individuals who suffer from ‘mental illness’. Between 1 in 4 to 1 in 6 will suffer during their lifetime with a recognised ‘mental illness’. You portray a narrow view of life and its complexities. Your views reflect a narrow, ignorant and insensitive view of what it is to be ‘human’. Fortunately your views in the developed world on mental illness, are in the main confined to the margins. Would suggest you take some time to investigate what the ‘diagnosis’ bi-polar disorder means,in particular to suffers and their families.
You have created an impression that you live in a ‘John Wayne’ world of simple right and wrong - one wonders how you deal with complex personal emotional issues.Doubtless you ignore them and crash on regardless in proven best practice chauvinist white male SA mode.
Then again you could get help - but that would mean confronting your true self - discomforting - but not as discomforting as living life with a ‘mental health’ disorder.
Rod when people say that they support China’s drug policy FULLSTOP they are treading on very dangerous ground.
Bipolars function in society but then so do people who drink and take drugs.
When you are very drunk or high you are unable to function normally and do things which you would otherwise not have done and spend the rest of your life paying for it.
Ask me I’m a criminal attorney.
The difference in the case of a bipolar is that usually (unless they stop medication)they are just as high or drunk as the above but INVOLUNTARILY.
In other words if he is suffering an episode he could do the same things that drunks and druggies do without meaning to.
So to punish them for involuntary acts is as bad as punishing a fully retarded person because at the relevant time he might as well be fully retarded.
Then to suggest that anyone caught with drugs or dealing drugs must simply die is extremely dangerous.
Many of your readers who are sitting their nodding their heads have probably unknowingly been in a car where there are drugs. Best they look up SA law on people who are in the same car. Imagine if it carried a death penalty?
The reason we have laws is to assess who is held accountable.
Kill them all is great for armchair critics - If they were on the wrong end of it they’d find out why people are so angry.
Contrary to popular belief and the propaganda: over the years I have known many long term drug users (grass mainly), including two heroine addicts, that were productive members of society. Some people just have the need to self medicate. To deprive them is just plain cruelty.
Your being a criminal attorney does not automatically make you right in your thinking, or of superior intelligence, or make your armchair any better than mine.
You have a narrow, simplistic view on most issues that fails to focus on the big issue. You wrongly focus on the drug mule ‘victim’, instead of the narcotic industry and how to combat it. The terms “out of sight, out of mind” and “not in my backyard”, were made for you; - until your son and daughter one day comes home a heroin addict. The treatment of the ‘poor’ drug mule then becomes inconsequetial. It is a non-issue and intentional collateral damage in a war that kills thousands of innocents every day at the hand of addicts and drug dealers.
The freedoms for the individual that you defend within the context of our laws, are the same freedoms that cause immense hidden harm in society. You become the menace.
The “family” and the Brits had 2 years, but only came up with the bi-polar excuse at the eleventh hour.
What you say is mostly true - but I don’t believe it in this case.
I have had bi-polar friends and family - and visited them and fellow patients in hospital.
They very seldom get to the stage of not knowing what heroin is, and if they did they woud also not be able to pack a suitcase and board a plane. They would be too obviously disorientated. I doubt they would be allowed to board.
And bi-polar people kill themselves, not other people.
Spot on Mike. As I said in your previous post, unless you have been around someone with Bi-polar, who has no idea that what he is doing is not normal, then you would not understand.
It’s easy for detractors to brush this away and support the “shoot on sight” approach that the Chinese use. They are wrong; Bi-polar is a serious mental disability.
HI traps - you do present a convincing argument in your comment above, but not in your blogs on the issue.
I dont want our discussions to end up in personal attacks and that seemed to be the case, or so I gather,from your comment on the Canadian couple attack blog that I wrote in response to yours. You did not engage with the issues I raised, just sulkily (or so it seemed) said it just reinforced why you dont read my blogs. That is not healthy debate. I have nothing “personal” against you, I just dont agree with some of what you write.
So OK the Chinese dont execute Shaikh. As per my blog that just “opens up the heavens” for those who wish to smuggle drugs into the country. I said in my blog I think execution is very tough, but somewhere the line has to be drawn. And I fail to understand why you didnt balance your pieces with what Shaikh actually smuggled into the country, or at least what was in his suitcase. It was not candy. It was poison.
