Death Penalty News

A shocking, devastating loss that none of us saw coming. Rest in Power, M Ravi. How do I process something that doesn’t feel real? As I'm writing this, the amount of information I have is distressingly small. M Ravi is dead. He was pronounced dead at Tan Tock Seng Hospital this morning. The police say they don’t suspect foul play, but investigations are ongoing. None of us saw this coming.

SINGAPORE: Yong Vui Kong is alive and well, though still incarcerated, as he sees the 15th year since a last-minute appeal saved his life from the gallows. Vui Kong’s story was well publicized after he was arrested for possession of 47.27 grams of heroin. This occurred in 2007 when the Malaysian was only 19 years old.

“The more I learn about the death penalty… the more I am convinced that it’s a brutal injustice that has no place in any society.” Last year, after a two-year COVID-19 hiatus, Singapore’s authorities quietly restarted the execution of prisoners on death row. The prompted renewed scrutiny of the city-state’s mandatory use of the death penalty, even in relatively minor drug cases, with the United Nations expressing its concern over a pending “surge in execution notices.” The resumption of executions was also stridently opposed by a network of activists inside Singapore, who have been working for years for the abolition of the death penalty.

In the third of the DPRU's (Death Penalty Research Unit, University of Oxford, Faculty of Law) series of Q&As with death penalty experts from around the world, Kirsten Han, an anti-death penalty advocate in Singapore, tells DPRU Research Officer Jocelyn Hutton about her current work and about her involvement in the case of the recently executed Nagaenthran Dharmalingam . Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do in relation to the death penalty? A lot of my contribution to the campaign to abolish the death penalty in Singapore has to do with storytelling, since that fits with the skills that I have as a writer and journalist, and because abolitionist perspectives, or any in-depth coverage of capital punishment, are missing from the local government-controlled mainstream media. I write about death row prisoners and the experiences of their families, try to humanise this issue. For many Singaporeans, it’s so distant and so abstract that it’s very easy to dismiss; so...

Public support for capital punishment isn’t as overwhelming and unshakeable as the government often portrays it to be. The sun baked the concrete and tarmac as mourners walked behind a hearse carrying Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam , wailing and crying out for the life that had been lost. Over 200 people attended his funeral, sending him off on the final leg of a horrific journey that had begun 13 years ago, when Nagaenthran had been arrested in Singapore and eventually charged with trafficking 42.72 grams of heroin. Nagaenthran’s story triggered an outpouring of support and concern in the final six months of his life. Although the Singapore government has repeatedly insisted that he was not intellectually disabled – even going as far as to issue a statement to that effect on the day he was hanged in prison – it was not a matter of contention that he’d had an IQ of 69, far below the average, and that he had “borderline intellectual functioning” as well as other cognitive impairments. As fa...

M Ravi has spent nearly 20 years taking on the cases few want to touch, and is convinced Singapore will eventually abolish the death penalty. Singapore is known for being tough on crime, with some of the harshest punishments in the world, including a mandatory death sentence for certain offences, including drug-related crimes. One lawyer, M Ravi, has been taking on the state in high-profile cases for decades. Ravi has been diagnosed as bipolar and is currently suspended from practising law on mental health grounds, but he has been heavily involved in the case of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam , a Malaysian man with a learning disability found guilty of drug offences and sentenced to death. A last-minute appeal that attracted worldwide attention gave Nagaenthran a reprieve, and he contracted COVID-19 in November of last year, further delaying the process. Singapore’s Court of Appeal heard his case on March 1, and has reserved judgement until an undisclosed date. Ravi spoke to Al Jazeera about...

Before the month of July is out, some 10 convicts on death row in Singapore’s Changi Prison – where Australian Nguyen Tuong Van was executed in December 2005 – will meet their fate. Because of the sensitive nature of the executions, Singapore's newspapers have made only scant mention of the impending deaths. In Singapore, executions are usually carried out at six o'clock on a Friday morning, when most of the city-state is still asleep. The chosen date is usually about two weeks after the state president has rejected the clemency appeals of the condemned men. That suggests they will be killed by the state this Friday. The last time Singapore executed a large group of men at the same time was 1975, when seven convicted murderers, including two brothers, were hanged. Before that, in 1966, 18 men died at the hands of hangman Dharshan Singh for their roles in the murder of a prison superintendent and his assistants. They were hanged in threes. But unlike the e...

In Singapore, there are 32 offences that could potentially warrant death sentences. 4 of these call for the mandatory death penalty, where the death penalty must be given and judges are not able to take into consideration mitigating circumstances when sentencing: - Murder  -  Drug trafficking - Terrorism - Possession of unauthorised firearms, ammunition or explosives However, since an amendment to the law in 2012, the mandatory death penalty for the offences of murder and drug trafficking has been lifted in certain conditions and the courts can decide to impose life imprisonment instead. Specifically, for drug trafficking, the trafficker must have: - Only played the role of courier (i.e. transport, send or deliver) for a controlled drug; and - Either cooperated with the Central Narcotics Bureau in a significant way that has disrupted drug trafficking activities within or outside Singapore; or had a mental disability that impaired their judgement of the s...

As Malaysia takes the progressive approach of reviewing the suitability of some of its laws, Singapore holds on tight to its old ways despite many voicing that these laws are too oppressive or redundant in the face of other existing legislation. One of these laws facing the axe across the causeway is the draconian Sedition Act 1948. As you can see from the date of this Act, it is high time this piece of legislation is reviewed. We are now in 2018, a far cry from post war 1948. In large part, this act was devised to deal with the upsurge of communism. Now that communism is no longer a viable threat, it follows to say that the necessity of the act is similarly no longer viable. From the Singaporean context, we too have this dreaded act – this act along with the infamous Internal Securities Act (ISA) – has been used to silence all matter of behaviour deemed undesirable by the powers be. Victims have included cartoonist, Leslie Chew and the many individuals who were arrested and...

The following is a press release by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights' Regional Office for South-East Asia: We urgently call on the Singapore Government to halt the execution of Malaysian national Kho Jabing, who is due to be hanged on Friday. Kho, 31, has endured years of immense suffering on death row as his sentence has been changed several times. Kho was sentenced to death in 2010 for murder. At the time, a mandatory death penalty applied to all cases of murder in Singapore. In 2012, Singapore amended legislation regarding the mandatory use of the death penalty and his sentence was changed to life imprisonment and 24 strokes of the cane. However, Kho's death sentence was reinstated in January 2015 by the Court of Appeal. In November 2015, Kho was granted a temporary stay of execution less than 24 hours before he was due to be hanged. On 5 April, his death sentence was upheld by the Court of Appeal. Despite several appeals by th...