[[{“value”:”
On Friday morning, Azwan bin Bohari was marched to the gallows. The 47-year-old Singaporean, himself an addict, was convicted of trafficking 26.5 grams of heroin in 2019. Despite pleas for the Singaporean authorities to halt it, and the fact Azwan was waiting on the outcome of a legal appeal, the execution controversially went ahead. Azwan’s appeal that half of what he was caught with was for his own personal consumption – which would have placed him below the threshold for execution – was dismissed by the court.
Singapore prides itself on being clean, safe and orderly, telling the world this is because when they say ‘zero tolerance’, they mean it. Capital punishment is popular in the Southeast Asian city-state, with various polls suggesting around 80 per cent of citizens support the death penalty as a deterrent against drug offences. Crime rates are indeed low, but is it really as simple as that?
There’s very little correlation between capital punishment and crime rates
‘I went to Azwan’s funeral and burial,’ said abolitionist campaigner Kirsten Han. ‘So many people loved him and cared for him. Family members of other prisoners attended the funeral too – some of them have already lost their loved ones to the death penalty, others are still living with the fear that they, too, might soon receive the dreaded execution notice. Capital punishment causes harm, pain and trauma that ripples out beyond death row into the community, and this harm is not recognised because the state is too busy pretending that it’s protecting people by killing.’
Azwan’s story will sound familiar to Nazira Lajim Hertslet, whose brother Nazeri bin Lajim was hanged in 2022. ‘Our grandfather is an Englishman; he married a Malay woman during the [Second World War], so we have a mixed blood,’ said Nazira, showing me the family photographs. Side-by-side, the men look uncannily similar.
‘[Nazeri] looks just like my father, he’s very good-looking… he was a very quiet boy, but easily influenced. He was a very clean man, always wear proper smart dress. You would never know he’s a drug addict.’
Singapore was not always this universally strict on the use of drugs and addictive substances. In 1907 the Straits Times, the city’s newspaper of record, even railed against the hypocrisy of campaigning against opium but not whisky or beer. However, in the anxious period after Singaporean independence in 1965, a moral panic in the 1970s erupted over the growing number of heroin addicts that were emerging. Terrified of becoming a dope-infested warren of sin like Hong Kong or Bangkok, the city-state’s laws became progressively harsher.
Nazeri was an addict since he was fourteen: first methaqualone (MX) pills, then, two years later, heroin. ‘My father passed away, and my mother had to go out and work as a washerwoman, as a maid,’ Nazira remembered. ‘We were so poor, we hardly had food at home to eat. That’s why no attention was given to him. He drifted away.’
Nazeri spent the rest of his life in and out of prison, his self-esteem and addiction deteriorating with each incarceration. He said he felt like ‘sampah masyarakat (the trash of society)’, and once threatened to slit his wrists in front of his sister during a manic withdrawal. Still, he got married and had a son. Then in April 2012 he was arrested buying two black-taped bundles containing 35.41g of heroin. Being caught with heroin weighing over fifteen grams, or half-a-kilo of cannabis, triggers an automatic death sentence in Singapore. By comparison, in the UK, fifteen grams will merely land you three to eight years’ jail time.
Nazira was only allowed to visit her brother once a month, and even then they could not even touch, sitting on opposite sides of a glass panel. ‘He became a very religious person while he’s in prison. Every day, every morning, he start praying… the day before he was hanged, he looked so radiant, so happy. Then he said, “never mind. Leave it to God, it’s fate”.’
The majority of convicts incarcerated in Singapore’s Changi prison, including on death row, are there thanks to drug offences. The fact that all these mules, pushers and junkies keep getting caught suggests others are slipping through the cracks, and that there’s a consistent demand for drugs which is profitably being met. Singapore is many things, but drug-free it is not.
There’s no reliable data on narcotic consumption in Singapore: patients can’t even disclose drug use to their doctors, as they are obliged to report it to police. The government touts the disappearance of opium as a sign of its success, but outside the handful of countries that still produce it, opium is rather scarce nowadays. East Asia’s preferred poison is amphetamine, otherwise known as speed.
‘The death penalty, and the war on drugs in general, causes harm and trauma and actually makes many people in Singapore unsafe,’ said Han. ‘It means that people who use drugs… are terrified of going to the doctor or the hospital. It means that it’s difficult, even impossible, to conduct harm reduction education that would give people evidence-based information about drugs, its use and what to do in the event of overdose or other emergencies.’
Singapore is not the only state to sentence drug dealers to death. Iran does too – and yet it has the highest level of opioid addiction in the world. Of course, Iran is the first stop on the heroin highway from Afghanistan and while that certainly plays a role, it’s not as important as you may think: the world capital of cocaine is Colombia, yet fewer Colombians get hooked on the stuff than Brits do.
There’s very little correlation between capital punishment and crime rates. Most criminals commit crimes either thinking they won’t be caught, or not thinking at all. Look at America, where cities like Houston, Memphis and St Louis suffer murder rates comparable to war zones and are all in death penalty states. There are plenty of other reasons why Singaporean streets are so safe: it’s small, compact, easy to police with a dystopian amount of surveillance cameras, and incredibly wealthy – there’s no Skid Row in Singapore.
To support executions, you must believe the police are never wrong. But it’s incredibly easy to frame someone for drugs offences, and in Singapore there’s no presumption of innocence in these matters. ‘In Singapore, when you’re being questioned by the police, you don’t get to have a lawyer,’ explained Han. ‘Statements are also not required to be taken verbatim. It’s hugely intimidating, bewildering stuff. And if you add factors like low levels of education, psychosocial disabilities, language barriers, stress… there are so many things that could make investigations and later convictions unsafe.’
Still, most Singaporeans do have faith in the justice system, including Nazira’s own children. But there’s a growing, if still small, abolitionist movement. In April 2022, a rare crowd of 400-odd protesters gathered in Hong Lim park – the only place where unsanctioned rallies are permitted – to speak out against the execution of Nagaenthran K Dharmalingam, caught with a batch of heroin strapped to his thigh at the Malaysian border in 2009. It was clear he’d been taken advantage of: the man had an IQ of 69. But the government didn’t budge and he was hanged on the morning of 27 April that year.
Nazira said her brother’s last wish was for her to look after his son, and to tell the world what happened to him. ‘I loved him so much because he looked exactly like my father,’ she said. ‘His character, personality, the same like my father… That’s why I feel that my father is gone for the second time.’
“}]] Singapore prides itself on being clean, safe and orderly, telling the world this is because when they say ‘zero tolerance’, they mean it. Read More