It would have been very interesting to see what the late Lee Kwan Yew would have made of this week’s Bali Nine executions. While we can only speculate, a retrospective glance at the hard-line stance that Singapore’s founding father took on foreigners committing crimes in his country suggests he would have sided with Indonesia’s decision to execute Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran.

The most famous case is that of Michael Fay, an 18-year-old American living in Singapore in the early 1990s, who spent four months in prison and was lashed with a cane for vandalising cars and stealing street signs. The case caused an international incident at the time, with then-US President Bill Clinton and a group of senators publicly appealing for clemency.

This was partially successful, with Fay only receiving four strokes instead of six, but Singapore largely stuck to its guns. At the time, Lee said, “The punishment is not fatal. It is not painless. It does what it is supposed to do, to remind the wrongdoer that he should never do it again."

What we have seen with the Bali Nine executions is similar resistance to international pressure when it comes to crimes committed by foreigners, even if the offences and punishments are fundamentally different.

And it is reasonable to expect more of the same as Asian nations grow in confidence and influence. China, for example, executes between 1,000 and 3,000 people every year, including foreigners, and has consistently thumbed its nose at international efforts to halt the practice. Similarly, Singapore did not hesitate to sentence Swiss national Oliver Fricker to five months in jail and three strokes of the cane when he graffitied a train in 2010.

Many may find corporal and capital punishment to be morally abhorrent, but the obvious lesson that can be extracted from all three countries is that any chance of leniency after committing a crime in another country because you are a Westerner is quickly diminishing and nor should we expect clemency on these grounds. We expect foreign nationals to adhere to our laws when they are on our soil, so why should the reverse not also hold, even if we find their justice repugnant?

We can however influence these countries by setting an example, and for that reason I am happy to live in New Zealand.