THE distraught father of a 21-year-old girl sentenced to death in Singapore for drug smuggling made an emotional plea for help to Governor Chris Patten last night.
In a letter to the Governor, the father expressed his desperation and sadness at learning his youngest daughter, Poon Yuen-chung, would face death by hanging for an offence she committed in 1991, when she was 18.
Mr Poon hopes Mr Patten, a father of three, will sympathise with his desperate attempt to save Yuen-chung from the gallows, and join in his plea for clemency by writing to the new Singaporean President, Ong Teng Cheong.
In the heart-rending letter, Mr Poon tells of the torment his family has endured in the two years since Yuen-chung was arrested in Singapore's Changi Airport for smuggling 3.06 kilograms of heroin.
Another 3.46 kilograms was found in the luggage of Yuen-chung's travelling companion, Lam Hoi-ka, who was also found guilty of smuggling last week but escaped the gallows as she was under the age of 18 at the time of the offence.
Singapore law provides that any person below 18 cannot be sentenced to death even in a case where the death sentence is mandatory. Hoi-ka was given life imprisonment.
Yuen-chung was 18 years and 10 months when she was arrested on July 16, 1991.
