Death Penalty News

Singapore will not alter its capital punishment laws, maintaining that the death penalty is a crucial deterrent against drug offences, its Foreign Minister Dr Vivian Balakrishnan said.  Speaking at a media roundtable during the 17th Malaysian Journalists' visit programme organised by Singapore's Digital Development and Information Ministry, Balakrishnan said the punishment remains in place with strong public support despite international pressure and human rights concerns.  "There is no change to the law," he said, stressing that drug trafficking presents a clear and present threat. 

Hayat says the execution of drug mules will effectively eliminate potential witnesses to drug operations. PETALING JAYA: Executing drug couriers and low-level operators will not deter or hamper drug syndicates, and will instead embolden them, says a group that advocates for criminal justice reform. Hayat said the execution of drug mules would effectively eliminate potential witnesses to drug operations. “Executions do not disrupt syndicates, nor do they dismantle the systems that enable them to thrive.

Although mandatory death penalty was abolished in 2023, many death sentences in Malaysia still involve drug offences. Concerned about the situation, Amnesty International (AI) calls for a moratorium, highlighting human rights violations. For AI Interim Executive Director Vilasini Vijandran, the country’s credibility is undermined. The gap between lower and higher courts on this matter is growing.

Today [Oct. 10] is the 21st World Day against the Death Penalty, and a pathway towards abolition of this cruel measure in the South East Asia is not unimaginable. I don’t pen these words in response to vast mobilizations against capital punishment sweeping the region. Quite the contrary. Regrettably, we’re far from achieving that level of awareness and mobilization. This is a region where championing human rights hasn’t historically been viewed as fashionable or commendable. Yet, there’s a genuine opportunity to ignite a substantive conversation about the death penalty.

The situation is particularly dire for foreign nationals who find themselves sentenced to death outside of their home countries. On March 30, Singapore executed Abdul Kahar bin Othman, a local man sentenced to death for drug offences and the first person to be executed in Singapore in since 2019. Othman had been unable to appeal his execution because he did not have a lawyer. 8 of the 35 countries that still retain the death penalty for drug offences are in South-east Asia and were responsible for a staggering 91.5 % of all confirmed death sentences given for drug offences worldwide, according to the Global Review 2021 from Harm Reduction International (HRI). The imposition of these death sentences is shrouded in secrecy and characterised by widespread human rights violations (HRI 2019), such as lack of access to legal representation (HRI 2020), as in Othman's case. Too often, there are reports of torture, ill treatment and coerced confession. The situation is particularly dire for...

MALAYSIA is on the path of becoming a nation that will put the dignity of human beings and human rights before any other consideration. This would be the case if the government eliminated the death penalty from its penal code. By the end of the month, the government could embrace the likely recommendations being provided by a committee headed by former chief justice Tun Richard Malanjun, findings that hopefully will prove that alternative sentencing to the death penalty is possible and in the best interest of the country. Public opinion is swayed by the emotional turmoil and trauma caused by stories about the death penalty. It is regrettable that judges kept sentencing people to death despite an official moratorium being in place and an imperfect but still positive amendment to the Dangerous Drug Act 1952 in 2017. The amendment did away with automatic mandatory penalty and instead gave a discretion to judges to decide, based on conditions to be met for not imposing the death penalty on...

Foreign nationals, and within this group migrant workers, are a population that disproportionately faces the death penalty around the world. The data and statistics gathered by Reprieve and Migrant CARE for this report show that migrant workers as a sub-set of the foreign national population are at grave risk of human rights violations related to the death penalty, including arbitrary deprivation of the right to life in the context of unlawful death sentences and executions. This report focuses on: states that receive migrant workers (‘receiving states’), in particular the states that make up the Association of South East Asian Nations or ASEAN (‘South East Asian states’) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (‘Gulf states’), and on states from which migrant workers travel to work (‘sending states’). In the Gulf states, foreign nationals are overwhelmingly and disproportionately represented on death rows and are disproportionately executed, particularly for drug offences. Within this group,...

Boycotts and sanctions are unlikely to persuade the tiny country to scrap its draconian anti-gay and adultery laws Brunei is usually a quiet and tranquil country: crime is virtually unknown, traffic is light and its political scene is among the most stable in the region. Yet in recent weeks the small nation has been in the international spotlight over the introduction of draconian anti-homosexual and anti-adultery laws that had been delayed for some time. There are now calls for boycotts and the withdrawal of Western honorary degrees and other honors that had previously been bestowed on Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, who is the last absolute monarch in Southeast Asia. However, the Brunei government remains resolute in insisting that this is an internal affair and that the law be implemented without external interference. What exactly is behind this insistence in the face of international and celebrity condemnation? Commentators have pointed to the possibility that the monarch,...

PM Mahathir bolsters credentials by signing up to ICC after abandoning death penalty Malaysia’s accession to the International Criminal Court (ICC) will further enhance its global standing after its decision to abandon the death penalty and should add weight to efforts to prosecute six generals in Myanmar for genocide.  The government of Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad signed the Rome Statute governing the ICC on March 5 and immediately notified the United Nations, noting the court’s objective was to end impunity — namely genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Since ousting the scandal-ravaged Najib Razak in elections last year, Mahathir has pushed his country towards international norms in regard to humanitarian issues. He was widely praised in November for abolishing the death penalty but his agenda struck a snag and he was forced to back down from signing on to the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (I...

Manila, Philippines Parliamentarians from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Wednesday urged Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and his allies at the House of Representatives to reject the re-imposition of the death penalty in the country, and to respect the Philippines' international obligations and standing in the ASEAN as a regional leader in human rights protection. Instead of bringing back the death penalty, the Philippines and ASEAN should think about reforms, preventive measures, and rehabilitation, as ways of deterring crimes instead of the old "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" doctrine, Cambodia Rep. Mu Sochua, Battambang Representative of the National Assembly of Cambodia, said. "Killing, in whatever form, is a form of violence. Death penalty is the extreme form of violence," Sochua said. Malaysia, a nation that still imposes capital punishment, still gets opposition from its legislators lobbying for the aboliti...