KUALA LUMPUR: The abolition of the death penalty for drug-related offences has been put on hold, pending the outcome of an ongoing court case.
Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Datuk Liew Vui Keong said the applicant in the case had challenged the constitutionality of the death penalty in drug cases.
“The applicant had argued that they have equal rights and protection under the law and that his death penalty sentence should not be the same as those imposed for murder,” he said.
Liew said the removal of the mandatory death sentence for murder was still in progress.
“I hope to get it tabled sometime in July (Parliament session).
“I’m waiting for the paper to be returned to me from the Attorney-General’s Chambers, perhaps in the next couple of days,” Liew said at the Talking Drugs, Death Penalty and Human Rights Forum, held at the Universiti Malaya (UM) Alumni House, here, today.
Last October, the Cabinet gave the green light to abolish the death penalty in Malaysia.
If Parliament approves it, the country’s 1,291 death row inmates will all get a reprieve.
Liew had previously said that the death penalty would be replaced with a minimum jail sentence of 30 years.
Such a jail sentence could be used in the proposed amendment to Section 39(B) of the Dangerous Drug Act 1952, for instance, where a convicted offender was subjected to the mandatory death sentence.
There are 17 other criminal offences that bear the same capital punishment.
These include offences such as waging war against the Yang di-Pertuan Agong, terrorism, murder, attempted murder during life imprisonment, killing victims during kidnapping, possessing and using firearms as well as rape leading to death and rape of minors.
Meanwhile, Permatang Pauh member of parliament Nurul Izzah Anwar said a proposal for the decriminalisation of illicit drug use would be released on June 26.
“I have written to the Home Minister and Liew on the suggestions in this proposal and I, together with (University of Malaya Faculty of Medicine Dean) Professor Datuk Dr Adeeba Kamarulzaman also presented this to the health minister.
“The response has been positive and there has been readiness to engage.”
Nurul said it was important to embrace harm reduction as a solution to curb addiction.
“Harm reduction was supported by (former home minister) Datuk Seri Dr Ahmad Zahid Hamidi, and the previous government even had a Pemandu (Performance Management and Delivery Unit) lab on the decriminalisation of drugs in Malaysia.
“So it’s a cross-partisan issue and Malaysia is in dire need of this,” she added.
Source: nst.com.my, Hana Naz Harun, June 17, 2019
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
