Despite calls for the city-state to abolish the death penalty for drug-related offenses, Singapore carried out its second hanging this week over drug trafficking on Friday and the first death penalty for a woman in 19 years on that day.
Next week, according to activists, another execution is scheduled.
According to the Central Narcotics Bureau, Saridewi Djamani, 45, received a death sentence in 2018 for trafficking approximately 31 grams (1.09 ounces) of diamorphine, or pure heroin. The amount, according to its statement, was “sufficient to feed the habit of about 370 abusers for a week.”
Anyone found guilty of smuggling more than 500 grams (17.64 ounces) of cannabis & 15 grams (0.53 ounces) of heroin may receive the death penalty under Singaporean law.
Two days before to Djamani’s execution, Singaporean Mohammed Aziz Hussain, 56, was put to death for smuggling about 50 grams (1.75 ounces) of heroin.
According to the drugs department, both inmates had due process, which included the ability to appeal their conviction and punishment as well as submit a request for presidential pardon.
There is mounting evidence that Singapore should stop carrying out executions for drug charges, according to human rights organizations, foreign activists, and the UN. Authorities in Singapore maintain that the death penalty is crucial to reducing drug demand and supply.
Since starting to hang individuals again in March 2022, human rights organizations claim it has hanged 15 people for drug offenses—an average of one per month.
The last woman believed to have been hanged in Singapore, according to opponents of the death sentence, was hairdresser Yen May Woen, 36, who was also convicted of narcotics trafficking in 2004.
A new execution notice has been given to another prisoner for August 3; it will be the sixth this year alone, according to the Singapore-based Transformative Justice Collective, which campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty.
The inmate, who is a citizen of ethnic Malay, was employed as a delivery driver prior to his detention in 2016. It stated that he was found guilty in 2019 of trafficking about 50 grams (1.75 ounces) of heroin. According to the group, the man claimed during his trial that he thought he was delivering illegal smokes for a friend to whom he owed money and that he didn’t check the bag’s contents because he trusted his friend.
The individual had to get the required death penalty even though the court determined he was just a messenger, it stated. The group reaffirmed calls for an immediate ban on the use of the death sentence and “condemns, in the strongest terms, the state’s bloodthirsty streak.”
Critics claim Singapore’s strict regulations only serve to penalize low-level traffickers & couriers, who are frequently hired from vulnerable and underprivileged populations. They claim that Singapore is also out of sync with the trend of more nations abandoning the death penalty. While Malaysia removed the mandatory death penalty for severe offenses this year, neighboring Thailand has legalized marijuana.