Singapore Resumes Hangings for Drug Offenses, Provoking Outrage, Rare Public Protest

In a move sharply crit­i­cized by rights advo­cates as a vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al human rights law, Singapore has resumed exe­cu­tions for non-vio­lent drug offenses. 

On March 30, 2022, the author­i­tar­i­an city/​state hanged Abdul Kahar bin Othman on charges of drug traf­fick­ing, its first exe­cu­tion since November 2019. The exe­cu­tion of the 68-year-old bin Othman may presage a spate of exe­cu­tions, human rights lead­ers feared, fol­low­ing the denial of appeals ear­li­er in March of an intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled Malaysian man and sev­er­al oth­ers con­demned for drug offens­es under Singapore’s manda­to­ry death penalty statute.

As the UN Human Rights office expressed con­cern about what it feared would be ​“a surge in exe­cu­tion notices,” Amnesty International charged that ​“the use of the death penal­ty in Singapore vio­lates inter­na­tion­al human rights law and stan­dards. The death penal­ty is nev­er the solu­tion to crime or the solu­tion to address the risks and harms of using drugs,” Amnesty said in a March 29, 2022 statement.

Former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, now the chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, wrote in a com­men­tary in Al Jazeera that Singapore’s 1973 Misuse of Drugs Act, which impos­es a manda­to­ry death sen­tence for 20 dif­fer­ent drug offens­es, ​“has not ful­filled its inten­tion of pre­vent­ing and com­bat­ting illic­it drug traf­fick­ing and drug use.” She said that the country’s ​“use of the death penal­ty for drug-relat­ed offences does not meet the [inter­na­tion­al law] thresh­old of ​‘most seri­ous crimes’ … and thus clear­ly vio­lates inter­na­tion­al human rights law.”

The exe­cu­tion pro­voked a rare pub­lic protest (pic­tured) in Singapore on April 3, 2022, as hun­dreds of pro­tes­tors gath­ered to demon­strate against the country’s resump­tion of the death penal­ty. ​“Capital pun­ish­ment is a bru­tal sys­tem that makes brutes of us all,” promi­nent Singaporean activist Kirsten Han told atten­dees at the demon­stra­tion. ​“Instead of push­ing us to address inequal­i­ties and exploita­tive and oppres­sive sys­tems that leave peo­ple mar­gin­al­ized and unsup­port­ed, it makes us the worst ver­sion of ourselves.”

Organizers said the demon­stra­tion — held in the one park in the city state in which protests are allowed with­out pri­or police approval — was in response to fears that Singapore would restart hang­ings after it halt­ed exe­cu­tions dur­ing the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. According to the Transformative Justice Collective, a group that aims to reform Singapore’s crim­i­nal legal sys­tem, sev­en men on the city state’s death row have been giv­en exe­cu­tion notices since 2019.

“After two years of no exe­cu­tions, the hang­ing of Abdul Kahar bin Othman, who was sen­tenced for drug-relat­ed offences and to the manda­to­ry death penal­ty, is a shame­ful breach of inter­na­tion­al law,” said Amnesty International Southeast Asia Researcher Rachel Chhoa-Howard. ​“There is over­whelm­ing evi­dence that puni­tive drug poli­cies, includ­ing impos­ing the death penal­ty for drug use and pos­ses­sion, do not solve prob­lems asso­ci­at­ed with drugs. The Singapore gov­ern­ment should focus on evi­dence-based and com­mu­ni­ty-based approach­es root­ed in the respect of pub­lic health and human rights to avert drug depen­dence and oth­er soci­etal harms that may result from the use of drugs.”

Abdul Kahar was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death via manda­to­ry death sen­tence in 2015 for drug traf­fick­ing. In the wake of Abdul Kahar’s exe­cu­tion, Han told the Guardian that ​“t[h]e Singapore gov­ern­ment reg­u­lar­ly claims that the death penal­ty is an effec­tive deter­rent to drug traf­fick­ing. They talk about the harms that drugs can inflict upon peo­ple with addic­tions, and insist that the use of the cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment will help pro­tect peo­ple and save lives. But there is no clear evi­dence that the death penal­ty is more effec­tive than any oth­er pun­ish­ment in deter­ring drug offences.”

The next man like­ly to face exe­cu­tion in Singapore is Malaysian nation­al Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, who lost his final appeal against his manda­to­ry death sen­tence for a drug-relat­ed offense on March 29, 2022. The orga­niz­er of the protest, Jolovan Wham, said in a tweet that “[t]his event is organ­ised in sup­port of and in sol­i­dar­i­ty with Nagaenthran and all death row pris­on­ers and their loved ones.”

Dharmalingam was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to death in 2010 for bring­ing 1.5 ounces of hero­in into the coun­try. His lawyers have argued that he is intel­lec­tu­al­ly dis­abled and men­tal­ly incom­pe­tent to be exe­cut­ed. ​“We are extreme­ly con­cerned about rushed hear­ings and deci­sions in this case, in vio­la­tion of Nagaenthran’s fair tri­al rights. Nagaenthran should be pro­tect­ed from the death penal­ty because of his intel­lec­tu­al dis­abil­i­ty,” said Maya Foa, who is the exec­u­tive direc­tor of UK-based human rights organization Reprieve. 

Chhoa-Howard called the out­come of Dharmalingam’s appeal ​“shock­ing” in light of ​“seri­ous con­cerns about his intel­lec­tu­al and men­tal capac­i­ty, and col­lec­tive out­rage from around the world.”