Source: The Sydney Morning Herald (30 April 2022)
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/not-only-is-the-prisoner-killed-but-his-family-is-destroyed-20220429-p5ah3v.html
Singapore: Apart from the family members and friends of the prisoners he has represented, Julian McMahon knows about as well as any Australian about the grisly, heartbreaking reality of the death penalty.
The Melbourne barrister was the lawyer for Bali 9 members Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who faced an Indonesian firing squad in 2015, and for Melbourne man Van Tuong Nguyen, who was put to death for drug trafficking by Singapore in 2005.
“The role of the lawyer in those circumstances is to provide steady guidance and not to be overwhelmed by the emotional horror of it all,” McMahon told The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
“That comes later. It’s deeply upsetting to participate in. By participating up close you see that not only is the prisoner being killed, but also his family is being destroyed. The ripple effect of an execution is to kill the prisoner, destroy the family and ultimately to harm all those involved in the process.”
The issue of capital punishment has naturally peaked in prominence in Australia over the years when Australians have been caught up in its crosshairs, most notably in those instances in Indonesia and Singapore, and in Malaysia, which executed Perth man Kevin Barlow and Brian Chambers, from Sydney, for heroin importation in 1986.
The body of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam was to be cremated in his home town of Ipoh in Malaysia’s Perak state on Friday afternoon, two days after his execution inside Changi prison and more than a decade after he was arrested entering Singapore with 42.72 grams of heroin strapped to his thigh and given a mandatory death sentence.
He was the second inmate to face the gallows in Singapore in the last month. Three others have received execution notices this year – all for drug offences as well - as the city state begins carrying out the death penalty again after a two-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic.
However, the case of a 34-year-old Malaysian man with “borderline intellectual functioning” being hanged by Singapore this week generated worldwide attention.
The ultimate penalty
The resumption of executions has thrust the spotlight back onto the hardline stance on narcotics of Singapore, which shares one of the world’s busiest land crossings with Malaysia and regards the death penalty as a core national policy, crucial to maintaining its status as one of the safest places on the planet.
The island nation is far from alone in Asia in handing out the ultimate penalty for drug trafficking.
The region is a global leader when it comes to capital punishment for drugs crimes. According to the latest report by Harm Reduction International, which assembles figures on the death penalty for drugs, there were 237 known drug-related death sentences handed down worldwide last year and more than 90 per cent of them were in south-east Asia.
Indonesia was the frontrunner with 89, followed by Vietnam with at least 87, Malaysia 15, Laos 14, Singapore 10 and Thailand two.
Yet while Singapore has resumed executions, none of its regional neighbours except Vietnam - where capital punishment is a state secret and numbers are unknown - have actually carried one out in recent years. In 2021, Indonesia went a fifth straight year without delivering one for any offence, Malaysia’s last execution was in 2017 and Thailand hasn’t put a prisoner to death for drugs since 2009, although it did execute a man by lethal injection in 2018 over a robbery resulting in death.
The war on drugs
It’s not to say that those tied up in the drugs game or linked to it have not paid the highest price at the hands of the state. The Philippines abolished the death penalty in 2006 but President Rodrigo Duterte took matters into his own hands after his election in 2016 in a so-called war on drugs that rights groups estimate has led to more than 20,000 drug-related killings by authorities and vigilante groups.
And in countries such as Indonesia, the lack of executions doesn’t equate to progress, said HRI’s human rights lead Ajeng Larasati, who is Indonesian.
“There is a still a huge appetite [by courts] to sentence people to death for drugs in Indonesia,” she said.
In Malaysia, judges are also still prescribing the sentence despite even though they have limited discretion to opt for a life sentence and whipping rather than the death penalty for drug trafficking, under an amendment to the law passed in 2017.
Last October Hairun Jalmani, a 55-year-old single mother of nine in Sabah, was sentenced to death after being found with 113 grams of methamphetamine.
There are at least small signs things might change. A parliamentary committee is expected to this year table a further amendment to the law in Malaysia, where convictions for murder, kidnapping and drug trafficking have had mandatory death sentences.
But Dobby Chew, the Malaysia-based executive coordinator of the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, warns the anticipated changes fall a long way short of abolition, as had briefly been foreshadowed by then prime minister Mahathir Mohamad when won election again in 2018.
