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The United Nations human rights office voiced alarm on Wednesday at the number of people being executed in Singapore for drug-related offences, saying it was incompatible with human dignity.
UN rights chief Volker Türk said there had been a general shift away from the use of capital punishment in Asia and Singapore was one of only a few countries imposing the death penalty for drug-related crimes not involving intentional killing.
The death penalty is mandatory in Singapore for drug trafficking above certain quantities, such as 500 grams of cannabis or 15 grams of heroin.
Türk pleaded in a statement with Singapore, and all other states still carrying out executions, “to impose a moratorium, as a critical step towards full legal abolition of this inhuman practice.”
Türk’s office said that of the 25 executions in Singapore in 2023 and 2024, 24 were reportedly for drug offences.
Of the 17 people executed in the city state last year, 15 were convicted of drug-related crimes.
So far this year, eight people have been executed for such offences.
They include Omar bin Yacob Bamadhaj, who was executed last week for trafficking cannabis, with his family given two weeks’ notice.
The European Union, Britain, Switzerland and Norway had urged Singapore to halt his execution and commute his sentence to a non-capital one.
“At every level, the taking of this man’s life is both cruel and inhuman,” said Türk. “The death penalty is fundamentally incompatible with human dignity and the right to life.”
Türk said drug-related offences not involving loss of life did not meet the “most serious crimes” standard set by international human rights law, which limits capital punishment to crimes of extreme gravity involving intentional killing.
It also requires strict compliance with full due process and fair trial guarantees, the UN high commissioner for human rights said.
Officials in Singapore maintain that the death penalty has made it one of the world’s safest cities and a government survey in 2023 showed strong public support for capital punishment for serious crimes.
While the overall global trend continues to move towards universal abolition of the death penalty, Iran and a handful of other states such as Saudi Arabia and the United States saw executions surge last year.
Additional sources • AFP