Just 3 weeks after 46-year-old Singaporean Thangaraju Suppiah was hanged for the crime of conspiracy to traffick marijuana, anti-death penalty activists in Singapore have confirmed that the government is set to execute another man tomorrow, May 17, for the same crime.
In a post shared by the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) last night, the activist group said that the family of a 37-year-old Malay Singaporean man had received an execution notice last Wednesday.
The family has asked for privacy so no personal details like his name or photo were revealed in the post.
According to the TJC, the man has been in prison for seven years after being convicted of trafficking 1.5kg of cannabis.
Trafficking 500g of cannabis or more carries the mandatory death penalty under Singapore’s harsh drug laws.
However, TJC said that an application to reopen his case has been filed on the basis that DNA and fingerprint evidence only tied him to possession of a much smaller amount of cannabis.
Billionaire and outspoken death penalty abolitionist Richard Branson last month wrote about the many issues surrounding Thangaraju’s “shocking” case, arguing that ‘In the coming days, Singapore may kill an innocent man”. The Ministry of Home Affairs replied by defending the execution and calling Branson “disrespectful”. Singapore continues to vehemently defend its death penalty regime even as other countries in the region move away from the use of capital punishment.
If the man’s appeal is unsuccessful, the state will proceed with the execution at dawn tomorrow.
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