A 68-year-old Singaporean man charged with drug trafficking was hung after the city-state resumed executions after a two-year halt due to the epidemic. Singapore, which has one of the most harsh anti-drug trafficking laws, saw its last execution in November 2019.
Abdul Kahar bin Othman was executed on Wednesday. In 2013, the court convicted him on two counts of trafficking 66.77 grams of diamorphine. He was sentenced to death in 2015. According to reports, the execution took place despite calls from human rights activists, including the UN Human Rights Office, to reduce Kahar’s sentence to life in prison.
In sympathy, a group of anti-death penalty campaigners staged a candlelight vigil outside the prison facility. Kirsten Han attended the vigil as a member of the Transformative Justice Collective, a local activist organization that advocates for the abolition of the death sentence in Singapore.
‘The Singapore government maintains that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to drug trafficking on a regular basis. They discuss the problems that drugs may cause to addicts and argue that the implementation of the death penalty will help protect people and preserve lives. However, there is no convincing evidence that the death sentence is more efficient than alternative punishments in discouraging drug offences,’ Han told The Guardian.
She said that Abdul Kahar’s experience demonstrated that the problem was considerably more intricate than the ‘evil’ drug trafficker and ‘victim’ drug user storyline. Kahar hailed from an impoverished background and had fought drug addiction since he was a youngster, according to Han. He spent more time in prison than he did as a free man. After a decade of preventative imprisonment, Kahar was released from jail in 2005. Han is concerned that executions in the city-state may resume after a two-year hiatus.
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