If you and I are going to write blogs and substantiate our opinions… well, ther ei s going to be debate. But I think you unnecessariyl took it to the level of personal attack. The fact that I engage with your writing is in itself a compliment. And I have only engaged with four of you blogs in the year and a half (continued)
(continued from previous) I have blogged on Thought Leadership. I do not dissect your blogs “all the time”. I wanted lively debate, not personal attacks. You come across as a great guy, but I do not agree with you all the time… so what?
Peace brother.
Happy new year.
You were out of line Rod and your blog cannot be contrived as anything other an attack on Mike.
You both contribute to this forum with what can only be described as top class articles.
There will always be healthy debate about a particular subject that will stir the pot and create responses that differ to the subjected view.
That is acceptable, but, if it becomes personal then I for one will refrain from participating.
You guy need to find some common ground and remember that we see you, as people with the vision and inspiration to tell it like it is.
Bun fights are for politicians, not for intelligent bloggers on a forum such as this.
Steviewonder - my blog was not about mental illness. I have compassion for the truly mentallly ill. I have suffered from depression, twice was put on medication but my system rejected the stuff for some reason.
Like Lyndall beddy, I just do not agree that Shaikh’s 11th hour attempt at mitigation because he was perhaps bipolar holds water.
Traps and those agreeing with him come strongly from the viewpoint of rights for the accused. When seen solely from that point fo view, his and their commentary are convincing. However, the emphasis of Siobhan, myself and others is the rights of those who become victims of the drugs is also strongly convincing.
Perhaps we need to balance the two viewpoints.
At the end of the day? If I was given the choice as to what should have been done to Shaikh I would have said do not execute him. Deport him back to the UK with a stiff warning. But then softies like me are then guilty of being too soft on the drug trafficking criminals.
On this issue, then Traps - you say agreeing with zero tolerance on trafficking heroin is treading on dangerous ground. I think being too soft on traffickers and their mules is treading on dangerous ground.
Shaikh and the others involved - who will never get caught - knew the ruling in China. They ignored it and the price was paid.
StevieWonder and Michael T, a few points to consider:
- it took two years from arresting to execution so was not a rushed process
- do you know what the Chinese authorities did regarding (the late) submission of bi-polar illness? If not perhaps you should investigate their judicial process before putting pen to paper
- do you have any idea how much misery 4 kgs of heroin can cause?
- and how can you be so insensitive/unknowing about Chinese history and how the European colonial powers especially Britain forced/sold herion into China to balance their trade deficits thus causing a huge drug problem in the 1800’s.
About five Zimbabweans (men and women) are facing the same fate as Shaikh in China. Another one was bust in Indonesia. How do we get our government interested in their case of get rich or die trying.
Rod Mackenzie - I agree with you on the zero tolerance to drugs (and all other crime) even though I do not agree with the death sentence as practiced in China. All the more reason not to smuggle drugs into China. Bipolar Disorder: previously Manic Depressive. Several degrees apparently exist. Very difficult to diagnose and therefore very easy to use as an excuse.
I think Traps sees the world through legal eyes. While the law is something we should be able to wade our way through, it often defies logic. For example, people in SA today are taking finance houses to court over reckless lending, and in the process they lose sight of the fact that according to the principles of common sense they were in fact reckless borrowers. But because there is this reckless lending law, they start believing that they have no responsibility as borrowers. Now Traps talks about people being guilty of drug possession if they’re in a car with drugs - and states that many people may have been in this situation unknowingly. But the argument doesn’t end there. Were SA to be as strict as China on drugs, the chances of anyone unknowingly being in a car carrying drugs could be reduced to the equivalent of a meteor striking.
Am I the only one who finds that they’re punishing the wrong guy for it? Now they killed the guy who could eyewitness the person who gave the heroin to him. I’m far from saying that the guy himself shouldn’t be punished, but executing him as scapegoat and letting the organised crime behind him carry on seems like a bad idea to me.
Then there’s also the point of why people are trafficing drugs into China that way. The fact that they’re using rather “innocent” people means that the chance of success is not high enough for them to risk their own lives, but on the other hand it must still be high enough that the monetary loss for them if their carriers get caught does not play such a significant role. And let’s face it, the monetary gain is the only thing the people organising that kind of drug trafficing are interested in… Whether the caught carrier gets executed or not is not does not really have any impact on them, when their drugs are being confiscated and hopefully destroyed. They’re probably even happier with them being executed to avoid ever being identified…
Traps first blog included
“China are the world champions when it comes to the death penalty, executing more people than any other country every year. The vast majority of these cases relate to murder and drug trafficking.”
