A Singaporean man is scheduled to be hanged next week for conspiring to smuggle 1kg of cannabis in the city-state’s first execution in six months, rights groups said.
Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, would be executed on Wednesday, according to a notice from the Singapore Prison Service that was received by his family and posted on social media by rights advocates.
Amnesty International condemned the decision, calling it “extremely cruel.”
Photo: EPA-EFE
“If carried out, this execution would be in violation of international law and in stubborn defiance of continued outcry over Singapore’s use of the death penalty,” an Amnesty spokesperson said.
In many parts of the world — including in Thailand — cannabis has been decriminalized, with authorities abandoning prison sentences, and rights groups have been mounting pressure on Singapore to abolish capital punishment.
The city-state has some of the world’s toughest laws against the use and sale of narcotics, saying that the death penalty remains an effective deterrent against trafficking.
Tangaraju was convicted in 2017 of “abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic” 1.0179kg of cannabis, twice the minimum volume that merits the death sentence.
He was sentenced to death in 2018, and the Singaporean Court of Appeal upheld the decision.
Prosecutors said he owned two mobile phone numbers used as contacts.
“What is especially troubling is that Tangaraju ... never actually handled the drugs,” human rights advocate Kirsten Han (韓俐穎) said. “He was also questioned by the police without legal counsel, and said that he was denied a Tamil interpreter.”
Singaporean High Court Judge Hoo Sheau Peng (符曉平) said that anyone who abets the commission of a crime under the law shall also be guilty of that offense and liable to the same punishment.
Hoo said that “the charge against the accused had been proved beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Singapore resumed execution by hanging in March last year, after a hiatus of more than two years.
Eleven executions were carried out last year — all for drug offences.
Among those hanged was Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, whose execution sparked a global outcry, including from the UN and British billionaire Richard Branson, because he was deemed to have a mental disability.
The UN says that the death penalty has not proven to be an effective deterrent globally and is incompatible with international human rights law, which only permits capital punishment for the most serious crimes.
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS