KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — A Malaysian man on death row for trafficking heroin is to be executed this week in Singapore, anti-death penalty activists said Monday, renewing calls for a halt to capital punishment in the city-state.
If the execution goes through, Datchinamurthy Kataiah, 39, will become the third Malaysian national and the eleventh person to be hanged this year in Singapore.
His family received a notice on Sunday that his hanging will take place on Thursday at Singapore’s Changi prison, according to Kokila Annamalai of the Transformative Collective Justice, which advocates for abolishing the death penalty in Singapore.
Datchinamurthy was arrested in 2011 and later convicted of trafficking about 45 grams (1.6 ounces) of heroin into Singapore. He was to be hanged in 2022 but won a last-minute reprieve pending a legal challenge that was dismissed by the court in August.
Singapore’s strict laws mandate the death penalty for anyone caught carrying more than 15 grams of heroin and 500 grams of cannabis. Critics say the law disproportionately targets low-level traffickers and couriers.
Speaking at a joint news conference via video link with Amnesty International Malaysia and the Anti-Depath Penalty Asia Network, Kokila read from a letter from Datchinamurty’s sister, Rani, who has flown to Singapore to spend time with him.
Her brother is not protesting punishment, Rani said in the letter, but believes the death penalty is “too harsh and extreme for a young man’s naive action.”
The three rights groups and 30 other civil society organizations also issued a joint statement reiterating standing calls to halt executions. They said three other Malaysians and a Singaporean man, who had been on death row for drug offenses ranging from 7 years to 10 years, face executions after recently losing their latest appeals.
The Cabinet of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who took office last year, had advised President Tharman Shanmugaratnam to show clemency to a Singaporean man on death row for drug trafficking.
The president responded and the man’s sentence was last month commuted to life in prison — the first such clemency since 1998. The three activist groups say it shows change is possible.
The groups also urged neighboring Malaysia — the current chair of the regional ASEAN bloc — to take steps to protect its disadvantaged citizens who are being exploited by drug syndicates.
Malaysia made a step toward abolishing the death penalty in 2023, allowing for alternative sentences to capital punishment, with prison terms of 30 to 40 years and caning.
Amnesty International’s 2024 global report said Malaysia commuted more than 1,000 death sentences last year.
In contrast, Singapore doubled its executions from five in 2023 to nine last year, with six of those carried out over a two-month period, Amnesty said. More than 40 remain on death row in the city-state.
Amnesty also said that the Asia-Pacific region continues to hold the highest number of executions in the world, but secrecy and restrictive state practices such as in China, Vietnam and North Korea make it impossible to obtain accurate figures.
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This story has been corrected to show that Malaysia did not completely abolish the death penalty in 2023 but offered alternative sentences.