Singapore plans to execute man over 1kg of cannabis
taipeitimes.com
taipeitimes.com
The call history with drug traffickers was from months before his arrest on "drug consumption", where while in remand the police "made the connection" to the previous crime. He denied any involvement, but a court ruled that he owned the phone number. So....
Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xn7b/death-penalty-singapo...
What if he dialed the wrong number?
What if it wasn't actually his phone, but was a shared phone among friends or family members (not uncommon in people without stacks of money)?
What if he lost his phone or it was stolen?
What if someone else had the number before him?
Also, "The Independent reported that Tangaraju had a prior arrest record in another drug use case, and that he was required to submit himself to regular urine tests. He had missed a test and was on his way to report to the police when he arrested."
Seems rather suspicious.
Nonetheless, the fact that he doesn't have a lawyer is extremely concerning from a human rights perspective.
I don't understand the logic here. Why not report it after the date? A rather strange number of coincidences... having a "prior arrest record in another drug use case" and not reporting his phone being stolen, only to be arrested for a drug event again.
Nevertheless, I would never cheat on my spouse, so I would not be in such a situation to begin with.
Regardless, it is possible that we are not really hearing his side of the story properly. He doesn't even have a lawyer, which is extremely concerning. Regardless of whether or not he is guilty, he deserves the best defense possible.
I imagine that some folks in NZ may not report to police a stolen phone out of general distrust of police, or a lack of belief that it would help anything.
Of course, if he knew he was going to be busted two weeks later then he should have but… haha
I’m all for following the laws of a place, but that these laws are backwards, needs to be said. What social harm is cannabis doing? What special good is this dudes lamentably preventable death doing?
All the more surprising because Singapore is not some ultra orthodox conservative theocracy. It’s this place that a lot of my classmates in college wanted to go and work in. But it’s light-years from Hong Kong, in terms of liberty. How did things go so wrong? I mean both those places are run by Chinese, right?
I don’t know it seems to be working in Singapore. They don’t have a fentanyl drug crisis.
On the other hand, this seems like a fairly excessive punishment given the safety and relative pharmaceutical use of marijuana.
On the other other hand, Singapore is pretty clear about the law and death sentence that will follow. You really have to be a special kind of dunce to violate that law (even if people think it’s excessive).
May God have mercy on that man’s soul, because Singapore certainly won’t.
Are those two connected?
Please explain your thought process here.
Is it?
Is there any reliable data that demonstrates this?
By which I mean, data that isn't (directly or indirectly) controlled by the same government that wants to kill people for possessing drugs, and thus has a vested interest in justifying that policy.
I don't think there's generally any reason to doubt Singapore official data in general. Do you happen to know about any source on it being unreliable? Or even rumours that it is?
(FWIW, I totally agree thay killing citizens over weed is batshit insane, even if it was hypothetically proven to be very effective method to reduce drug usage/dealing)
So this is not the same thing as questioning data from just anywhere else. Singapore's government transparency is abysmal by international standards, especially by the standards of developed countries.
north america has a fentanyl crisis, most other parts of the world with a wide spectrum of drug policies don't. also, the gap between cannabis and fentanyl is enormous, not all "drugs" are the same. that's an absolutely crazy causation link to dream up to justify a death sentence.
additionally, i wouldn't assume the "dunce" did this to buy his 3rd lambo, he's probably just trying to survive given the cards he was dealt.
Seriously, plenty of other countries have avoided the opioid/fentanyl problem without the death penalty. Doesn’t that imply there’s something different? Perhaps extreme lobbying by opioid manufacturers for doctors to overprescribe them and turning the other way to pill mills? Given the opioid epidemic was driven by legal opioids and the black market grew to supply people who could no longer afford the legal supply, I think that suggests Singapore’s death penalty policy has nothing to do here.
Moreover, I suspect like all places, Singaporians don’t have that much difficulty accessing illicit drugs. Do you think this 1kg represents the totality of the illicit drug trade in Singapore? Heck. If anything the death penalty should be the cause of record profits for black market drug distributors - where there’s more risk you can charge more money because there’s less competition willing to take that risk. That increases prices to a point but it’s not going to price it out of complete reach (otherwise you have no customers).
I'm not sure if the "correlation != causation" argument works here. They have serious laws to prevent drug smuggling, and all the data shows that it is working. Logic suggests deterrent against serious crime => less serious crime
> "Moreover, I suspect like all places, Singaporians don’t have that much difficulty accessing illicit drugs."
"I suspect" is not a valid source.
