and i would say that. i wouldn t quite put it as political control and social control. 0k. but the model. let s dig into your particular remit. you re home affairs minister, you have been for some time, as well as being law minister. singapore is very well known around the world for its. ..well, many would say draconian criminal code, and particularly when it comes to drugs, narcotics, and the bringing of drugs into singapore. you have a mandatory death penalty for that particular crime. do you have any doubts at all that that is the right policy? i don t have any doubts. capital punishment is one aspect of a whole series of measures that we have to deal with drug abuse problem. it s imposed on drug traffickers and it s imposed because there is clear evidence that it s a serious deterrent for would be drug traffickers.
controlled by drug gangs, shootings and killings. you consider that to be better? you look at singapore. law and order, we are number one. you have. i believe i m right in saying, minister, you have about 60 people on death row at the moment, don t you? and the vast majority of them are accused, convicted of drugs offences. we do, but we have also saved thousands of lives because we are now arresting about 3000 people per year. see, the. that s 3000 people. the anti death penalty asia network says this, and then we ll move on after this. but singapore s international reputation, they say, has deteriorated significantly as the result of things like the execution of this individual, nagaenthran. that s what you have to confront. are you prepared to see your state s reputation sink because of the draconian decisions you insist on making? i think the key thing is the lives of singaporeans and protecting singaporeans. you know, people focus
and how do you think the international system is going to play out? you ve got to look at all of these things. look at the people the us deals with. are they all democratic? so, let s get real. 0k, you re not going to give me a straight answer, so a final question, and it s based on words. my answer is that we will not choose sides. we will go with what we think is right. kishore mahbubani, a former singaporean diplomat, i m sure you know him well. i do. he says singapore is the most globalised country in the world. how is singapore going to survive a world where globalisation is in retreat? it s a tough one. you know, it s not going to be easy. but at the same time, there are some advantages to. i mean, the situation, the picture about china us, we have spoken about, it s going to become much more difficult, much more difficult to navigate. but at the same time, the pandemic and, you know,
welcome to newsday. reporting live from singapore, i m karishma vaswani. the headlines. in denmark, at least three people are killed in a shooting at a shopping centre in the capital copenhagen. translation: suddenly we heard shots. - i think there were ten. we ended up in a toilet, where we all huddled together. there were around 11 of us. we were so scared. it s just been a terrible experience. police say a 22 year old danish man has been charged with manslaughter and will appear in court on monday. the country s prime minister described it as a cruel attack and urged the people to stand together. in other news. ukraine s troops have withdrawn from the strategic city of lysychansk. russia says it now controls
hostile on the basis that it comes from malign foreign interests, does it worry you that that has been described by reporters without borders, an independent ngo, as a legal monstrosity with totalitarian leanings? you say your government isn t about control. what on earth are you doing passing this fica legislation? well, you might want to look at the legislation. the reporters without borders, i m. it s an interesting organisation. they rank us, you know, in the annual rankings below. last year, they ranked us 160 out of 180, below gambia. guinea, afghanistan, philippines, south sudan, myanmar. south sudan has been described as having one of the most serious refugee crises. myanmar had a coup. i don t see journalists queuing up to go to south sudan, philippines and myanmar as opposed to singapore. take a young female bbc journalist, do you think