Lashes to Slaps on Wrists

The minimum wage in Washington State is $16.28 an hour, California $20 and Australia $15.49 (23.23 AUD). On Sunday, employers must pay double, so many eateries and cafes are closed. Family run immigrant businesses are notable exceptions.

Those figures made me think of a 2013 murder in Bà Rịa, a city adjacent to Vũng Tàu, my provisional home.

In Vietnam, there’s an illegal form of gambling, lô đề, based on winning lottery tickets. Though organizers could be jailed for up to three years, they exist in each neighborhood. In 2013, 19-year-old Minh owed his 28-year-old neighbor, Kiều, $27.50 through lô đề. Slow to pay, Minh was repeatedly threatened by Kiều, so he called her one night to settle. Leaving the house, Kiều told her 7-year-son mommy would be right back. Her husband was working out of town.

Though it wasn’t quite 9PM, the kid slept until morning. Waking, he realized his mom had not returned, so went to neighbors for help. Just 500 meters away, Kiều’s half naked body was found. A knife, her pants and panties lay near. Minh had raped the corpse.

That very night, Minh surprised his 29-year-old girlfriend with two gold rings and a bracelet, freshly stolen. With Kiều’s money, Minh also enjoyed himself a bit, so didn’t return to work in hilly Đạ Tẻh, a tribal town. Caught soon after, Minh wasn’t executed until 2018.

With the EU refusing to sell Vietnam lethal-injection drugs, its death row roster spiked, leading to calls for reinstalling firing squads. Over $27.50, two lives were lost. Curiously, Minh’s nickname was Cu Lỳ, or Stubborn Penis. His last photo showed Minh had gained weight and a more dignified face.

There’s an Aussie TV show, Border Security: Australia’s Front Line, that’s in its 18th season. So popular, it’s also broadcast in Canada, Poland, Belgium, Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Italy, France, Norway, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea, Thailand, Macau and Singapore. Smugglers can watch to better prepare.

Caught with undeclared or banned food at Aussie airports, Vietnamese are regularly featured on Border Security. They’ve also been snagged with heroin, cocaine and meth. A 3/24/05 episode showed two young Viet women with 220 grams of swallowed heroin. With a street value of $95,000, each would have pocketed just $3,168! It’s still more than $30. Snared in Singapore or China, each would have gotten the death penalty. Instead, they were sentenced to 5 and 5 1/2 years.

In 2004, a 24-year-old Vietnamese-Australian was snagged in Singapore with 396.2 grams of smack. That much dope would have gotten Van Tuong Nguyen killed in Vietnam, too. Born in a Thai refugee camp, Văn Tường never saw his ancestral homeland. Picking up the drug in Cambodia, Văn Tường had a four-hour layover in Spore, a mindless blunder by his handlers. His memorial service at Melbourne’s St. Patrick Cathedral was attended by four Victorian MPs.

Border Security episodes on YouTube are often mislabeled, with no dates. Only first names, perhaps false, of the convicted are given. It’s impossible to find out more about them. In Vietnam, a felon is shown just after he’s caught, during confession, at the crime site then in court. If executed, there’s a photo of him just before the end.

An elderly couple from Sydney went to Vietnam to attend the wedding of a family friend, someone they had known “since he was a baby.” There, they were told the nuptial had been canceled. Returning, they carried an extra suitcase for this man. Hidden in it were 4.2 kilos of ephedrine worth half a million bucks when converted into meth. Landing at a different airport the next day, the white weasel was caught, yet only served 237 days.

Lenient penalties are the norm here. A 19-year-old Kiwi who sucker punched someone was only fined $226. Dubbed the “one punch thug,” Caleb Maraku strutted, smiled and took selfies as he left court. To the assembled media, he smirked, “Babe, take a picture! Take a picture, babe!” Only after 49,500 people had signed an online petition was Maraku deported.

Australia began as a penal colony where even children were savagely beaten for the slightest infractions. Robert Hughes, “In 1790 one man got 300 lashes and 6 months in chains for stealing 20 ounces of potatoes, and another drew 1,000 lashes for taking 3 pounds of the precious tubers. After such treatment, a man would be incapacitated, literally skinned alive.”

Twain, “In Australia and Tasmania they gave a convict fifty for almost any little offense; and sometimes a brutal officer would add fifty, and then another fifty, and so on, as long as the sufferer could endure the torture and live.”

An excerpt from a well-known ballad:

For three long years I was beastly treated, heavy irons on my legs I wore,
My back from flogging it was lacerated, and often painted with crimson gore,
And many a lad from downright starvation lies mouldering humbly beneath the clay,
Where Captain Logan he had us mangled on his triangles at Moreton Bay.

Now, Oz is a mommy state where only the unwoke, “antivaxxers” and “conspiracy theorists” are harshly dealt. American trends such as dine and dashes, porch piracy and flash robs have appeared, but so far, no one has been pushed onto subway or railroad tracks. Headlines such as this are still rare, “Families run for cover as shots ring out on violent night at Epping Plaza [in Melbourne].” Machetes were also swung on 6/22/24.

Daily in Philly, Chicago, New Orleans and St Louis, etc., people wake up to much worse.

[Brisbane, 6/22/24]

[Richard’s Tasty Corner Chinese restaurant in Brisbane on 6/22/24]

[Ipswich, 6/14/24]

[Brisbane, 6/22/24]