Singapore on Wednesday executed a person convicted of conspiring to visitors about two kilos of hashish, a punishment that human rights teams known as grossly extreme with different international locations all over the world stress-free their stances on marijuana.
The person, Tangaraju Suppiah, a 46-year-old Singaporean, was sentenced in 2018 for coordinating with two different males to import the hashish in 2013. Though he by no means got here into contact with the drug, he was sentenced to loss of life by hanging after a choose dominated that he was linked to the opposite males by means of two cellphone numbers belonging to him.
Singapore’s narcotics legal guidelines are a number of the harshest on the earth and mandate the loss of life penalty for some drug trafficking offenses. Final 12 months, the nation executed 11 folks, all for nonviolent drug offenses.
Singapore has continued to make use of executions for drug-related crimes regardless that its neighbor and rival, Malaysia, lately ended its necessary loss of life penalty for severe crimes, together with drug offenses.
Phil Robertson, the deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, mentioned in an announcement that the sentence was “outrageous and unacceptable” and “raises severe issues that Singapore is launching a renewed spree to empty its loss of life row in a misguided deterrence effort that really reveals extra about Singapore’s barbarity than anything.”
Kirsten Han, a loss of life penalty opponent, mentioned that Mr. Tangaraju’s execution confirmed that Singapore had prioritized “wanting robust on crime” over enacting simpler insurance policies to scale back hurt from medication.
Activists mentioned the proof in opposition to Mr. Tangaraju — the numbers on the telephones of the opposite two males — was largely circumstantial. Human rights organizations additionally raised issues that Mr. Tangaraju didn’t have entry to a lawyer when he was first questioned by the authorities — Singaporean regulation doesn’t assure any such proper — and was denied entry to a Tamil interpreter when the police took his assertion.
Earlier than the execution, the United Nations’ prime human rights official known as for the authorities to “urgently rethink” the sentence.
“We now have issues round due course of and respect for honest trial ensures,” Ravina Shamdasani, a spokeswoman for the U.N. excessive commissioner for human rights, mentioned in a assertion.
The Singaporean authorities dismissed these issues, saying that Mr. Tangaraju had been afforded due course of. In a assertion issued earlier than his execution, the nation’s Central Narcotics Bureau mentioned that he “had entry to authorized counsel all through the method.” It additionally mentioned {that a} choose had discovered his declare of being denied an interpreter to be “disingenuous,” as a result of he had not requested for an interpreter when giving subsequent statements to the authorities.
“Capital punishment is a part of Singapore’s complete hurt prevention technique, which targets each drug demand and provide,” the assertion mentioned.
The opposite two males related to the case each gave proof in opposition to Mr. Tangaraju at his trial. Certainly one of them, who was arrested with the hashish in query, pleaded responsible to trafficking 499.9 grams of the drug — just under the five hundred grams, or 1.1 kilos, that will draw the loss of life penalty — and was sentenced to 23 years in jail and 15 strokes of the cane. The opposite acquired a discharge not amounting to acquittal.
Mr. Tangaraju’s household campaigned for clemency till his execution, issuing video appeals and writing letters to Singapore’s president, Halimah Yacob. On Tuesday, a Singaporean court docket rejected a last-minute enchantment from the household.
“His household mentioned they weren’t going to surrender on him till the final second,” mentioned Ms. Han, the anti-death-penalty activist, who spoke to Mr. Tangaraju’s household after the execution. “It was necessary to them that they saved making an attempt to battle for him.”
