2023-07-28 11:05:00
DISPATCH — This Friday, July 28, Singapore hanged one of its nationals for drug trafficking. If judicial executions have resumed brutally since 2022, it has been twenty years since the severe Singaporean legislation fell on a woman.
“The death sentence imposed on Saridewi Binte Djamani was carried out on July 28, 2023,” the Central Narcotics Bureau said in a statement. At 45, she was found guilty of trafficking 30.72 grams of heroin, more than twice the volume punishable by death in Singapore.
As AFP reports, the wealthy Asian financial center applies one of the toughest drug laws in the world: trafficking more than 500 grams of cannabis or more than 15 grams of heroin is punishable by death sentence.
Ms Djamani, who was convicted in 2018, “benefited from due process under the law and was represented by counsel throughout the proceedings”, the justice said in a statement. “She appealed her conviction and sentence, and the Court of Appeal denied her appeal on October 6, 2022,” the office wrote, just as her appeal for presidential clemency was also denied.
Judicial executions resumed in the Asian financial hub in March 2022, after a two-year hiatus during the Covid-19 crisis. Since then, 15 prisoners have been convicted of drug trafficking and killed.
Of course, these killings are met with increasingly fierce opposition in the country. “This week has shed a harsh and tragic light on the total lack of death penalty reform in Singapore,” said Chiara Sangiorgio, death penalty specialist for the NGO Amnesty International. “While most countries in the world are turning their backs on this cruel punishment, the Singapore government continues to execute people for drug-related offences, in violation of international human rights law and international standards on the subject. matter,” he added.
For Singapore, it is this severity that has helped make it one of the safest countries in Asia. The government therefore does not plan to reverse this legislation.
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