SINGAPORE: On Friday (Jul 28), Singapore is set to judicially execute a woman on death row for the first time in nearly 20 years.
The 45-year-old Singaporean woman, Saridewi Djamani, received a drug offence conviction in 2018 for having trafficked about 30 grams of heroin in 2016.
The last time a woman was executed was reportedly in 2004, when Yen May Woen, a 36-year-old hairdresser, received the death penalty for drug trafficking.
News of Saridewi’s impending execution has made the news internationally, with pieces in The Guardian, BBC, the Associated Press, South China Morning Post, The Times, and others.
While executions in the past have caught media attention around the globe, Saridewi’s story may be getting more attention due to her gender, as the execution of female offenders is far rarer than of males.
In 2021, The Death Penalty Project said that it’s believed that women make up less than 5 per cent of the death row population around the globe.
Activist Kirsten Han is quoted in The Guardian as saying that two women are on death row in Singapore.
Saridewi’s offence
Saridewi was arrested on June 17, 2016, in her Sengkang flat after she had been seen with a man, Malaysian national Muhammad Haikal bin Abdullah, whom the Central Narcotics Bureau had been surveilling on a suspected drug transaction.
A plastic bag of pure heroin was discovered in her flat, and she and Muhammad Haikal were charged with drug trafficking.
She was charged with trafficking 30.72g of pure heroin, and under the Misuse of Drugs Act, a prison found guilty of trafficking at least 15g of diamorphine (heroin) is given a mandatory death sentence, but judges may sentence offenders to life imprisonment if it’s shown that they have diminished responsibility or acted as couriers.
At her 2018 trial, Saridewi said that from the 30.72g of heroin found in her possession, she planned on using 19.01g. The rest would be for trafficking. A psychiatric report she submitted to the court said she suffered from persistent depressive disorder and severe substance use disorder.
Saridewi also 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. Other claims she made were also rejected.
She was given the death penalty on July 6, 2018, after a 13-day trial. Muhammad Haikal was sentenced to life imprisonment as he was found to merely be acting as a courier.
“Once (Saridewi) exhausted her appeal options it was a matter of time that she would be given an execution notice,” says Ms Han in The Guardian, adding, “The authorities are not moved by the fact that most of the people on death row come from marginalised and vulnerable groups. The people who are on death row are those deemed dispensable by both the drug kingpins and the Singapore state. This is not something Singaporeans should be proud of.”
Earlier this week, a 56-year-old Singaporean man, Mohammed Aziz Hussain, was also executed on a drug conviction.
Activists say that at least 13 others have been put to death since judicial executions resumed in 2022. /TISG