May 14
AUSTRALIA/SINGAPORE:
Singapore has been exposed as the country with shockingly high,
hidden toll of executions, according to Amnesty International
Australia.
On Friday, a drug trafficker at the centre of a high-profile
campaign to end the death penalty was executed in Changi Prison.
Shanmugam Murugesu, 38, was convicted of trying to import
1,029.8gm of cannabis through a checkpoint from Malaysia.
An Australian man, Nguyen Tuong Van, 24, will know within weeks
if clemency against his death sentence will be successful.
The small city-state with a population of just over four million
people has hanged more than 400 prisoners in the last 13 years,
including foreign nationals. Official information about the use
of the death penalty is shrouded in secrecy. The government does
not normally publish statistics about death sentences or executions.
It is not known how many prisoners are currently on death row,
but the deplorable death toll from executions continues.
Amnesty International Australia has called on the Government of
Singapore to impose an immediate moratorium on executions, to
commute all pending death sentences to prison terms and to end
the secrecy surrounding the use of the death penalty.
Singapore is believed to have the highest per capita rate of
executions the world. A UN Report found that Singapore had three
times the number of executions, relative to the size of its
population, as the next country on the list - Saudi Arabia.
"The government of Singapore must seriously reconsider its stance
claiming that the death penalty is not a human rights issue,"
said Tim Goodwin, Amnesty International Australia's Anti-Death
Penalty Network Coordinator.
"The death penalty equates to the cold-blooded killing of a human
being by the state in the name of justice, and violates one of
the most fundamental of all human rights: the right to life. By
imposing death sentences and carrying out high numbers of executions,
Singapore is going against global trends towards abolition of death
penalty", said Tim Goodwin.
Amnesty International's report, Singapore; The death penalty;
A hidden toll of executions, examines how the death penalty often
falls disproportionately and arbitrarily on the most marginalised
or vulnerable members of society. Many of those executed have been
migrant workers, drug addicts, the impoverished or those lacking
in education.
Drug addicts are particularly vulnerable. Many were hanged after
being found in possession of relatively small quantities of drugs.
A series of clauses in Singapore's Misuse of Drugs Act contain
presumptions of guilt, conflicting with the right to presumed
innocent until proven guilty and eroding the right to a fair trial.
"Such provisions erode the right to a fair trial and increase the
risk of executing the innocent," stressed Tim Goodwin. "Moreover,
it is often the drug addicts or minor drug pushers who are hanged,
while those who mastermind the crime of trafficking evade arrest
and punishment."
(source: AI-Australia)
