Singapore just executed a man for cannabis\u2014and for just one kilo. Even worse, the trial appears not to have even met basic standards for fairness. This outrage comes just as neighboring Malaysia is finally following through on pledges to limit use of the death penalty\u2014five years after a global outcry when a compassionate care provider was sentenced to be hanged for supplying cannabis oil. Despite the quasi-decriminalization in Thailand, Southeast Asia remains one of the most repressive regions on earth where the herb is concerned.<\/p>\n
The Southeast Asian city-state of Singapore has a reputation for puritanical intolerance as well as its paradoxical cosmopolitanism. An egregious example made at least brief world headlines last week\u2014when a man was put to death on a cannabis charge.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tangaraju Suppiah<\/a>, 46, was\u00a0hanged<\/a>\u00a0April 26 at the island nation\u2019s Changi prison\u2014over the protests<\/a>\u00a0of local and international human rights groups. They charged that the case against Suppiah was legally irregular, on top of the absurdly extreme punishment. For starters, not only was the quantity in question (a little more than a single kilogram), but it wasn\u2019t even found on his person. Suppiah was charged with \u201cconspiracy to traffic\u201d the shipment in from neighboring Malaysia after two phone numbers used by a deliveryman were traced to him. Convicted in 2013, he was sentenced to death in 2018.<\/p>\n Next, Suppiah was part of Singapore\u2019s Indian minority, and rights groups monitoring the case say he was denied adequate access to an interpreter to his native Tamil language. (Official proceedings in Singapore are generally in English.) And he was also denied adequate counsel\u2014he had to represent himself on his final appeal, as his family was unable to afford a lawyer. The appeal wasn\u2019t successful. The\u00a0Transformative Justice Collective, a Singaporean anti-death penalty group, said there were \u201cserious problems\u201d with the evidence used to convict Tangaraju, characterizing it as \u201cshockingly thin<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Singapore\u2019s Misuse of Drugs Act mandates the death penalty if the amount of cannabis in question is more than 500 grams. Using the predictably jaundiced language<\/a>, the Ministry of Home Affairs said that the amount Suppiah was convicted for was \u201csufficient to feed the addiction of about 150 abusers for a week.\u201d Convicted traffickers who can prove that they were only couriers may be able to avoid hanging\u2014but Suppiah had no such luck.\u00a0On the eve of the execution, Suppiah\u2019s family issued a desperate plea for clemency\u00a0on social media<\/a>, calling on the public to pressure President Halimah Yacob to intervene in the case. \u201cMy uncle is a very good man, he didn\u2019t have education or money but he worked very hard to look after us,\u201d said his niece.<\/p>\n The UN\u00a0Human Rights Office called for<\/a>\u00a0Singapore to \u201curgently reconsider\u201d the execution. And British business tycoon Richard Branson blogged\u00a0on his company\u2019s website<\/a>: \u201cKilling people for allegedly smuggling cannabis is particularly cruel and misguided, given that more countries are now introducing sensible drug policy by decriminalizing and regulating both medicinal and recreational cannabis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Lecturing from a scion of former colonial power Britain was of course met with facile dismissal. The\u00a0Ministry of Home Affairs responded<\/a>\u00a0that Branson\u2019s comments showed \u201cdisrespect\u201d for Singapore\u2019s justice system.<\/p>\n Suppiah\u2019s execution was the first to be carried out by Singapore this year. But 2022 saw 11 hangings in the city-state. Among those executed last year was\u00a0another cannabis defendant<\/a>, Omar Yacob Bamadhaj\u2014similarly charged with bringing in about a kilo from Malaysia. His final appeal was turned down by the country\u2019s Apex Court in October 2021\u2014again prompting a flurry of scolding from human rights groups. Reggae star Ziggy Marley\u00a0also spoke out<\/a>\u00a0for Bamadhaj\u2014to no avail.<\/p>\n Singapore is one of 35 countries and territories around the world that sentence people to death for drug convictions, according to\u00a0a study<\/a> by UK-based\u00a0Harm Reduction International.<\/p>\n Singapore\u2019s neighbor Malaysia is also one of those 35 countries\u2014and is just now seeing some small progress toward correcting this injustice. On April 11, Malaysia\u2019s Parliament passed two bills reforming death penalty sentencing, and abolishing mandatory death penalties.\u00a0<\/p>\n This is a long-delayed response to the global activist outcry in October 2018, when a Malaysian man was sentenced to death for providing medical cannabis oil to epileptics and cancer patients. Malaysia\u2019s government responded to the international protests by\u00a0pledging to abolish the death penalty. But the brief media spotlight moved on, and more than four years passed with no legislative action.