Kuala Lumpur: Two drug traffickers have been hanged in Singapore, bringing to four this year the number of executions in the city-state despite growing calls to abolish the death penalty.
Activists said the prison department handed over the belongings and death certificates of Malaysian national Kalwant Singh and Singaporean Norasharee Gous to their families after the executions on Thursday morning.
Amnesty International said Singapore was one of four countries known to have executed people for drug-related crimes in recent years, against a global trend towards the abolition of the death penalty.
Anti-death penalty activists handed over a memorandum on Monday to protest the imminent execution of a Malaysian man convicted of drug trafficking at the Singapore High Commission in Kuala Lumpur. Credit: AP
“Singapore has again executed people convicted of drug-related offenses in violation of international law, without cruelly ignoring public protest,” said Emerlynne Gill, Amnesty International’s deputy regional director of research.
“The death penalty is never the solution and we are unconditionally opposed to it. There is no evidence that it acts as a single deterrent to crime, “Gill said in a statement.
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Kalwant, who was convicted in 2016 of bringing heroin to Singapore, was the second Malaysian executed in less than three months. In late April, the hanging of another Malaysian caused an international outcry because he was believed to have a mental disability.
Kalwant filed a last-minute appeal on the eve of his execution alleging he was a mere messenger and had cooperated with police, but the country’s highest court rejected her, according to activists.
Critics say Singapore’s death penalty has mostly hit low-level mules and has done little to stop drug traffickers and organized unions. But the government defends it as necessary to protect its citizens.