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The Singaporean government has been urged to call off the execution of a Malaysian national caught smuggling around 51g of heroin.
Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, 30, was sentenced to death in 2017 for importing the opioid diamorphine into the city-state in 2014. His execution has been scheduled for dawn on Thursday after he spent 11 years in Changi prison, according to his family and human rights groups.
Experts from the United Nations on Tuesday called on Singaporean authorities to halt executions for drug offences which they argued were “illegal under international human rights law on several grounds”.
“Mandatory death sentences are inherently over-inclusive and inevitably violate human rights law,” the UN Rapporteurs said in a statement. “There is no evidence that the death penalty does more than any other punishment to curb or prevent drug trafficking,” they said.
Under Singapore’s Misuse of Drugs Act, which dictates harsh punishments for drug trafficking, anyone convicted of trafficking more than 500g of cannabis or 15g of heroin will be executed.
The government’s narcotics bureau website claims it is an offence for citizens and permanent residents to consume drugs in Singapore and overseas. Consumption of controlled drugs carries an imprisonment of up to 10 years or S$20,000 (£16,000) or both.
Authorities in Singapore have been called on repeatedly to abolish the death penalty for drug offences, with rights groups saying there is increasing evidence it is ineffective as a deterrent.
They have also decried the punishment which sees low-level drug mules deployed in the illegal trade and are targeted for their vulnerabilities.
However, the Southeast Asian island nation of 5.7 million people has fiercely defended its stance.
Singapore says it has a zero-tolerance approach to drug trafficking and insists capital punishment is key to halting drug demand and supply. The nation has hanged hundreds of people – including dozens of foreigners – for narcotics offences.
Law minister K Shanmugam last year cited regional surveys as proof of strong and growing support for using the death penalty on drug traffickers. A survey conducted by the Home Ministry in 2023 allegedly showed that 69 per cent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed that the mandatory death penalty was an appropriate punishment for trafficking of significant amounts of drugs, he claimed.
The law minister previously said: “Ultimately, the population of Singapore will have to decide whether they support capital punishment, or they don’t. What I can tell you is that today, there is strong support. Partly because we handle this carefully, and secondly, because we explain our position repeatedly to the public, so the public understands.”
Singapore’s authorities had put execution sentences on hold in 2020 during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, but resumed the hangings in 2022 despite calls to cease capital punishment for drug-related crimes.
In March 2022, Singapore hanged Abdul Kahar bin Othman on charges of drug trafficking, its first execution since the pandemic. A year later, Singapore conducted its first execution of a woman in 19 years for trafficking nearly 31g of pure heroin.
Between 1 October 2024 and 7 February 2025, Singapore carried out nine executions, including eight of individuals convicted of drug trafficking, according to Amnesty International.
About 50 people in total are facing the gallows in Singapore, according to Transformative Justice Collective, a non-profit that campaigns against the death penalty.
Singapore is among at least 35 nations that still impose the death penalty for drug offences and is one of the only eight countries in the world to hand out such a sentence regularly.
Meanwhile, the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) has issued an urgent appeal to the Singapore government to halt the execution of the Malaysian national after his clemency application was rejected by the president of Singapore.
“The death penalty should not be imposed for drug-related crimes,” the CLA said, adding that such cases raise serious questions about fairness and justice.