2023-07-28 18:50:12
It is through a communiqué that the Singaporean authorities of the Central Narcotics Bureau announced that: “The death sentence imposed on Saridewi Binte Djamani was carried out on July 28, 2023.” This 45-year-old Singaporean was convicted of drug trafficking and sentenced to death in 2018. The appeal against her conviction in October was unsuccessful, as was her request for a presidential pardon.
In this city-state of just over 5 million people located on the shores of the Strait of Malacca, in the very south of the Malay Peninsula, being in possession of more than 15 grams of heroin is enough to be sentenced to capital punishment. Saridewi Binte Djamani was in possession of the double. The last death of a woman in Singapore dates back to 2004 when Yen May Woen, then aged 36, was convicted of drug trafficking.
Executions had been paused in the country during the Covid-19 pandemic before resuming in March 2022. Since then, fifteen people have climbed the scaffold in Changi prison, where the death row of the former British colony. On Wednesday July 26, a 57-year-old man, Mohd Aziz bin Hussain, was executed for trafficking 50 grams of heroin. On August 3, a delivery driver arrested in 2016 and sentenced in 2019 for the same reasons will be executed.
The city-state accused of being on the wrong target
Capital punishment is at the heart ” of Singapore’s Comprehensive Harm Prevention Strategy », explain the authorities. Singapore uses the hanging method to put its convicts to death, a method that returns death “instant”, according to Amnesty International. The country applies one of the strictest laws in the world concerning the fight against drug trafficking and the majority of executions are linked to these offences. In 2022 worldwide, 37% of executions were for drug-related cases.
The executive power assures that the deterrent effect of the death penalty has enabled Singapore to remain a prosperous financial center and above all one of the safest cities in the world since its independence in 1965.
However, the assertion is refuted by most human rights NGOs, accusing the authorities of taking the wrong target. They accuse Singapore of attacking small dealers or drug mules when the country’s very opaque banking system benefits Southeast Asian drug barons who place money there.
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