Malaysian Government Pledges to End Mandatory Death Penalty

The cab­i­net of the gov­ern­ment of Malaysia announced on June 10, 2022 that it had reached agree­ment to abol­ish the nation’s manda­to­ry death penal­ty laws and sub­mit leg­is­la­tion to par­lia­ment to pro­vide judges dis­cre­tion to impose oth­er penal­ties for cap­i­tal crimes. Law Minister Wan Junaidi Tuanku Jaafar said the cab­i­net also agreed to study pro­pos­als to sub­sti­tute sen­tences for those cur­rent­ly on death row for offences car­ry­ing the death penalty. 

Amnesty International reports that as of February 2022, Malaysia had 1,341 peo­ple on its death row, with 905 hav­ing been con­demned under manda­to­ry death sen­tences for drug trafficking.

The announce­ment comes three years after the gov­ern­ment of for­mer Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad made a sim­i­lar pledge. However, Mahathir’s coali­tion gov­ern­ment col­lapsed in February 2020, one month before par­lia­ment was sched­uled to table the abolition legislation. 

Human rights groups offered cau­tious praise for the government’s action. Amnesty International Malaysia’s Executive Director Katrina Jorene Maliamauv called the announce­ment ​“a wel­come step in the right direc­tion” and urged the gov­ern­ment to ​“table the nec­es­sary amend­ments in Parliament with­out delay and estab­lish a full review of all cas­es involv­ing the manda­to­ry death penal­ty with a view to com­mut­ing these sentences.”

Human Rights Watch Deputy Asia Director Phil Robertson said the cab­i­net deci­sion was ​“an impor­tant step for­ward. … But,” he added, ​“before every­one starts cheer­ing, we need to see Malaysia pass the actu­al leg­isla­tive amend­ments to put this pledge into effect because we have been down this road before, with suc­ces­sive Malaysian gov­ern­ments promis­ing much on human rights but ulti­mate­ly deliv­er­ing very little.” 

The use of the death penal­ty for non-vio­lent drug offens­es vio­lates inter­na­tion­al human rights law. In its 2022 annu­al report on the glob­al use of cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment for drug offens­es, inter­na­tion­al drug mon­i­tor Harm Reduction International denot­ed Malaysia as one of eight ​“high appli­ca­tion … coun­tries active­ly resort­ing to cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment as a cen­tral tool of drug control.” 

Amnesty’s Maliamauv said, ​“We have seen and doc­u­ment­ed time and time again how the use of manda­to­ry sen­tenc­ing has dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly harmed the most mar­gin­al­ized and dis­en­fran­chised mem­bers of soci­ety, how the death penal­ty itself has not served as a unique deter­rent to crime, and how its con­tin­ued use has sti­fled the nec­es­sary and vision­ary work towards enabling fair jus­tice and address­ing issues at the root causes.”

Malaysia has had a mora­to­ri­um on exe­cu­tions since 2018 and that mora­to­ri­um remains in effect while the gov­ern­ment under­takes steps to end the manda­to­ry death penal­ty and put alter­na­tive pun­ish­ments in place.