“From what we understand it’s only going to recommend that mandatory death sentences be replaced with full discretion for judges,” Chew said.
Across the Johor-Singapore Causeway, though, there is no sign anything will change.
In Singapore, drug trafficking, including for more than 15 grams of heroin, is among the offences that carries a mandatory death penalty and all but three of 60 prisoners on death row were there on narcotics offences, according to the Transformative Justice Collective, a Singaporean organisation seeking reform of the city-state’s justice system.
This week, the United Nations human rights office expressed alarm at “a rapid rise in the number of execution notices issues since the beginning of the year in Singapore”.
But Singapore authorities staunchly back the deployment of capital publishment, pointing to its deterrent effect and studies they say demonstrate support by its population.
The Herald and The Age requested an interview with Singapore Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam on the use of the death penalty but was directed instead towards statements by the Central Narcotics Bureau and Attorney General’s Chambers defending the execution of Nagaenthran, saying he had been transporting enough heroin to “feed the addiction of 510 drug abusers for a week”.
In response to previous questions, though, the home affairs ministry said: “The death penalty is an important component of Singapore’s criminal justice system. It is applied only after due process of law and with judicial safeguards. We use capital punishment in the most limited of circumstances, to deter the most serious crimes in Singapore’s context, such as murder and drug trafficking, and this has proven effective. In so doing, the larger interest of ensuring our people’s fundamental human right to safety and security, is served.”
In parliament here last month, Shanmugum said the majority of Singaporeans believed the death penalty served as an effective deterrent against serious crimes, reading from preliminary findings of a government study.
The home affairs ministry has said there is evidence that drug traffickers had reduced the amount of drugs they transported because they knew about the death penalty and the thresholds for different drugs, pointing to reductions in the trafficking of opium and cannabis after the introduction of the mandatory death penalty in 1990 and another government study showing “severe legal consequences had limited [offenders’] trafficking behaviour”.
The deterrence argument is one that is furiously contested including by rights groups. “Based on research that has been carried out, there is no reliable evidence of the deterrent effects of the death penalty. It’s not just for drugs, it’s also for other crimes punishable by death,” Larasati said.
The way McMahon sees it, it is also ineffective on another front. It is almost never the drug kingpins themselves who are ensnared.
“The so-called zero tolerance policy only works against the easy target – the intellectually disabled or the drug addicted or the generally incompetent low-level drug mule,” he said.
“That in itself should give pause to reflect on what’s really happening because those people are constantly replaceable by an endless line of foolish or vulnerable young offenders.”
Having experienced Singapore’s system at close quarters, he added: “It is a shocking fact and aberration for a sophisticated state to maintain a mandatory death penalty, particularly for relatively minor drug offences.”
Saturday, 30 April 2022
Malaysia’s Death Penalty Hypocrisy
Source: Human Rights Watch (28 April 2022)
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/28/malaysias-death-penalty-hypocrisy
When Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a Malaysian national, was facing the death penalty in Singapore on drug charges, Malaysia’s prime minister and foreign minister twice wrote to the Singapore government asking for clemency. According to a statement from the Foreign Ministry, they even offered to discuss transferring Nagaenthran to Malaysia.
On April 27, Singapore hanged Nagaenthran in the face of massive international calls for clemency. After the execution, Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry put out a statement thanking all of those who had campaigned on his behalf.
While the Malaysian government’s activism on behalf of its citizen is laudable, it is also hypocritical. Nagaenthran was sentenced to death in 2010 for bringing 42.72 grams (approximately three tablespoons) of diamorphine – a drug made from morphine – into Singapore. He likely would have faced the same death sentence had he been arrested in Malaysia.
Judges in Malaysia are currently required to impose the death penalty on almost anyone convicted of “trafficking” in drugs – presumed for anyone possessing more than minimal amounts. Since the presumption applies to those carrying 15 grams of morphine or diamorphine, Nagaenthran also would have been presumed to be “trafficking” in drugs under Malaysian law.
Amendments passed in 2017 provide Malaysian judges limited discretion to impose a life sentence plus whipping instead of the death penalty. However, according to research by Australia’s Monash University, judges exercised their discretion to impose a life sentence in only four of the 38 cases in which a defendant was convicted of drug trafficking between March 2018, when the amendments went into effect, and October 2020. The other 34 defendants were sentenced to death.
