Singabloodypore

Amnesty International
28 June 2007 -AI INDEX NO.:ASA/01/02/2007
For more information go to
http://web.amnesty.org

SINGAPORE

"It is never the real traffickers who are caught. The ones who are caught and hanged are often poor, desperate people, who are being made use of. By hanging them, we are helping to perpetuate the plan of the real traffickers who are very smart. They use people they can afford to lose to carry the drugs for them. So if we carry on with the death penalty, they will get away and the root of the problem is never really solved."

Singaporean lawyer quoted in the New Paper, 17 June 2001

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Singapore is believed to have one of the highest per capita execution rates in the world and enforces some of the world’sstrictest drug laws. More than 420 people have been executedsince 1991, the majority for drug trafficking.[1]The Misuse of Drugs Act provides for a mandatory death sentence for at least 20 different offences. Anyone found inpossession of specified quantities of drugs is automatically presumed to be trafficking in the drug unless the contrary can be proven. This presumption of guilt conflicts with the universally guaranteed right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and places the burden of proof on the defendant rather than the prosecutor. Such presumptions erode the right to a fair trial are in violation of international standards. In May 2001, the Court ofAppeal ruled that those helping drug traffickers would face the death penalty.[2]

In a response to proposed changes to the Penal Code, the Singapore Law Society[3] in April 2007 asked that judges be given the right to provide for a discretionary punishment arguing that changing the mandatory death penalty for capital offences will not lead to a reduction in deterrence. Public debate in Singapore about the death penalty is restricted. This is partly as a result of tight government controls on the press and civil society organisations. The government does not normally publish comprehensive statistics about death sentences or executions but a handful of executions are reported in the press. In his report to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in March 2006, the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, remarked, “Measures taken by the Government of Singapore suggest an attempt to suppress public debate about the death penalty in the country. For example, in April 2005, the Government denied a permit to an Amnesty International official to speak at aconference on the death penalty organized by political opposition leaders and human rights activists... If public opinion really is an important consideration for a country, then it would seem that the Government should facilitate access to the relevant information so as to make this opinion as informed as possible."[4] Amnesty International believes that the regular and fully comprehensive release of annual, disaggregated data on the application of the death penalty in Singapore will serve an important function in prompting and informing widened public debate concerning the death penalty. In recent years, there have been a number of high profile executions of drug-offenders. Unprecedented public debate was sparked when a former taxi-driver and window cleaner, Shanmugam s/o Murugesu, aged 38, was sentenced to death in April 2004 after being found with just over one kilogram of cannabis. His case resulted in local activists organizing a rare public forum to highlight Shanmugam’s situation but he was later hanged on 13 May 2005. On 2 December 2006, Australian Van Tuong Nguyen, aged 25, was hanged after he had been sentenced to death in March 2004, for importing 396.2 grams of heroin in transit through Singapore. Van Nguyen’s case also attracted wide public attention in Singapore, Australia and the region.

In April 2005, the Singapore Law Society Gazette published commentary arguing that there was “light on the path” because “it is now open to an accused to show…that a mandatory death sentence is cruel and inhuman punishment under customary international law”. Professor Alston called on the Government of Singapore not to proceed with the execution of Nguyen saying it would violate international legal standards relating to the imposition of the death penalty. In speaking about the mandatory death penalty he said, "Making such a penalty mandatory - thereby eliminating the discretion of the court - makes it impossible to take into account mitigating or extenuating circumstances and eliminate any individual determination of an appropriate sentence in a particular case".[5]

[1] “Singapore: Further information on death penalty”, January 2007(ASA36/001/2007).
[2] “The death penalty: A hidden toll of executions”, January 2004 (ASA36/001/2004).
[3] http://news.asiaone.com/a1news/20070405_story5_1.html
[4] “The death penalty: A hidden toll of executions”, January 2004 (ASA36/001/2004).
[5] http://www.hrdc.net/sahrde, 31 January 2006

TAKE ACTION!