26-7-2023 (SINGAPORE) Singapore is set to execute two drug convicts this week, including the first woman to be sent to the gallows in nearly 20 years, according to local rights organisation Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), which has urged the authorities to halt the executions.
A 56-year-old man who was convicted of trafficking 50 grams (1.76 ounces) of heroin is scheduled to be hanged on Wednesday, while a 45-year-old woman named Saridewi Djamani, who was sentenced to death in 2018 for trafficking around 30 grams of heroin, is set to be executed on Friday.
If carried out, Djamani would be the first woman to be executed in Singapore since 2004.
TJC said that both prisoners are Singaporean and that their families have received notices setting the dates of their executions, although prison officials have not yet confirmed these reports.
Singapore imposes the death penalty for certain crimes, including murder and some forms of kidnapping. It also has some of the world’s toughest anti-drug laws, with trafficking more than 500 grams of cannabis and 15 grams of heroin resulting in the death penalty.
At least 13 people have been hanged in Singapore since the government resumed executions following a two-year hiatus during the Covid-19 pandemic. rights watchdog Amnesty International has called on Singapore to halt the upcoming executions. “It is unconscionable that authorities in Singapore continue to cruelly pursue more executions in the name of drug control,” said Amnesty’s death penalty expert Chiara Sangiorgio in a statement.
“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,” Sangiorgio added.
Singapore has defended its use of the death penalty as an effective crime deterrent.
