SINGAPORE — Hundreds of protesters in tightly controlled
Singapore staged a rare demonstration against the death penalty Sunday as fears
grow that the city-state is set to carry out a wave of hangings.
اضافة اعلان
Authorities last
week conducted the country’s first execution since 2019 when they hanged a drug
trafficker. Several other death row convicts recently had appeals rejected.
Organizers said
about 400 people joined the demonstration at “Speakers’ Corner” in a downtown
park, the only place in the city-state where protests are allowed without prior
police approval.
They held signs
reading “Capital punishment does not make us safer”, and “Don’t kill in our
names”, and chanted slogans against the death penalty.
“Capital
Punishment is a brutal system that makes brutes of us all,” Kirsten Han, a
prominent local activist, said in an address to the crowd.
“Instead of
pushing us to address inequalities and exploitative and oppressive systems that
leave people marginalized and unsupported, it makes us the worst version of
ourselves.”
Protests are
unusual in Singapore, which frequently faces criticism for curbing civil
liberties.
Aside from in
“Speakers’ Corner”, it is illegal for even one person to stage a demonstration
without a police permit.
Abdul Kahar
Othman, a 68-year-old Singaporean drug trafficker, was hanged Wednesday despite
appeals for clemency from the
United Nations and rights groups.
Next in line to
be executed could be Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, a mentally disabled Malaysian
convicted of heroin trafficking who lost his final appeal last week.
His case has
attracted a storm of criticism, including from the EU and British billionaire
Richard Branson.
Three other men
sentenced to death for drugs offenses had their appeals rejected earlier in
March.
Prosperous but
socially conservative Singapore has some of the world’s toughest drugs laws,
and has faced mounting calls from rights groups to abandon the death penalty.
Authorities
insist that capital punishment remains an effective deterrent against drug
trafficking and has helped to keep the city-state one of the safest places in
Asia.
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