Well, seems like a damn fine place to start! Murder (quick version) and drug trafficking (slow version of murder). Either way, it’s murder and should receive very severe penalties. And if execution is the way to stop these then that must be the punishment. And if execution seems not to deter many murderers and drug traffickers, then the state should still execute them as the maximum sanction. Because no state should revert, no matter the provocation or seriousness of the crime, to earlier times type punishment of
- hanging, drawing and quartering (look it up if you do not realise quite what it means)
- burning
- crucifixion
- being put in a gibbet on a pole until one starved or thirsted to death or was picked to death by birds
- being tortured to death
Your contempt for human rights is a disqualifying flaw in your argument. Being accused or even convicted of a crime doesn’t make one not a person. Thus a zero tolerance system that concludes with state sponsored murder is outside the bounds of justice. The conservative scare story with which you close the article demonstrates the flaw in you argument. State violence directed to counter an imminent threat is different than violence to punish a threat that has been halted without violence. How would indefinite detention be less a dis-incentive? Endorsing capital punishment and calling for relaxing the inalienable rights of human beings exposes the moral flaws which underly the PRC’s relationship with its citizenry. Individuals, unless urban and wealthy (and thus a threat to stability), are treated as lacking autonomy and receive the benefit of the state as the state sees fit not based upon any social contract.
I can’t resist adding this comment. When the explorer Adulphe Delgorue was visiting the Zulu king Mpande ( father of Ceteswayo and successor to Dingaan, who had been successor to Shaka) he had some goods stolen from his tent. The king and the whole tribe were incredulous - the Zulu had no thieves! When the perpetrator was apprehended, confessed, and was immediately executed. The western explorer tried to get his sentence commuted and the Zulus and their king were scornful. This is what King Mpande said:
” A man is bad. I destroy him, not only on his own account, but to prevent the contagion of evil. Would you have me make a large hole in the earth and put him into it? Then he would have to be fed there at the expense of others. The painful life he would lead there would embitter him more against men, and, if he managed to escape, render him ten times more wicked.”
Now you see why the Zulus had no thieves (and the Chinese no drug dealers).
Rod - I’m afraid that your argument in favour of China’s execution of Shaikh is APPALLINGLY BAD. Acc. to your argument, if China failed to execute a mentally ill man, this would open the floodgates to drug lords using mentally ill people to deliver drugs.
But your argument just doesn’t add up. Firstly, if the man REALLY is mentally ill, then legally he is simply not competent to stand trial. Imagine if the drug lords had used a CHILD to smuggle drugs - would you be arguing that the child should also have been executed? After all, if not, the drug lords would start to use children …. I trust you would not want to go down that road.
2ndly, I imagine that part of the ploy of the Chinese is to use the death penalty as a deterrent. But to people who are mentally ill, deterrents mean very little.
3rdly, why is it necessary that Shaikh be *executed*? If he is caught, and the drugs confiscated, this doesn’t help the drug lords - executing the drug mule or keeping him in prison is indifferent to them. So again, your argument is flawed.
And finally, there is also the importance of DUE PROCESS!! If we go around killing everyone who commits a crime - regardless of their mental health or ability to reason - we’ll certainly have a crime-free world. But we;ll also have a terribly unjust one.
I see your logic, Nicole. However, the chances are he’s too smart to find, or untouchable. Or simply too far away from China. I guess that in all practicality China’s execution of this mule sends the message to other potential mules: “Don’t do jobs for drug barons”. That’s one way of reducing them to trading in more honest things. Like a consumer boycott!
I do get the impression that this has more to do with politics and ideaologies than the actual case at hand. There is a simple fact in life, and that is “if you go to Rome, you must do as the Romans Do”. Full stop. The Chinese have a law that executes drug dealers, so if you are planning to go to China, you must know it and deal with it. Otherwise, don’t bother going to China.
In any case, why do we even bother? Everyday we are bombarded with the propaganda of how appalling China’s human rights are. Yet, people from those same countries that spread that propaganda are lining up to go to China. Why? You don’t like what China does, stay away. But if you do go to China, then be prepared.
Would we have heard this much noice if this Shaikh guy was from Iran, for example? Me thinks not
Oscar Melamed - the drug lords will only start to use children when they are given the same right to free choice of action that they seem to enjoy in South Africa. Indeed in all the countries where this immense act of stupidity is practiced the insidence of crime by children has escalated. Children and the mentally deficient are not capable of making informed choices, yet and should therefore be protected and guided by adults not given leave to do as they wish. This produce what I call feral children. What type of society will they build when they become adult?