While Malaysia declared a moratorium on executions in July 2018, the laws imposing the death penalty remain on the books and courts continue to sentence defendants to death. On the same day that the Foreign Ministry issued its statement on Nagaenthran, a court in the city of Kuching sentenced a man to death for trafficking methamphetamine.
The Malaysian government should stop playing games with people’s lives and commit to enacting legislation to eliminate the death penalty for all – not just some – drug offenses in the next sitting of Parliament. And if it wants its international calls for clemency to be taken seriously, the government should move swiftly to full abolition of the death penalty, an inherently cruel punishment wherever it is carried out.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/04/28/malaysias-death-penalty-hypocrisy
When Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a Malaysian national, was facing the death penalty in Singapore on drug charges, Malaysia’s prime minister and foreign minister twice wrote to the Singapore government asking for clemency. According to a statement from the Foreign Ministry, they even offered to discuss transferring Nagaenthran to Malaysia.
On April 27, Singapore hanged Nagaenthran in the face of massive international calls for clemency. After the execution, Malaysia’s Foreign Ministry put out a statement thanking all of those who had campaigned on his behalf.
While the Malaysian government’s activism on behalf of its citizen is laudable, it is also hypocritical. Nagaenthran was sentenced to death in 2010 for bringing 42.72 grams (approximately three tablespoons) of diamorphine – a drug made from morphine – into Singapore. He likely would have faced the same death sentence had he been arrested in Malaysia.
Judges in Malaysia are currently required to impose the death penalty on almost anyone convicted of “trafficking” in drugs – presumed for anyone possessing more than minimal amounts. Since the presumption applies to those carrying 15 grams of morphine or diamorphine, Nagaenthran also would have been presumed to be “trafficking” in drugs under Malaysian law.
Amendments passed in 2017 provide Malaysian judges limited discretion to impose a life sentence plus whipping instead of the death penalty. However, according to research by Australia’s Monash University, judges exercised their discretion to impose a life sentence in only four of the 38 cases in which a defendant was convicted of drug trafficking between March 2018, when the amendments went into effect, and October 2020. The other 34 defendants were sentenced to death.
While Malaysia declared a moratorium on executions in July 2018, the laws imposing the death penalty remain on the books and courts continue to sentence defendants to death. On the same day that the Foreign Ministry issued its statement on Nagaenthran, a court in the city of Kuching sentenced a man to death for trafficking methamphetamine.
The Malaysian government should stop playing games with people’s lives and commit to enacting legislation to eliminate the death penalty for all – not just some – drug offenses in the next sitting of Parliament. And if it wants its international calls for clemency to be taken seriously, the government should move swiftly to full abolition of the death penalty, an inherently cruel punishment wherever it is carried out.
Wednesday, 13 April 2022
Singapore hardens opinion against death penalty as ‘sense of injustice’ grows
Source: The Guardian (13 April 2022)
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/singapore-hardens-opinion-against-death-penalty-as-sense-of-injustice-grows
The news was delivered in just a few cold sentences. An appeal for clemency for Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a man on death row whose case has prompted a global outcry, had failed.
“Please be informed that the position...remains unchanged” wrote Singapore president’s principal private secretary, in a letter to Nagaenthran’s family: “The sentence of death therefore stands.”
Nagaenthran’s relatives and supporters have campaigned tirelessly for his life to be spared. He was arrested in 2009, aged 21, for attempting to smuggle a small amount of heroin – about three tablespoons – into Singapore and has since spent more than a decade on death row. His lawyer has argued that he has an IQ of 69, a level recognised as indicating a learning disability, and should be protected from execution under international law. Nagaenthran has said he was coerced into carrying the drugs.
Nagaenthran’s case has appalled rights groups, and provoked an outcry from voices around the world - from billionaire businessman Richard Branson, a critic of the death penalty, to EU representatives and UN experts. Domestically, it has also prompted some younger Singaporeans to question a system that the government has long claimed makes the city state “one of the safest places in the world”.
“The death penalty is applicable only for a very limited number of offences, involving the most serious forms of harm to victims and to society, such as intentional murder and trafficking of significant quantities of drugs. We have put in place many judicial safeguards surrounding its use,” the government says.
The Singapore government does not disclose how many people are on death row. Since 2019, eight death row prisoners have been given execution notices, placing them at imminent risk of hanging. One of these men was hanged last month.
