SINGAPORE HANGS 11TH PRISONER OF YEAR: NGO

October 9, 2022:

Singapore hanged a prisoner on 7 October 2022, according to anti-death penalty activists, making it the 11th of this year amid the highest rate of executions in the Southeast Asian city-state since 2010.
“An execution took place in Singapore today. Our thoughts and solidarity are with his loved ones,” tweeted local NGO Transformative Justice Collective, which maintains contact with relatives of some death-row inmates and records executions, which are not announced by the authorities.
“The death penalty does not repair harms or protect people; it only causes more distress and suffering. We call for an immediate moratorium on executions in Singapore, with a view to abolition,” it said earlier this week.
With this latest execution, which usually take place early in the morning, the number of executions this year have risen to 11, all since March, a rate unprecedented in more than a decade and which has drawn criticism from the United Nations and the international community.
According to Transformative Justice Collective coordinator Kirsten Han, this rate of executions – all for drug trafficking – has not been seen since at least 2010, and the annual figures had been on a downward trend since the highs of the 1990s, when hangings could exceed 70 per year.
Activists warn that there are still more than 50 people on death row, saturated as a result of the halt in executions in the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, now resulting in an acceleration of hangings.