"Singapore has one of the lowest rates of drug abuse in the world: 30 opiates abusers per 100,000 people" (source: The Washington Post)
Perhaps the law serving as a deterrent against heinous crimes works?
That's not what evidence about the death penalty shows.
If I kill anyone with a moderate amount of drugs and jail and charge huge fines to those with a small amount, and I curtail press freedoms heavily, how do we know that they’ve actually tackled the drug problem instead of pushing it into the shadows?
Also, for what it’s worth Singapore itself reported an increase in drug smuggling even as hangings increased [1]. So maybe there isn’t a correlation there. It all seems like wishful thinking to justify inhumane policies.
As another poster pointed out, it’s extremely suspicious that the penalized under drug policies seems to have a racial used tinge to it. Kind of how in America black people outnumber white people significantly for drug crimes even though by all metrics it seems like drug use rates are quite similar.
Did America’s strict drug laws create a better society than countries that tried more empathetic approaches with legalization and trying to help drug addicts get back on their feet? I think there’s a reason America’s laws are liberalizing with respect to drugs. There’s an understanding that draconian laws harm more than they help (if they even help at all).
[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-law-drugs-idUSK...
And yet Singapore is in the top 5 nations for highest GDP per capita (nominal). They also have one of the lowest rates of drug addiction. Surely they are doing something right. Which one would most people rather have - a prosperous life, or freedom to smoke weed? I choose the former.
> "anyone with a moderate amount of drugs"
But why do they have drugs to begin with? Nobody forced them to smoke weed. How does society benefit from the legalization of recreational drugs, which have negative effects on health? I highly recommend reading the history of Singapore's drug addiction crisis.
> "As another poster pointed out, it’s extremely suspicious that the penalized under drug policies seems to have a racial used tinge to it."
A cause for concern indeed. This should be investigated.
> "Did America’s strict drug laws create a better society than countries that tried more empathetic approaches with legalization and trying to help drug addicts get back on their feet?"
Unlike Singapore, America has for-profit prisons, so it's unlikely helping addicts get back on their feet is even a priority for this nation to begin with.
What does one have to do with the other? Finland and Sweden have high GDP and low drug problems and score highly on press freedom and human rights. They don’t murder anyone either. Doesn’t that make them a strictly better model to learn from?
I think the fact that it’s a Chinese city state that’s the financial hub of Asia means that most Chinese business probably flows through Singapore really helps boost the per capita GDP. Still, there’s a lot to learn from Singapore’s successes. I just don’t think their approach to drug prohibition is where to look as a model.
> How does society benefit from the legalization of recreational drugs, which have negative effects on health?
That’s begging the question. The negative effects are not so clear and the line between recreational and medicinal is fairly fluid. I recommend you look at the history of drugs ping ponging back and forth from that characterization. You may also want to consider the US’s experiment with prohibition. Not everyone using drugs recreationally is a drug abuser. With the exception of opiates which are more dangerous and highly addictive, people can generally responsibly manage recreational drug intake. Same as with alcohol and alcohol is much more dangerous, harmful, and addicting than weed.
> Unlike Singapore, America has for-profit prisons, so it's unlikely helping addicts get back on their feet is even a priority for this nation to begin with.
Now we’re getting somewhere. This is true for Finland and Sweden too - their prison programs focus on humane rehabilitation no matter the crime and their recidivism rates are extremely low. So maybe, just maybe, that’s the key reason. The harshness on drugs may not matter so much but it’s a convenient cover for institutionalized racism that Singapore is engaging in.
I haven't seen a blatant double standard in Singapore, smugglers from every part of the world get similar treatment.
>Did America’s strict drug laws create a better society than countries that tried more empathetic approaches with legalization
US drug laws had a racial targeting component that most other countries do not. An attempt at a direct comparison probably wouldnt work since incarcerating specific outgroups was a goal of US law.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Singapor...
Pretty flimsy case it seems:
Tangaraju was arrested in 2014 for drug consumption and for failing to show up for drug tests. While he was in remand, authorities identified Tangaraju for his potential involvement in a case of cannabis trafficking in September 2013. The court ruled that a phone number used to coordinate a drug delivery belonged to Tangaraju, and found him guilty of abetting the trafficking attempt. Tangaraju denied being involved in the transaction.
Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/88xn7b/death-penalty-singapo...
I wonder how much of Singapore's drug punishment policy is economic: they want to create a corporate and financial haven, and if they permit too much drug trafficking and international organized crime, the may end up with harsher KYC/AML requirements, that will hamper these businesses. It's probably sold under the harm it can do to "the population", but under the economic theory that's only tangentially true (via reduced trickle down), it's really about the harm done to large banking and services base in Asia if it co-locates with too much high volume illicit business.
