Kuala lumpur: The second execution for cannabis trafficking in three weeks was carried out by hanging in Singapore on Wednesday, despite growing calls for the city-state to stop drug-related executions.
According to activist Kokila Annamalai of the Transformative Justice Collective, which fights for the abolition of the death penalty in Singapore, the 37-year-old man was executed after his last-ditch attempt to have his case reopened on Tuesday was denied by the court without a hearing.
She said the man, who wished to remain unnamed because his family requested privacy, had been sentenced to seven years in prison in 2019 after being found guilty of trafficking 1.5 kilogrammes of marijuana.
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She continued that the court rejected his attempt to have his case reopened despite DNA and fingerprint evidence linking him to a much smaller amount that he admittedly had in his possession. Trafficking in cannabis weighing more than 500 grammes is punishable by death in Singapore.
We worry that this killing spree will continue in the upcoming weeks and months if we don't band together to stop it, she said. The city-state has 600 prisoners on death row, most of whom are there for drug-related offences, she added.
After a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore executed 11 people for drug offences last year. International outrage over the hanging of a particular Malaysian who was allegedly mentally ill led to a review of the nation's use of the death penalty for violating human rights standards.
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Singaporean Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, was hanged three weeks ago in the year's first execution for trafficking 1 kilogramme of cannabis despite not being found in possession of the drugs. He denied being the person in charge of organising the drug deliveries, but prosecutors claimed phone numbers pointed to him as the culprit.
Singapore has been urged to halt executions for drug-related offences by human rights organisations, British tycoon Richard Branson, and the United Nations due to mounting evidence that the death penalty is ineffective as a deterrent. However, the government of Singapore insists that everyone is given a fair trial and that the death penalty is still "part of Singapore's comprehensive harm prevention strategy which targets both drug demand and supply."
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Despite a break since 2016, Amnesty International reported that Indonesia executed 112 people for drug-related crimes by firing squad last year, in addition to Singapore. Malaysia no longer enforces the death penalty as a mandatory punishment for serious crimes, in contrast to neighbouring Thailand, which has legalised marijuana