‘Sense of injustice’
Death penalty cases are rarely reported in any detail in Singapore’s tightly controlled media, but Nagaenthran’s story has been shared widely online. Isaac Chiew, a 22-year-old university student, said he hadn’t thought very much about the death penalty, until he came across Nagaenthran’s case on Instagram. “Reading all the details really made me feel this sense of injustice,” he says. “It just made me feel - this could have been my friend or me in a different circumstance.” Nagaenthran was just a young man who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, says Chiew. He began to read about others on death row, and was struck by stories of people who were condemned to death simply for falling in with the wrong crowd or making a mistake.
Profiles of some death row inmates shared online by campaigners show they are not big time criminals, but rather men from marginalised communities who have faced poverty, or struggled with addiction.
“Social media has allowed us to centre the voices of death row prisoners and their families,” says Jolovan Wham, a human rights activist.
In a rare protest this month, more than 400 people turned out at Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim park, the only place where demonstrations are permitted in Singapore, to call for executions to be halted.
Public support
Research suggests that the death penalty is supported by the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans - but that this is not an unconditional or strongly held view. A study by the National University of Singapore found that seven in 10 Singaporeans said they agreed with capital punishment in general, but that support fell when people were presented with different scenarios and asked to choose whether the person convicted should be executed. Support also depended heavily on the premise that it was a more effective deterrent than other forms of punishment, and that no errors were made when such sentences were administered.
Research suggests the more information people have about the death penalty, the more their support wavers, said Han. “That’s part of the challenge. How do we give them these details when it can’t get into mainstream media?”
Han hopes attitudes will change with time. But she adds that, public opinion aside, governments should still commit to abolishing the death penalty. “Human rights issues should not be subjected to whatever the majority votes for.”
For Nagaenthran, there are no more procedural steps left. His last ditch appeal was rejected last month as baseless by Singapore’s top court. The clemency, now refused, was the only option left.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/13/singapore-hardens-opinion-against-death-penalty-as-sense-of-injustice-grows
The news was delivered in just a few cold sentences. An appeal for clemency for Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a man on death row whose case has prompted a global outcry, had failed.
“Please be informed that the position...remains unchanged” wrote Singapore president’s principal private secretary, in a letter to Nagaenthran’s family: “The sentence of death therefore stands.”
Nagaenthran’s relatives and supporters have campaigned tirelessly for his life to be spared. He was arrested in 2009, aged 21, for attempting to smuggle a small amount of heroin – about three tablespoons – into Singapore and has since spent more than a decade on death row. His lawyer has argued that he has an IQ of 69, a level recognised as indicating a learning disability, and should be protected from execution under international law. Nagaenthran has said he was coerced into carrying the drugs.
Nagaenthran’s case has appalled rights groups, and provoked an outcry from voices around the world - from billionaire businessman Richard Branson, a critic of the death penalty, to EU representatives and UN experts. Domestically, it has also prompted some younger Singaporeans to question a system that the government has long claimed makes the city state “one of the safest places in the world”.
“The death penalty is applicable only for a very limited number of offences, involving the most serious forms of harm to victims and to society, such as intentional murder and trafficking of significant quantities of drugs. We have put in place many judicial safeguards surrounding its use,” the government says.
The Singapore government does not disclose how many people are on death row. Since 2019, eight death row prisoners have been given execution notices, placing them at imminent risk of hanging. One of these men was hanged last month.
‘Sense of injustice’
Death penalty cases are rarely reported in any detail in Singapore’s tightly controlled media, but Nagaenthran’s story has been shared widely online. Isaac Chiew, a 22-year-old university student, said he hadn’t thought very much about the death penalty, until he came across Nagaenthran’s case on Instagram. “Reading all the details really made me feel this sense of injustice,” he says. “It just made me feel - this could have been my friend or me in a different circumstance.” Nagaenthran was just a young man who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, says Chiew. He began to read about others on death row, and was struck by stories of people who were condemned to death simply for falling in with the wrong crowd or making a mistake.
Profiles of some death row inmates shared online by campaigners show they are not big time criminals, but rather men from marginalised communities who have faced poverty, or struggled with addiction.
“Social media has allowed us to centre the voices of death row prisoners and their families,” says Jolovan Wham, a human rights activist.
