A local man convicted of drug trafficking was hanged in Singapore on Wednesday, according to officials, two days before the first woman prisoner to be put to death in the city-state in nearly 20 years.
The Central Narcotics Bureau said in a statement that Mohd Aziz bin Hussain, who had been found guilty and given a death sentence in 2017 for trafficking “not less than 49.98 grams” (1.76 ounces) of heroin, had been put to death at Changi Prison.
The 57-year-old was the 14th prisoner executed since the government started carrying them out again in March 2022 following a two-year hiatus due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Previous appeals Hussain had filed against his conviction and sentence had been rejected, and he had also been denied presidential clemency.
Saridewi Djamani, a 45-year-old female drug offender, is due to be hung on Friday, according to the neighborhood rights organization Transformative Justice Collective (TJC).
In 2018, she received a death sentence for distributing about 30 grams of heroin.
According to TJC activist Kokila Annamalai, if Djamani’s sentence is carried out, she will be the first woman put to death in Singapore since Yen May Woen, a 36-year-old hairdresser, was hanged for narcotics trafficking in 2004.
The trafficking of more than 500 grams of cannabis or more than 15 grams of heroin can result in the death penalty in Singapore, which has some of the strictest anti-drug laws in the world.
Amnesty International, a human rights organization, requested Singapore to suspend the executions on Tuesday, claiming there was no proof the death penalty served as a deterrence to crime.
“It is unconscionable that authorities in Singapore continue to cruelly pursue more executions in the name of drug control,” Amnesty death penalty expert Chiara Sangiorgio said in a statement.
Singapore, meanwhile, is adamant that having the death sentence has contributed to its ranking as one of Asia’s safest nations.
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, who was hanged since last year, was among those who did so. Because he was thought to have a mental handicap, his death provoked a global outrage, including from the United Nations and British businessman Richard Branson.