I fully agree with you Rod. I believe that, in so called enlightened justice systems, excuses and leniency on crime are taken too far. Those who commit serious crime should be held fully accountable and punished accordingly. I would love to see the Chinese zero tolerance attitude to crime adopted in SA. Crime here, as you know, is totally out of hand, largely due to ineffective punishment failing to act as a serious deterrent.
Having just spent half the evening reading the TL posts and comments, this was the first that really interested me. Do any South Africans really believe that laws should be upheld?
But the above says more about the repeated use of blogs from the same old people. Please TL, give us someone new to read. There is so much ’same old’ on this site.
Part one: Michael Trapido - peace accepted,but why uncle Rod, I think you are two or so years older than me ?
Ohhhhhh…. a reference to the fact I sometimes say aunty Lyndall?
Oscar Melamed - I find the idea of Shaikh being mentally ill very unconvincing. Read Lyndall Beddy’s commentary on this above. And th ebiploar issues was presented at the eleventh hour, long long after he was caught with the poison.
I am strongly in favour of human rights, and do nto hold it in contempt. I think the people’s lives the heroin would have destroyed is not given much attention.
As DeltaM put it very well above “I do get the impression that this has more to do with politics and ideologies than the actual case at hand. There is a simple fact in life, and that is “if you go to Rome, you must do as the Romans Do”. Full stop. The Chinese have a law that executes drug dealers, so if you are planning to go to China, you must know it and deal with it. Otherwise, don’t bother going to China.” Agreed.
Different countries have different rules. So just play by the rules of the country you are going to… or suffer the consequences.
I do agree that unfortunately the carrier, the mule, got the severest punishment and the “upline” got away Scot free. But that is NOT the fault of the Chinese.
When I see all the children in Shanghai, happy, safe, secure…
I was also referring to SB saying I have contempt for human rights in my last two comments on DeltaM and Oscar Melamed. I do not have contempt for human rights. Look at what I say about children in the blog and in the above comments.
Apologies: Typing should never be done in too much of a hurry.
Insidence should read incidence and it is the children, not the drug lords that is too young to be allowed to choose their own way to self-destruct.
Rod wrote: “Oscar Melamed - I find the idea of Shaikh being mentally ill very unconvincing.” 1stly, where is your argument for this? Are you a psychiatrist? And secondly, if you find it unconvincing, then why use it as a premise for one of your arguments? There is a difference between executing him b/c he is in fact NOT mentally unbalanced, and executing him b/c - even if he IS mentally unbalanced - it will serve as a deterrent. You seemed to be making the latter point (o/wise why even bring up his mental insanity?) I was arguing against this latter claim. Obviously if he is not mentally unbalanced, the issues change.
And X Cepting - your comments about children are totally irrelevant as a response to my comments. I don’t even understand the point you are trying to make.
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CRACKING CHINA was previously the title of this blog. That title was used as the name for Rod MacKenzie's second book, Cracking China: a memoir of our first three years in China, which is now available at Exclusive Books and other good bookstores. ISBN-13: 9780620451079.
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Rod and his wife, Marion, AKA the Chook or chookie, lived in China for five years. They have now moved to Auckland, New Zealand, where they hope to give Kiwi-land a crack. They live in a six-bedroom house along with the family, altogether seven rather individualistic and opinionated (sometimes self-opinionated) people and a small, mad terrier, Joey, who thinks he can pick up a rugby ball with his mouth.
Long ago Rod completed a post-graduate degree in English partly under the glacier presence and tutelage of J.M. Coetzee (who nevertheless encouraged Rod to keep writing). Rod has recovered from that ordeal.
He has written numerous other books, including two blockbuster novels and one novella. He is patiently waiting for publishers to See the Light.
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Truth be told, I am not married and have never been married, now at the sweet, tender, gullible age of 47. That's right, the Chook and I (the Chook be...
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Your argument is stronger than Traps.
We still have the convicted fraudster S Shaik shopping, playing golf and breaking his parole conditions. This despite the fact that he was let out of jail on the principle that he was terminally ill and had the right to be with his family in his last days.
This is now some two years ago.
Maybe we need to redefine “terminally ill”. Ask the Chinese for advice.
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