In a rare protest this month, more than 400 people turned out at Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim park, the only place where demonstrations are permitted in Singapore, to call for executions to be halted.
Kirsten Han, a journalist and activist who has spent a decade campaigning against the death penalty, believes its likely the highest turn out ever seen at such a demonstration. The message, too, was different.
“Previously a lot of other death penalty events might have been focused on - give this person a chance,” said Han. But protesters were now critiquing the whole system. They weren’t, she added, just expressing pity for any one person; they were calling for abolition of the death penalty. Most of the attendees were young Singaporeans.
The Singaporean authorities have shown no willingness to move towards dropping the death sentence, despite a global shift towards abolition, said Ariel Yin Yee Yap, a doctoral researcher and teaching associate at Monash University.
“My research indicates a long pattern of state justification and legitimisation, to both the international community, and domestic audiences, [of] its continued practice of capital punishment,” she said. The government argues that capital punishment is the most effective deterrent against crime - an idea debunked by criminological research, she adds.
“Previously a lot of other death penalty events might have been focused on - give this person a chance,” said Han. But protesters were now critiquing the whole system. They weren’t, she added, just expressing pity for any one person; they were calling for abolition of the death penalty. Most of the attendees were young Singaporeans.
The Singaporean authorities have shown no willingness to move towards dropping the death sentence, despite a global shift towards abolition, said Ariel Yin Yee Yap, a doctoral researcher and teaching associate at Monash University.
“My research indicates a long pattern of state justification and legitimisation, to both the international community, and domestic audiences, [of] its continued practice of capital punishment,” she said. The government argues that capital punishment is the most effective deterrent against crime - an idea debunked by criminological research, she adds.
Public support
Research suggests that the death penalty is supported by the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans - but that this is not an unconditional or strongly held view. A study by the National University of Singapore found that seven in 10 Singaporeans said they agreed with capital punishment in general, but that support fell when people were presented with different scenarios and asked to choose whether the person convicted should be executed. Support also depended heavily on the premise that it was a more effective deterrent than other forms of punishment, and that no errors were made when such sentences were administered.
Research suggests the more information people have about the death penalty, the more their support wavers, said Han. “That’s part of the challenge. How do we give them these details when it can’t get into mainstream media?”
Han hopes attitudes will change with time. But she adds that, public opinion aside, governments should still commit to abolishing the death penalty. “Human rights issues should not be subjected to whatever the majority votes for.”
For Nagaenthran, there are no more procedural steps left. His last ditch appeal was rejected last month as baseless by Singapore’s top court. The clemency, now refused, was the only option left.
Friday, 8 April 2022
Will 2022 signal sea change in the death penalty for drugs?
Source: Jakarta Post (6 April 2022)
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/will-2022-signal-sea-change-in-the-death-penalty-for-drugs-jakarta-post-contributor
JAKARTA (THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - On March 30, Singapore executed Abdul Kahar bin Othman, a local man sentenced to death for drug offences and the first person to be executed in Singapore in since 2019.
Othman had been unable to appeal his execution because he did not have a lawyer. Eight of the 35 countries that still retain the death penalty for drug offences are in South-east Asia and were responsible for a staggering 91.5 per cent of all confirmed death sentences given for drug offences worldwide, according to the Global Review 2021 from Harm Reduction International (HRI).
The imposition of these death sentences is shrouded in secrecy and characterised by widespread human rights violations (HRI 2019), such as lack of access to legal representation (HRI 2020), as in Othman's case. Too often, there are reports of torture, ill treatment and coerced confession.
The situation is particularly dire for foreign nationals who find themselves sentenced to death outside of their home countries, often without interpreters and lawyers made available to them during the legal process, says a March 2019 HRI briefing paper.
In Indonesia, all 14 convicted drug offenders who were executed in 2015 and 2016 were foreign nationals. Obviously, 2021 was not the first year in which death sentences in South-east Asian countries comprised the overwhelming majority of death sentences for drug offences around the world.
The HRI's Global Overview 2020 shows that 98 per cent of confirmed global death sentences for drugs, or 209 out of 213 sentences, were delivered in South-east Asian countries: 79 in Vietnam, 77 in Indonesia, 25 in Malaysia, 13 in Laos, eight in Thailand and six in Singapore. The figure presented in the 2019 HRI briefing paper is similar, with 170 out of 180 confirmed death sentences, or 94.4 per cent.
