Amnesty International calls for urgent stay as Singapore prepares to execute first woman in 20 years

Authorities in Singapore have been urged to halt the hanging of two people on drug related convictions, including the first woman set for execution in nearly 20 years.

The two are due to be hanged this week for trafficking a few grams of heroin, in keeping with Singapore’s stringent penalty against drug-related crimes.

The first punishment is expected on Wednesday, in which a 56-year-old Singaporean Malay man – who was convicted of trafficking around 50g of diamorphine – will be hanged after being served the execution notice last week. The unnamed prisoner was sentenced to death in 2018.

On Friday, the authorities will also execute a 45-year-old woman identified as Saridewi Djamani. The Singaporean national, the first woman to be executed in the spate of sentences this year, was given the punishment notice last Friday. She was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking around 30g of diamorphine.

Nearly 60 prisoners in Singapore’s jails are on the death row mostly for drug-related offences, as the city-state continues with its zero-tolerance legal punishment against drugs.

Amnesty International’s penalty expert Chiara Sangiorgio called the move by Singapore to “cruelly pursue more executions in the name of drug control” as unconscionable.

“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 drugs. As countries around the world do away with the death penalty and embrace drug policy reform, Singapore’s authorities are doing neither,” she said in a statement.

She added: “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.”

The Amnesty official said that it is past time for Singapore to reverse course and “consign the death penalty to the history books”.

She pointed out that the authorities in the south Asian state should address the underlying socio-economic causes that are causing people to participate in the drug trade.

“We renew our call on governments, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) to increase their pressure on Singapore so that all executions end and drug control policies become rooted in the promotion and protection of human rights,” Ms Sangiorgio said.

“This must start today, with an unequivocal condemnation of the set executions this week of two people convicted of drug trafficking.”

The convict to face the punishment on Wednesday was allegedly coerced into making admissions by the investigating officer who had promised him a non-capital charge, according to Transformative Justice Collective, an activism group seeking reform in Singapore’s criminal justice system.

In the second execution slated for this week, the woman previously testified that she had experienced symptoms of methamphetamine withdrawal and had not been "able to think properly" during the period her statement was recorded, the collective said.

It also noted that a High Court judge found that Saridewi had "at most been suffering from mild to moderate methamphetamine withdrawal during the statement-taking period" but the symptoms were "minimal and not noticeable" and her ability to give statements was not impaired.

A total of 11 people were executed by Singapore authorities last year in drug-related cases two years after it resumed rolling out capital punishments since the pandemic.

The hanging of a Malaysian man last year, who was mentally disabled and had an IQ of 69, sparked an international outcry and brought the country’s capital punishment under scrutiny for flouting human rights norms.