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.

“Public opinion surveys should be considered just as that – a ‘temperature check’ of how much more public education needs to be done about the human rights dimension of the death penalty,” she said.

I am aware also that among youths, opinions are shifting about the issues and overall, it seems that people’s judgment over the death penalty gets blurred once details, the intricacies behind every single case, are properly explained.

In short, as much as the PAP might dislike it, the death penalty is turning into something that is not either white or black. Moreover, as explained by activist and writer Kirsten Hen in her influential newsletter, recently anti-death penalty graffiti was found on the wall of one of the MRT stations.

In Singapore, such acts of vandalism are taken very seriously and it is a big deal daring to write campaigning slogans like the one that appeared on the walls of Buena Vista station. The message was bold and challenging, “If 1 syringe = 1 death = 1 hanged man HOW MANY 4 U SG GOV?”

The death penalty is claimed to have a unique deterrent effect on crime.

Sangiorgio explained that, “studies have shown that it does not, yet the authorities continue to state that capital punishment is part of Singapore’s comprehensive harm prevention strategy, which targets both drug demand and supply, which also seems quite paradoxical in its description of the state – premeditated, cold-blooded taking of a life as punishment for drug trafficking as part of a comprehensive harm prevention strategy”.

To back up this argument, there is quite a long list of studies and research claiming the opposite of what the PAP is saying over and over. For example, the summary of the High-Level Panel at the Human Rights Council in 2021 on deterrence.

Then there is what Sangiorgio defines as a “widely cited study on deterrence, comparing Singapore and Hong Kong carried out in 2009. In the comparative study, the latter, which abolished capital punishment in 1993, did not see any major spike in homicides.

The Hong Kong authorities treat illegal drugs harshly but the laws do not include capital punishment. Moreover, according to official data from the Central Registry of Drug Abuse in Hong Kong, in 2022, the total number of reported drug abusers in 2022 decreased by 14 percent (from 6,095 to 5,235) compared with that in 2021.

There are many more research papers and studies that effectively back up the fact that the death penalty as an effective deterrent is more an illusion rather than a reality.

We cannot deny the fact that Singapore is and remains an extremely safe place and that is because of the policies being undertaken by the government. Yet the death penalty should be taken down as the cornerstone of the PAP’s safety doctrine.

I believe activists and human rights experts alike must develop a counter-doctrine or a strategy because it is clear that such evidence-based arguments made by Sangiorgio and many others are not enough to flip the argument in their favor.

The moral and ethical approach does not work, it is as simple as that. Instead, we need to create discomfort, uneasiness and a bit of unpredictability over the death penalty.

These are elements that the PAP hates because they go against its inner "wired" systems. It is what Donald Low in the book Hard Choice calls, even if not clearly referring to capital punishment, the “cognitive biases” in the government of Singapore.

“These include,” he shared, “confirmation bias, which is the tendency for people to only seek evidence that supports their pet theories while refusing to subject opposing views to serious consideration”. In short, the PAP suffers “groupthink” as Low further explains.

While the party has incorporated many of the analyses contained in Hard Choices, capital punishment remains a “red line” and remains untouchable.

On the one hand, international media, not only in the West but also in the Asia Pacific, must keep pressing the issue. Recently TIME magazine did so with a comprehensive piece written by Koh Ewe on Aug. 4.

But non-Western media must also step up otherwise the PAP will continue countering that only the Western progressive media bother to write about the issue.

We need to make the PAP feel the pressure and feel embarrassed. Ultimately it must really become an inconvenient burden for the PAP to keep defending what Sangiorgio rightly calls “an act of violence, even when legally sanctioned, and [one that] is not lawful under international human rights law and standards to impose it for drug trafficking”.

Yet the key might be adopting a “cost-benefit” approach.

For now, the Singapore government overwhelmingly claims the benefits of its inhuman stance. But if the issue tarnishes its reputation, then the PAP’s position could shift to one that is less dogmatic and more nuanced.

Then, if some major corporations headquartered there start sharing some discomfort over the PAP’s policy, such embarrassment could really erode Singapore’s reputation. In short, we need to keep the heat over the death penalty in Singapore.

What we need is a real debate that would keep the world’s attention over some of the most indecent policies in force in Singapore. Who knows if more graffiti like that in Buena Vista will pop up around the city.

Certainly, the PAP could avoid such risk. Ultimately its members know, deep inside, there is a different approach to capital punishment.

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The writer comments on social inclusion, youth development, regional integration, Sustainable Development Goals and human rights in the context of Asia Pacific.