I also wonder how much racism in Singapore affects this, looking at the list of people executed by Singapore I notice that non-Chinese names outnumber Chinese names by a lot, despite Chinese being the dominant socioeconomic class in Singapore. Singapore death row inmates allege racial bias: https://transformativejusticecollective.org/2021/08/16/inves...
Another article with additional info about this human's situation: https://www.malaysiakini.com/letters/662908
And some articles about racism in Singapore:
https://www.beenaroundtheglobe.com/racism-singapore/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/5/singapore-executions...
https://www.economist.com/asia/2021/07/29/racial-prejudice-r... (https://web.archive.org/web/20230422045704/https://www.econo...)
It would be great if posting something on here could stop this guy getting executed.
Part of it is due to the opium wars, where Britain forced China to take their opium via military means.
On the Malay side it is due to Islamic prohibitions on drugs. Arab countries also have extremely harsh drug laws.
And in modern times there’s just a desire to not end up like the Americas.
Islamic prohibitions and Arab countries have extremely harsh drug laws is not universal: hashish is culture in many Arab and Islamic places, isn't it?
When I said “Arabs” I had gulf Arabs in mind. UAE is notorious for jailing hapless travelers for the possession of poppy seed bread rolls. But it’s true that there is no universal Arab culture, and certain substances are licit in certain Arab countries. For example qaat in Yemen.
If Chinese are so against the drug trade because of the opium wars why is so much fentanyl manufactured in China and sent to the United States?
Also, I don’t think recreational drug use is exactly uncommon on the mainland.
And poppyseeds in UAE? Wow I didn’t know that.
That plus both countries had very different ideas about how the country should be run.
Singaporean citizens and PRs can be (and are) randomly drug tested when coming back to Singapore and if found guilty can be fined and/or receive a prison sentence. Yes, you can go to prison for flying to Thailand and smoking legal marijuana.
As for the death penalty, my guess is Singapore will eventually stop mandatory death penalties. Global pressure and stigma will eventually be too much. Even their neighbor, Malaysia, has stopped all executions since 2018.
However, if they end executions, they'll make sure to spin it as their idea and will give no hint that they bowed to international pressure or opinion.
So what legal chemicals a person imbibes in another jurisdiction, can, if detected in SG, lead to a prison sentence in SG. Wow. In some way, that's like a lack of respect from SG toward the laws of the place where it's legal. Law is not just about punishment, it's also about protection.
So basically SG is now like a much shinier, better run Changi prison, where the prisoners are insanely productive in high-impact industries. I guess it makes sense, even the airport is called Changi.
This does suck tho, as it is a very nice airport, and everything looks very beautiful.
I did not expect this thread to enlighten me as to just how very fucked up Singapore is. Very interesting.
But even such history doesn't mean a place can't move with the times. Also, I don't think you can blame capitol punishment on this.
That is concerning. Regardless of whether or not you think someone is guilty, they still deserve the best possible defense.
However, one thing I am genuinely curious about is why people condemn Singapore's solution in regards to substance smugglers. The state of their nation suggests that their solution works well.
Why should society condone the distribution of substances that ruin lives? I've seen people argue that capital punishment is unethical in this case. From the perspective of potential false-positive convictions, that is definitely a valid point. However, when people argue that the current punishment for such crime is too much, I must ask: what about the countless addicted people who lose their lives to drugs every year? Don't they deserve to live? Why does a smuggler who knowingly distributes a substance that destroys lives deserve sympathy? How can one expect such a menace to be "rehabilitated" in prison?
But if it really "worked"--why would there still consistently be prosecutions and executions of dealers, traffickers, etc? If Singapore's strategy really worked, it would have stopped this. Yet it didn't. So does it work?
The humanity of the addict that drives you to want to save her in the face of her own choices to resist being saved, is the same humanity of the dealer that you ignore in your drive to want to kill her.
In another way, are they also not jointly responsible? Without addicts there would be no dealers. Without dealers, no addicts. If we're going to kill all dealers, why not all addicts, too? In a more sophisticated way, isn't drug policy the real one responsible for the harm? If drugs were not "illegal", cartels would not exist, and all the violence from them would not exist. If drugs were not illegal, purity could be controlled, and so could dosage, and so could price, and not only would illicit market be far smaller, but less lives would be ruined through drug debt, disease, social exclusion, and, jail.
