The Singapore government this week again carried out a death sentence. This time 38-year-old Pannir Selvam Prantaman — the son of a Malaysian cleric — was hanged for possessing 52 grams of heroin.
Pannir was arrested in 2014 when drugs were found on him. The court proceedings lasted several years. His relatives and lawyers filed a number of appeals and appealed to the president for clemency, but all attempts were unsuccessful.
Singapore's laws are very strict:
- More than 15 grams of heroin or
- More than 500 grams of cannabis
any person caught with these amounts is mandatorily sentenced to death.
At trial Pannir defended himself, saying he did not know he was carrying drugs. In the cell awaiting sentence he wrote poems and songs. Friends remembered him as a calm, kind, and religiously conscientious person.
"Taking a person's life for 52 grams — such a punishment cannot be understood rationally," said an activist in Singapore who opposes the death penalty.
Despite international criticism, Singapore still maintains a strict position. Officials believe that only such harsh measures can protect the country from drug trafficking.
But Amnesty International and other human rights organizations call this "state-inflicted cruelty." According to them, it has not been proven that the death penalty has a clear effect in reducing drug trafficking.
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