While activist Kirsten Han wrote in a Facebook post that she had felt concerned that only a few people would attend the protest against the death penalty organised by Jolovan Wham and Kokila Annamalai, reports say around 400 people showed up in solidarity.
The event, entitled, “Not In Our Name: Stop the Executions, Abolish the Death Penalty,” was held on Sunday afternoon (Apr 3) at Speakers’ Corner at Hong Lim Park, which had only recently reopened after being shuttered for two years due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Last Wednesday (March 30), Singapore carried out its first execution since in more than two years. Abdul Kahar bin Othman, 68, had been convicted on two charges of trafficking diamorphine in 2013 and was given the death penalty two years later.
It was also reported last week that the last-ditch appeal from Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, a Malaysian convicted of drug trafficking, had been turned down on Mar 29.
Nagaenthran is said to have an IQ of 69 and to suffer from an intellectual disability. The International Bar Association, European Union, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch are among the organisations that have advocated against his execution.
Local activists, including Ms Han and Ms Annamalai, have fought for a stay of execution for Nagaenthran as well.
On death row, since he was found guilty in 2010, Nagaenthran, 34, had been in international news headlines for months, ahead of his scheduled execution last year. He was to have been hanged on Nov 10, 2021, but tested positive for Covid-19 a day earlier, and the execution was postponed.
It is unknown when his sentence will be carried out.
On the day of Abdul Kahar’s judicial execution last week, Ms Han wrote in a Facebook post, “After a childhood of poverty and hunger in what was, and might still be, one of Singapore’s poorest neighbourhoods, Kahar was incarcerated multiple times in prison and the state-run Drug Rehabilitation Centre, but never actually provided with the help that he needed.
This morning, after decades of failing to help Kahar out of overwhelmingly difficult circumstances — circumstances that we often put him in — Singapore failed him one final time.”
On Sunday night, after the turnout at the event at Hong Lim Park was better than she had expected, she wrote, “When the government repeatedly insists that an overwhelming majority of the Singaporeans support the death penalty and dissenting opinions are not given space in mainstream discourse, it can make you feel very alone, isolated on the fringes. Their goal is to make you feel so discouraged that you quit.”
Home Affairs and Law Minister K Shanmugam had said on Mar 3 that most people in Singapore still support the death penalty, citing early findings from a 2021 survey.
But at Sunday’s event, Ms Han wrote, “People made placards, joined in on chants, cheered on speakers, demonstrated solidarity for people on death row and their loved ones, and demanded an end to state violence.”
She quoted the younger brother of Abdul Kahar, Mr Abdul Mutalib, as saying, “It is over for my brother. Now we fight for everyone else.”
“The more the government repeats that the majority of Singaporeans support the death penalty, the more important it is for those of us who reject it to stand up and be counted. We might still be in the minority for now, but human rights and human dignity should not be subject to the whims of the majority.
Many countries got rid of the death penalty despite popular opinion, simply because it is cruel and inhuman punishment, and inevitable miscarriages of justice lead to disastrous consequences. Wrongful executions can never be set right; the people who have been wrongfully killed can never be brought back.
All the same, abolitionists must work all the harder to shift the needle, to put the issue on the table for discussion, to educate people, point out alternatives, encourage the imagining of better approaches. Today, I saw evidence that, over the past decade, the needle *has* shifted.
Our efforts will bear fruit one day. We shall overcome. Execute justice, not people. #AbolishDeathPenalty,” she added. /TISG
Netizens divided on impending execution of drug trafficker Nagaenthran