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n In February 2021, at least, the hash-oil producer, Muhammad Lukman, formally\u00a0escaped the gallows<\/a> after the Federal Court allowed his appeal of the death sentence. However, the court confirmed his guilt under Malaysia\u2019s harsh Dangerous Drugs Act and sentenced him to five years on each of two counts of possession. The terms were to run concurrently, meaning he still faced five years behind bars. Fortunately, the following month he reached a deal with judicial authorities under which his charge was reduced from trafficking to possession. With credit for time served on the lesser charge, he was released\u2014but not before being subjected to the humiliating corporal punishment imposed in such cases: a caning. He walked free in physical pain and bruised from 10 strokes of a cane.\u00a0<\/p>\n It was only in March 2023 that Malaysia\u2019s Parliament\u00a0began considering<\/a> Singapore of the death penalty reform bills. And the legislation stopped well short of the government\u2019s initial pledge to abolish the death penalty. Instead, it abolishes the\u00a0mandatory\u00a0<\/em>death penalty.\u00a0The Abolition of Mandatory Death Penalty Bill removes the mandatory death sentence for the 12 offenses that carried it. Judges will still have the option of imposing a death sentence in these cases. It also adds an additional requirement of caning for those given life imprisonment instead of the death penalty.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Revision of Sentence of Death & Imprisonment for Natural Life would allow prisoners sentenced to hanging or life imprisonment to apply for resentencing by the Federal Court within 90 days of the law taking effect. The caning provision was of course protested by rights groups.\u00a0Amnesty International Malaysia<\/a>\u2019s director Katrina Jorene Maliamauv said that caning \u201cconstitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, and as such is prohibited under international law.\u201d<\/p>\n When the two bills were\u00a0approved by Parliament<\/a>\u00a0last month, rights groups were only cautiously optimistic.\u00a0Human Rights Watch pointed out<\/a>\u00a0that the mandatory death penalty had been removed for drug charges in a\u00a0similar reform<\/a>\u00a0in November 2017. But it had little impact: 34 of 38 defendants were still sentenced to death for drug trafficking over the ensuing 18 months, with judges exercising their discretion to impose life imprisonment in only four cases. (Among the 34 was Mohammad Lukman.)<\/p>\n Despite the pledges made in 2018, the new law retains the death penalty for drug trafficking charges. And more than half Malaysia\u2019s death row inmates are charged with drug-related offenses.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe abolition of the mandatory death penalty brings Malaysia closer to the majority of countries that have eliminated capital punishment altogether,\u201d said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. \u201cMalaysia\u2019s next step should be ending its use of the punishment entirely and commuting the sentences of the 1,300 prisoners sitting on death row.\u201d<\/p>\n In Southeast Asia, Cambodia and the Philippines are the only countries to have abolished capital punishment altogether. It remains in place in Thailand\u2014even as the kingdom embraces a cannabis economy, slowly opening legal space for the herb.\u00a0<\/p>\n The good news is that in response to the Mohammad Lukman controversy in 2018, Malaysia declared a moratorium on executions while the government considered policy changes. This moratorium remains in place, and Malaysia has carried out no executions over the past four years.\u00a0<\/p>\n As limited as the progress in Malaysia is, it does point to the efficacy of activist pressure\u2014even in the most conservative and repressive of nominal democracies.\u00a0<\/p>\n And even Singapore is seeing increasingly vocal civil opposition to the anti-drug police state. A year ago,\u00a0the hanging<\/a> of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, a mentally disabled man caught with 43 grams of heroin,\u00a0prompted rare public protests<\/a> in the authoritarian city-state. Photos in the media showed young people gathered at a park holding hand-written signs with slogans such as \u201cNO MORE STATE VIOLENCE\u201d and \u201cDON\u2019T KILL IN OUR NAME.\u201d<\/p>\n The post International Outrage Continues After Singapore Executed Man for \u2018Cannabis Trafficking<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Singapore just executed a man for cannabis\u2014and for just one kilo. Even worse, the trial appears not to have even met basic standards for fairness. This outrage comes just as neighboring Malaysia is finally following through on pledges to limit use of the death penalty\u2014five years after a global outcryContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6591,50,80,3711,5005,3819,6004,17146,2275,6184,17117,420,17147],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64659"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64659"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64659\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64660,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64659\/revisions\/64660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Tentative Progress in Malaysia<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Activist Pressure Mounting\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: International Outrage Continues After Singapore Executed Man for \u2018Cannabis Trafficking<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"