SINGAPORE — Singapore on Wednesday executed an intellectually disabled man convicted of drug trafficking more than a decade ago, his family told Reuters, in one of its most high-profile hangings in decades even as global condemnation poured in.
Singapore executes intellectually disabled man despite outcry
Dharmalingam, a Malaysian national with an IQ of 69, said he was coerced into trafficking the package of heroin in 2009 as a way to pay off his debts. His mother said he planned to use the money to help support her. He was traveling from Malaysia to Singapore when he was caught at a border checkpoint with the heroin strapped to his thigh.
“Nagen got mixed up in criminal activity and sentenced to death because he has disabilities that affect his reasoning and judgment,” his mother said in an appeal filed in December. He was first sentenced to death in 2010.
“His mistake will cost him his life unless you exercise mercy, and grant him clemency,” she said.
But authorities rejected his mother’s 11th-hour clemency plea Tuesday. Dharmalingam asked the judge to speak and to touch his family members who were present in court.
“It is my final wish,” he said through an interpreter. He held hands with his mother through a slit in a glass courtroom partition.
His sentence drew international condemnation from celebrities, governments and human rights organizations.
“The use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses is incompatible with international human rights law,” the United Nations said in a statement yesterday, urging the state to halt the execution.
The case has brought unwanted attention to Singapore’s laws on capital punishment, which are emblematic of the conservative, tough-on-crime policies the country became known for in the twentieth century. The tiny island nation is one of a shrinking number of countries that impose the death penalty for drug offenses, a practice that has hobbled its efforts to become a modern, global hub in Asia.
In the 12 years since Dharmalingam was put on death row, Singapore revisited its mandatory capital punishment laws and gave judges the discretion to convert death sentences into the lesser penalty of life imprisonment. For nearly two years, Singapore halted all executions because of the pandemic.
But in March, the backlog of executions resumed and authorities hanged a 68-year-old man for drug trafficking. Dharmalingam’s execution is one of two scheduled in Singapore this week. Datchinamurthy Kataiah, another Malaysian citizen convicted of drug trafficking, also faces imminent hanging.
Authorities say that the death penalty has discouraged major drug trafficking — and allowed Singapore to become one of the safest places in the world. According to a 2019 study by the Ministry of Home Affairs, nearly 70 percent of Singapore residents agreed that capital punishment is more effective than life imprisonment as a deterrent against drug trafficking.
But slowly, dissent is emerging.
On Monday, 300 people gathered at a candlelight vigil to protest of Dharmalingam’s execution. A change.org petition calling for him to be pardoned also gathered 100,000 signatures. Even British billionaire Richard Branson weighed in, asking Singapore’s president on Twitter to spare the condemned man’s life.
In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Branson called the execution “a horrible blotch” on Singapore’s reputation.
“I don’t think civilized countries should be in the business of killing their own people, or killing anybody,” he said.
Source: WP
