Saridewi Djamani, 45, is due to be hanged for smuggling drugs
RICHARD LLOYD PARRY
SINGAPORE
Singapore is to hang a woman for smuggling drugs, in what would be its first such execution for 19 years, according to human rights groups.
“It is unconscionable that authorities in Singapore continue to cruelly pursue more executions in the name of drug control,” said Chiara Sangiorgio of Amnesty International. “There is no evidence that the death penalty has a unique deterrent effect or that it has any impact on the use and availability of drug“As countries around the world do away with the death penalty and embrace drug policy reform, Singapore’s authorities are doing neither. The only message that these executions send is that the government of Singapore is willing to once again defy international safeguards on the use of the death penalty.”
Singapore is secretive about its executions and activists are forced to gather information about imminent hangings from lawyers and the families of the convicted. TJC said there are 54 people on death row at the moment, all but three of them sentenced to death for drug-related offences.
Eleven men are known to have been hanged by the state last year. Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a 34-year-old Malaysian man, was executed in April 2022 despite an international campaign for clemency and claims by his lawyers and family that he was intellectually disabled.-The Times
