2 people to be executed for drug offences in Singapore, including 1st woman in 20 years — Transformative Justice Collective

SINGAPORE: A Singaporean Malay man, 56, and a Singaporean woman, 45, are scheduled for judicial execution this week, said Transformative Justice Collective, an organization that seeks the reform of Singapore’s criminal justice system, on Sunday (Jul 23).

The organization said the executions would occur this Wednesday (July 26) and Friday (July 28). The man, who is unnamed and the woman, Saridewi Djamani, received drug offence convictions in 2018. The last time a woman was judicially executed in Singapore was in 2004.

The man was convicted for having trafficked around 50g of diamorphine and is said to have received his notice of execution last Wednesday (Jul 19), Transformative Justice Collective said.

Although he claims that he had been coerced into making a number of admissions on the promise of a non-capital charge, the officer who investigated his case disputes this.

According to the High Court judge, if the man had been “truly fearful of the IO as he claimed, his fear appeared to have been wholly self-induced,” and added that since he found that the man had voluntarily made these statements, they were admissible.

Saridewi received a death sentence in 2018 for having trafficked about 30g of diamorphine.

She claimed at her trial that she had been suffering from drug withdrawal while giving statements to the police and was therefore unable to give accurate statements to the police at the time.

However, according to the High Court judge, the withdrawal symptoms she suffered from at the time of her statement-taking had been “minimal and not noticeable” and had not affected her ability to give statements.

“The Transformative Justice Collective condemns the state’s determination to keep taking lives in our name, as part of a ruthless and unjust war on drugs. We reiterate our call for a moratorium on the use of the death penalty pending a full and independent review of the capital punishment regime in Singapore #StopTheKilling,” the organization said in a statement. /TISG

Netizens ‘disappointed’ that Richard Branson declined MHA’s ‘death penalty debate’ but ‘he has a (good) point’ for declining