Singapore executed 17 people this year, marking 22-year high

International pressure on Singapore to reconsider its death penalty for drug offences has increased

SINGAPORE — Singapore has executed 17 individuals this year on drug and murder charges, marking the highest annual tally since 2003 amid renewed debate over the city-state’s use of the death penalty.

Over two days last week, three convicted drug traffickers were executed: Singaporean Mohammad Rizwan bin Akbar Husain, 44; another Singaporean whose name wasn’t released; and Saminathan Selvaraju, 42, a Malaysian. The hangings come ahead of a hearing on Wednesday in which activists will seek to challenge the constitutionality of the death penalty.

“A prisoner awaiting capital punishment will be scheduled for execution when he has exhausted all legal channels in relation to his conviction and sentence, including the appeal and clemency process,” the Ministry of Home Affairs said in a written response to questions sent by Bloomberg News.

Those executed last week had “been accorded full due process under the law” and their sentences were carried out in accordance with Singapore’s legal system, the ministry added.

The Transformative Justice Collective, which has brought the constitutional challenge, said if the court rules in their favour, that will mean “these three men, and all the others executed before them for drug offences, were wrongfully executed,” according to Kirsten Han, one member of the group. She, along with three other activists and three sisters of Singaporeans who have already been executed, have filed the challenge.

Singapore has long defended capital punishment for drug offences, saying the laws serve as a deterrent and help make the nation one of the safest places in the world. In 2024, the city-state carried out nine judicial executions, eight of which were for drug-related crimes. In the same year, the Central Narcotics Bureau said it arrested more than 3,100 drug abusers, around one-third of whom were new offenders.

In 2021, then-Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong defended the 1975 introduction of the death penalty saying, “drug traffickers became much less willing to bring drugs into Singapore.”

“Today, Singapore is relatively drug-free. Our situation is under better control than most other countries,” Lee said.

International pressure on Singapore to reconsider its death penalty for drug offences has been growing in recent years, particularly from human rights organisations.

The calls escalated in 2022 when the government resumed executions for drug offences after a temporary halt during the coronavirus 2019 (Covid-19) pandemic. British billionaire Richard Branson criticised Singapore that year, calling it “on the wrong side of history.”

Last week, a delegation from the European Union (EU) issued a joint statement expressing regret over the 2025 executions, saying that “imposing the death penalty for drug offences is incompatible with international law, as these offences do not meet the threshold of ‘most serious crimes.’”

Over the past 15 years, countries including Malaysia and Pakistan have abolished the mandatory death penalty for drug offences while almost 20 other nations have scrapped or reduced the use of the death penalty in part or in full, according to Transformative Justice Collective.

The Transformative Justice Collective is a civil-society group based in Singapore that campaigns against the death penalty. Last year, it was penalised under the so-called fake news law over a series of “false statements of fact” on the subject and received a two-year restriction on receiving financial benefits from operating the website and social media pages.

Han said that with executions this year the most since 19 people were sentenced to death in 2003, “the government will have to answer for themselves why they are so eager and determined to kill.”

“All this is done in the name of all Singaporeans, which is why it’s so important for all of us as citizens to reflect upon what this says about our society, our country and us as a people,” she said.

Source: bangkokpost.com, Bloomberg News, December 2, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde