A 68-year-old man has been hanged for drug trafficking in Singapore in the first execution to be carried out in the city state in more than two years, as the UN rights office expressed concern over a “surge in execution notices”.
Abdul Kahar bin Othman was convicted on two charges of trafficking diamorphine in 2013. He was sentenced to death in 2015.
No executions are believed to have been carried out in Singapore since 2019, due to pending court applications that have forced the authorities to halt proceedings. However, the families of those facing the death sentence fear the authorities are now pushing ahead with hangings to free up space on death row.
Kirsten Han, a journalist and activist who has spent a decade campaigning against the death penalty, said Abdul Kahar was executed on Wednesday morning.
He had struggled with drug addiction since his teenage years, and had spent most of his life in prison, she said. His brothers told Han that their father, who had worked for the British military, died aged about 40, and that the family had struggled to manage financially.
Han said: “The Singapore government regularly claims that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to drug trafficking. They talk about the harms that drugs can inflict upon people with addictions, and insist that the use of the capital punishment will help protect people and save lives. But there is no clear evidence that the death penalty is more effective than any other punishment in deterring drug offences.”
Abdul Kahar’s story showed the situation was far more complicated than the “bad” drug trafficker and “victim” drug user narrative, she added.
“He himself struggled with addiction to heroin. He needed sustained treatment, counselling and support to reintegrate into society. His family, too, needed help and guidance on how to best support him. Instead, all Abdul Kahar received was punishment, in the form of incarceration that only served to further alienate him from society and subject him to stigma. And now he’s gone.”
In addition to Abdul Kahar, seven other death row prisoners have been given execution notice since 2019, according to the Transformative Justice Collective, a group that campaigns for reform of Singapore’s legal system.
These include Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, a man with learning disabilities, who has spent a decade on death row for trafficking a small amount of heroin. His appeal was rejected by Singapore’s top court on Tuesday, despite an international outcry over his case.
The UN Human Rights Office had called for Abdul Kahar’s execution to be halted, and for the authorities to commute his sentence to a term of imprisonment. “We are concerned at the surge in execution notices this year,” it said.
The heads of mission of the European Union, EU member states and the diplomatic missions of Norway and Switzerland in Singapore made similar calls in a joint statement, and urged the authorities to adopt a moratorium on all executions “as a positive first step towards its abolition”.
The statement said: “Today, more than two-thirds of the countries of the world have become abolitionist in law or practice, which confirms a global trend in favour of the abolition of the death penalty. No compelling evidence exists to show that the death penalty serves as a more efficient deterrent to crime than imprisonment.” It added: “Furthermore, any errors – inevitable in any legal system – are irreversible.”
The Singapore government did not respond to a request for comment.
