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We need to keep the heat on Singapore over death penalty
Like Singapore, Hong Kong authorities treat illegal drugs harshly but unlike in Singapore, in Hong Kong the laws do not foresee capital punishment.
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Sending prayers: Nazira Lajim Hertslet, the sister of Nazeri Lajim, who was executed for drugs trafficking, prays by his grave at a Muslim cemetery in Singapore on May 1, 2023. Singapore ended a two-year hiatus on executions in 2022. (AFP/Roslan Rahman)
The summer saw a spike in capital executions in Singapore, including the first woman after two decades. My thinking, so far, is that we should try to come up with a strategy and tactics for how to change the equation about the issue in the city-state.
To better understand the intricacies of the issue, I corresponded with Chiara Sangiorgio, Amnesty International’s death penalty expert. In our interaction, I tried to capture the nuances of the ongoing effort to counter the official narrative, which often sounds more like propaganda Singapore’s ruling People's Action Party (PAP) has been pushing over the years.
The party has been spinning the narrative over deterrence and overall public opinion that supports the harshest and most cruel of punishment.
Sangiorgio shared the following:
“We have seen the government of Singapore often invoking the results of a public opinion survey to justify executions and their highly punitive drug policy.
“Repeated studies have consistently shown that public opinion surveys can be influenced by the timing of the polls, the methodology and questions asked, and that once the respondent is presented with more information about a case, for example, their views of the death penalty changes.