Prosecutions snip the leaves, but not the trunk or root. The leaves are often driven to crime by the same forces that drive people to be addicts. The standard of personal responsibility should be equally applied: people choose to become addicts, and they choose to commit crimes.
In both cases, there are other forces at work, but we must not treat one class of people as agent-free helpless fake victims, and others as planful, deliberate, fully-responsible perpetrators. We must apply responsibility equally to all, for their choices and situations.
I think the "moral panic" argument to justify lynching is a way to hack human psychology and has always been effective (heretics, witches, slaves, and now...I guess...drug mules?).
Put it another way: what if it was your sister, who was visiting you in Singapore, but she didn't speak the local language, and the eSIM she bought at the airport turned out to have been used by drug traffickers a few months before. Then out with friends, someone spikes her drinks, her friends lost her, and police later find her wandering the street in a confused state, and arrest her for "drug consumption". While detained, she refuses drug tests, and while checking her phone, they discover the "her involvement". Despite the fact that she just landed here, a court rules that the phone number belongs to her, and she is sentenced to death for "her part" in the months-prior drug trafficking. Are you still asking "what about the countless addicted people who lose their lives to drugs every year? how can such a menace be rehabilitated" and saying "The state of their nation suggests that their solution works well." It's an exaggeration, but how plausible is it? How plausible is the guilt of the guy they will execute? What if not your sister, but you? Someone switches bags with you at the airport, in a part of the airport where no cameras are...you have no proof, and you are sentenced to death for being "such a menace"? Do you still feel "their solution works well?" I mean, did you deserve to die for something else and this is what got you?
I think it doesn't work, and even if the questionable "war on drugs" was really a good goal (and not one that ended up lining the pockets of both 'sides', while denying people access to a lot of safe mood modifiers), then a better LE strategy would be executing the leadership of the organization.
Put it another way: in human trafficking cases, do we arrest the leaves (the girls and boys who are trafficked for sex or slave labor), or do we arrest the kingpins? The socioeconomic things driving those kids to become criminals are very similar for drugs, and for sex / slave labor.
Finally, does the prosecution and sentencing of many mainly black men in USA for small drug crimes (another example of a solution whose punishment seems exaggeratedly incommensurate with the crime), "work well"? Or is the problem that it was "not tough enough" -- we should have been executing people for this stuff...? :(
"Addicts" do not consume drugs out of their own free will. They are addicts, their condition is out of their control. The dealers have free will and willingly choose to ruin society.
> Someone switches bags with you at the airport, in a part of the airport where no cameras are...you have no proof, and you are sentenced to death for being "such a menace"?
You raise a good point - and believe it or not, that is actually a fear I have of travelling to Singapore. Even though it's obviously unlikely, there is always that fear of "but what if it happens?"
This is why the defendant deserves the best defense possible, and that doesn't seem to have happened in this case. It's also why the government should absolutely prioritize a high level of certainty when assessing if someone is guilty of such a serious crime or not. Personally, I wish they opted for life sentences as opposed to execution. You can free someone from prison. You can't un-execute them.
> "Finally, does the prosecution and sentencing of many mainly black men in USA for small drug crimes"
America has for-profit prisons, corrupt police, and a long history of racism. These factors play a major role in why minorities are targeted.
This is a little too simplistic. You have to ascribe them the same responsibility and agency you do dealers. There’s always causes, but choices are the decisive factor equally for both. An unfair application of that principle doesn’t help anyone.
Really you won’t go to SG for that reason? Wow, that’s kind of extreme. What about UAE?
You mean substances like alcohol and cigarettes?
It's not a stretch to predict that Singapore will remain a functional, clean society while many western counterparts will devolve into unhabitable messes.
It is unfortunate human beings still need a level of authoritarianism to flourish but that may be the case.
Edit: death penalty for smuggling is law in 33 countries. European nations do not have capital punishment at all.
What are you talking about? Can you please cite the "international law" you are referring to?
How a Singapore execution set off a wave of protest - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-61403692
Singapore: UN human rights experts urge immediate death penalty moratorium - https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/05/singapore-un...
The Movement to Close Singapore’s Death Row - https://www.thenation.com/article/world/singapore-death-pena...
Kirsten Han on the Fight to Abolish the Death Penalty in Singapore - https://thediplomat.com/2023/01/kirsten-han-on-the-fight-to-...
Singapore's govt recently expressed positive views about BRICS development. Wouldn't be surprised if that cued some human rights abuse articles in western aligned press. It's an obvious formula at this point.
Yet the presence of the articles doesn’t change the fundamental reality of the situation.
And the international law for smuggling is not the death penalty.
One can never be fully sure.