Activists held up placards before submitting the memorandum to Parliament to protest the impending execution of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam in Kuala Lumpur on November 3, 2021, who was sentenced to death for trafficking heroin to Singapore. (Photo: Mohd RASFAN/AFPP
- An activist for the Malaysian man who will be hanged on Wednesday said the execution was despicable.
- They appealed not to hang the mentally handicapped person for selling a small amount of heroine.
- He was arrested in 2009 for transporting 43 grams of drugs into Singapore.
Singapore faced a call on Friday not to hang a Malaysian man with intellectual disabilities for trafficking a small amount of heroin into the city-state. Activists criticized the planned execution as “despicable.”
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam was arrested in 2009 for transporting 43 grams (equivalent to about 3 tablespoons) of drugs into Singapore and was sentenced to death the following year.
After exhausting a series of legal challenges in this city-state with the most stringent anti-drug laws in the world, the 33-year-old is scheduled to be hanged on Wednesday.
This will be Singapore’s first execution since 2019. Despite increasing pressure from rights groups to abolish the death penalty, Singapore still insists that the death penalty is an effective deterrent to crime.
Proponents say that Naganslan has an IQ of 69, which is considered to be an intellectual disability and was fighting alcohol problems at the time of the crime.
Rachel Chhoa-Howard of Amnesty International said:
Hanging a person convicted of carrying drugs only, in the chilling testimony, he may not even fully understand what happened to him, which is despicable.
“We urge the authorities to immediately stop implementing Naganslan’s plan.”
Human Rights Watch stated that the execution of persons with intellectual disabilities violates international law, and continued hanging is “disproportionate and cruel.”
Nagaenthran’s sister Sarmila said that their family was “very shocked” when they heard of the planned execution.
“We really can’t accept it,” the 35-year-old told AFP in the northern Malaysian city of Ipoh.
Samira, her mother and another relative took a flight to neighboring Singapore on Friday, where they will be able to visit Nagansland.
She said that her mother “was crying all the time”, and she comforted her by saying, “Don’t worry, don’t give up, keep praying that something will happen.”
Nagaenthran’s legal team will launch a final challenge on Monday, saying the execution would violate the Singapore Constitution.
“We want to do our best,” Samira said.
After a recent visit to Nagaenthran, his lawyer M. Ravi said that the prisoner’s “mental age may be less than 18” and criticized the planned execution as “unreasonable and capricious state behavior”.
The Ministry of Home Affairs of Singapore defended the decision to continue the execution of the hanging, saying that the legal ruling found that he was not “mentally abnormal” at the time of the crime.
“Nagaenthran was found to clearly understand the nature of his actions,” it said in a statement.
