- At least 300 people gathered on Monday to call for a stay of execution for Nagen and another prisoner.
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| Singapore hangs a prisoner with intellectual disabilities for drug trafficking and unleashes a wave of international outrage |
Singapore, which has some of the most draconian anti-drug laws on the planet, on Wednesday ignored criticism from the international community and unusual protests on the island and executed a Malaysian prisoner with an intellectual disability convicted of trafficking a small amount of heroin.
Nagaenthran (Nagen) Dharmalingam, 34, was hanged (Singapore's method of carrying out executions) at Changi Prison at dawn on Wednesday. It was his brother, Navin, who came to identify the body, Singaporean anti-death penalty activist Kirsten Han confirmed.
Few cases had aroused as much interest as that of Nagen in Singapore, a country with a semi-authoritarian regime that hardly reports on executions -mostly drug traffickers- and censors controversial topics in the local press, although the prisoner's intellectual disability aroused the outrage outside and inside the country.
At least 300 people gathered Monday in Hong Lim Park in Singapore, the only place where the government allows protests, to call for the stay of execution of Nagen and another Malaysian prisoner, Datchinamurthy Kataiah, also sentenced to death. for drug trafficking and who in principle will be hanged on Friday.
Also on Monday, the United Nations Human Rights Office urged the Singapore government to stop the executions of both, while the European Union delegation in the Asian city-state had earlier called for Nagen's sentence to be reviewed.
Until the last moment
Navin himself, brother of the executed, trusted until the last minute that, due to the popular support expressed towards his brother, he would be exonerated -there was still the option of a presidential pardon-, and with that hope he went to the island prison this Wednesday, just to confirm the worst prognosis, human rights lawyer M Ravi Ravi posts on his social media account.
Neither petition came into effect; The last to try was the prisoner's mother, Panchalai, who appeared in the court of appeals on Tuesday alleging that her son had received an unfair trial, since the judge in the case, Sundaresh Menon, had been the attorney general when Nagen was sentenced. , and also during the first appeal.
The judge rejected the woman's request, which he described as "frivolous" and "lack of evidence", and only agreed to the last wish of Nagen, present in the room: to spend one last time with his family, before being returned to the prison and taken in a few hours to the gallows.
Nagen, who was arrested in April 2009 for smuggling 42.72 grams of heroin into Singapore, nearly three times more than the law stipulates (15 grams) for capital punishment, becomes the second person to be executed on the island. in less than a month, after two years without hangings.
According to Han and other activists, that stoppage would have generated a saturation in death row, a circumstance that now accelerates executions, with Datchinamurthy scheduled for Friday.
The EU denounces this sentence
The European Union on Wednesday called on Singapore to end the death sentence, after the execution, of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam.
"We urge Singapore to adopt a moratorium on all executions and join the global trend to abolish the death penalty," a spokesman for the European External Action Service (EEAS) said in a statement.
The condemnation of the EU adds to that of the United Nations, which this week already called for the executions to stop.
Execution despite protests
"The execution of Nagaenthran is a disgraceful act by the Singapore government, which has acted ruthlessly despite protests in Singapore, Malaysia, and around the world," said Erwin, Asia Pacific Director at Amnesty International (AI). van der Borght, in a statement.
The authorities of Singapore, a country in which high levels of development coexist with brutal and archaic practices such as the gallows, defend that executions are necessary to deter drug use, without data to support it, and that they are supported by the majority of its citizens.
But two successful protests this month by Han's anti-death penalty NGO, Transformative Justice Collective, suggest the space for criticism is growing.
From Speaker's Corner, the Hong Lim enclave where certain protests are allowed, always under authorization and without foreigners being able to participate, an attendee in his twenties who came to join the vigil for Nagen on Monday along with several friends, expressed his opinion.
“I do not support the death penalty, and I am here to speak out for those who cannot,” Francis said, joining dozens like him who have unsuccessfully called on Singapore not to execute Nagen.