The percentage of drug convicts on death row is alarming: 98 per cent in Laos, 66 per cent in Indonesia, 67.8 per cent in Malaysia, 55 per cent in Singapore, 63.5 per cent in Thailand and 50 per cent in Brunei Darussalam. By 2021, a total of 1,633 people were on death row for drug offences in the region, although the figure in Vietnam remains unknown.
The above figures likely paint only a partial picture because of a lack of transparency, but they demonstrate how the drug policies of South-east Asian countries have a significant, negative impact on human rights in the region as well as efforts to abolish the death penalty around the world.
Capital punishment is an abhorrent, outdated and inhumane form of punishment. Applying it for drug offences is a violation of international human rights law, a position that has been reaffirmed by numerous international authorities and human rights bodies.
Closer to home, however, Asean human rights bodies, including the Asean Inter-governmental Commission for Human Rights (AICHR), remain silent on the issue.
Nothing was heard from the AICHR in response to Othman's case, either before or after his sentence was carried out. The regional commission also failed, and continues to fail, to respond to Singapore's announcement on the execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, whose case has sparked an international outcry from rights groups.
Five UN human rights experts published a statement in Nov 2021 urging Singapore to halt his execution, accompanied by dozens of statements and joint statements from civil society organisations. In Feb 2022, Singaporean authorities issued notices of execution for three more people on death row for drug offences.
Again, nothing was heard from the AICHR. More executions are set to follow that of Othman. Earlier this week, Singapore's Court of Appeal dismissed Dharmalinggam's appeal. This means that Singapore does not necessarily need to issue a new notice of execution, and rights activists fear that Dharmalinggam may be executed soon.
As a regional human rights mechanism, the AICHR has the responsibility and the legitimacy to denounce and seek to address human rights violations that occur in the region. The death penalty is a human rights issue in South-east Asia, but the region's main human rights body is yet to oppose it publicly.
Moving forward, there are plenty of opportunities for the AICHR to raise and advocate for abolishing the death penalty for drug offences. It is not too late for the AICHR to ask the Singaporean government to stop its planned executions and undertake much-needed reform of the country's draconian drug policies.
It is also not too late to support the Philippines' Commission on Human Rights in blocking President Rodrigo Duterte's plan to reinstate the death penalty. And certainly, there are plenty of opportunities to support Malaysia's effort to abolish the death penalty for drug offences as the country plans to table an amendment to that policy in late 2022.
So, will 2022 be the year that South-east Asia can finally have a regional human rights mechanism that champions abolishing the death penalty for drug offences?
https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/se-asia/will-2022-signal-sea-change-in-the-death-penalty-for-drugs-jakarta-post-contributor
JAKARTA (THE JAKARTA POST/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - On March 30, Singapore executed Abdul Kahar bin Othman, a local man sentenced to death for drug offences and the first person to be executed in Singapore in since 2019.
Othman had been unable to appeal his execution because he did not have a lawyer. Eight of the 35 countries that still retain the death penalty for drug offences are in South-east Asia and were responsible for a staggering 91.5 per cent of all confirmed death sentences given for drug offences worldwide, according to the Global Review 2021 from Harm Reduction International (HRI).
The imposition of these death sentences is shrouded in secrecy and characterised by widespread human rights violations (HRI 2019), such as lack of access to legal representation (HRI 2020), as in Othman's case. Too often, there are reports of torture, ill treatment and coerced confession.
The situation is particularly dire for foreign nationals who find themselves sentenced to death outside of their home countries, often without interpreters and lawyers made available to them during the legal process, says a March 2019 HRI briefing paper.
In Indonesia, all 14 convicted drug offenders who were executed in 2015 and 2016 were foreign nationals. Obviously, 2021 was not the first year in which death sentences in South-east Asian countries comprised the overwhelming majority of death sentences for drug offences around the world.
The HRI's Global Overview 2020 shows that 98 per cent of confirmed global death sentences for drugs, or 209 out of 213 sentences, were delivered in South-east Asian countries: 79 in Vietnam, 77 in Indonesia, 25 in Malaysia, 13 in Laos, eight in Thailand and six in Singapore. The figure presented in the 2019 HRI briefing paper is similar, with 170 out of 180 confirmed death sentences, or 94.4 per cent.
