Singapore on Wednesday hanged a man for trafficking drugs, said the authorities, marking its second execution in three weeks.
The alleged accused was convicted in 2019 of trafficking around 1.5 kilos (3.3 pounds) of cannabis, Kokila Annamalai of local rights group Transformative Justice Collective told news agency AFP.
Singapore has one of the toughest anti-narcotics laws and as per the law, trafficking more than 500 grams of cannabis can result in the death penalty.
“A 36-year-old Singaporean man had his capital sentence carried out today at Changi Prison Complex,” a spokesman for the city-state’s prison service told AFP.
Singapore’s Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) released a statement saying that it would not reveal the name of the man in order to respect his family’s wish for privacy.
“The person was accorded full due process under the law, and had access to legal counsel throughout the process,” CNB added.
“A last-ditch appeal to review the case and stay his execution was dismissed on Tuesday”, Annamalai said.
Despite growing calls for the city-state to abolish the death penalty and halt drug-related executions, Singapore presses that it is an effective impediment against trafficking.
Singapore executes Indian-origin man for conspiring to traffic cannabis
Earlier, on April 26, Singapore executed an Indian-origin man, who was convicted of conspiring to traffic one kilogramme of cannabis. The decision to hang him was taken despite pleas for clemency from his family, activists and also the United Nations.
A spokesman for the Singapore Prison Service told the news agency AFP that the “Singaporean Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, had his capital sentence carried out today at Changi Prison Complex.”
Reuters reported that Kokila Annamalai, who is a Singapore-based rights activist representing the family, confirmed that Suppiah had been executed by hanging. It also mentioned that the president had rejected pleas for clemency on the eve of the execution.
The United Nations Human Rights Office for Singapore had urged the authorities to “urgently reconsider” the decision of hanging, and British tycoon Richard Branson also asked to halt it.
Branson, who is a member of the Geneva-based Global Commission on Drug Policy, wrote a blog earlier this week about Tangaraju. He mentioned that the Singaporean man was “not anywhere near” the drugs at the time of his arrest and that Singapore may be about to put an innocent man to death.
He was convicted in 2017 of “abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic” 1,017.9 grammes of cannabis. The quantity was twice the minimum volume required for a death sentence in Singapore. In 2018, Tangaraju was sentenced to death and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision.
Activists to push for Singapore to abolish death penalty
Activists said they will keep making efforts to push for Singapore to abrogate capital punishment as it has not proven any deterrent effect on crime.
“The call to the Singapore government (to scrap the death penalty) has been loud and clear globally, and we will repeat the call: Singapore has to halt the executions,” Amnesty International’s executive director for Malaysia Katrina Jorene Maliamauv told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday.
“They have to commute all existing death sentences.”
View Original Article on wionews.com