The percentage of drug convicts on death row is alarming: 98 per cent in Laos, 66 per cent in Indonesia, 67.8 per cent in Malaysia, 55 per cent in Singapore, 63.5 per cent in Thailand and 50 per cent in Brunei Darussalam. By 2021, a total of 1,633 people were on death row for drug offences in the region, although the figure in Vietnam remains unknown.
The above figures likely paint only a partial picture because of a lack of transparency, but they demonstrate how the drug policies of South-east Asian countries have a significant, negative impact on human rights in the region as well as efforts to abolish the death penalty around the world.
Capital punishment is an abhorrent, outdated and inhumane form of punishment. Applying it for drug offences is a violation of international human rights law, a position that has been reaffirmed by numerous international authorities and human rights bodies.
Closer to home, however, Asean human rights bodies, including the Asean Inter-governmental Commission for Human Rights (AICHR), remain silent on the issue.
Nothing was heard from the AICHR in response to Othman's case, either before or after his sentence was carried out. The regional commission also failed, and continues to fail, to respond to Singapore's announcement on the execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, whose case has sparked an international outcry from rights groups.
Five UN human rights experts published a statement in Nov 2021 urging Singapore to halt his execution, accompanied by dozens of statements and joint statements from civil society organisations. In Feb 2022, Singaporean authorities issued notices of execution for three more people on death row for drug offences.
Again, nothing was heard from the AICHR. More executions are set to follow that of Othman. Earlier this week, Singapore's Court of Appeal dismissed Dharmalinggam's appeal. This means that Singapore does not necessarily need to issue a new notice of execution, and rights activists fear that Dharmalinggam may be executed soon.
As a regional human rights mechanism, the AICHR has the responsibility and the legitimacy to denounce and seek to address human rights violations that occur in the region. The death penalty is a human rights issue in South-east Asia, but the region's main human rights body is yet to oppose it publicly.
Moving forward, there are plenty of opportunities for the AICHR to raise and advocate for abolishing the death penalty for drug offences. It is not too late for the AICHR to ask the Singaporean government to stop its planned executions and undertake much-needed reform of the country's draconian drug policies.
It is also not too late to support the Philippines' Commission on Human Rights in blocking President Rodrigo Duterte's plan to reinstate the death penalty. And certainly, there are plenty of opportunities to support Malaysia's effort to abolish the death penalty for drug offences as the country plans to table an amendment to that policy in late 2022.
So, will 2022 be the year that South-east Asia can finally have a regional human rights mechanism that champions abolishing the death penalty for drug offences?
Singaporeans protest the death penalty in rare demonstration
Source: France24 (3 April 2022)
Authorities last week conducted the country's first execution since 2019 when they hanged a drug trafficker. Several other death row convicts recently had appeals rejected.
Organisers said about 400 people joined the demonstration at "Speakers' Corner" in a downtown park, the only place in the city-state where protests are allowed without prior police approval.
They held signs reading "Capital punishment does not make us safer", and "Don't kill in our names", and chanted slogans against the death penalty.
"Capital Punishment is a brutal system that makes brutes of us all," Kirsten Han, a prominent local activist, said in an address to the crowd.
"Instead of pushing us to address inequalities and exploitative and oppressive systems that leave people marginalised and unsupported, it makes us the worst version of ourselves."
Protests are unusual in Singapore, which frequently faces criticism for curbing civil liberties.
Aside from in "Speakers' Corner", it is illegal for even one person to stage a demonstration without a police permit.
Abdul Kahar Othman, a 68-year-old Singaporean drug trafficker, was hanged Wednesday despite appeals for clemency from the United Nations and rights groups.
Next in line to be executed could be Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, a mentally disabled Malaysian convicted of heroin trafficking who lost his final appeal last week.
His case has attracted a storm of criticism, including from the European Union and British billionaire Richard Branson.
Three other men sentenced to death for drugs offences had their appeals rejected earlier in March.
Prosperous but socially conservative Singapore has some of the world's toughest drugs laws, and has faced mounting calls from rights groups to abandon the death penalty.
Authorities insist that capital punishment remains an effective deterrent against drug trafficking and has helped to keep the city-state one of the safest places in Asia.
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