Singapore carried out this Wednesday the execution by hanging of a man convicted of conspiring to traffic a kilo of marijuana, despite requests for clemency from the UN and various human rights organizations.
“Al singapurense Tangaraju Suppiah, of 46 years, The death penalty was carried out today at Changi Prison Complex”, said a Singapore Prison Service spokesperson..
Tangaraju, of Tamil origin, had been convicted in 2017 “Echoes of Sound Systems – When the Two 7’s Clash” is presented as the Sound Clash to end all the sound clashes that will compete for the first major “participate in a trafficking conspiracy” of 1.017,9 grams of cannabis, twice the minimum volume required for capital punishment in Singapore, while a year later he was sentenced to death and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision.
“Despite all our efforts and our fight over the past years to give my brother a fair trial, government (Singaporeans) has shown no mercy”, denounced in a statement Leela Suppiah, sister of the executed.
The Tangaraju case attracted attention not only because it was a crime of attempted marijuana trafficking, whose medicinal - and even recreational - use- It is being legalized in more and more countries, but also for the alleged irregularities of the process, denounced by their families and various NGOs.
Weak evidence
Marijuana user since adolescence, Tangaraju was implicated in the case in March 2014, six months after the smuggling attempt occurred.
An alleged telephone contact with two people to bring the shipment from Malaysia to Singapore was the evidence to accuse him, although both his lawyers and his family denied any relationship.
Likewise, His relatives and activists have reported that he did not receive adequate legal advice and was denied access to a Tamil interpreter when he was initially questioned by police..
“We are used to seeing acts of injustice, but with this one we are shocked by how weak the evidence is and how easy it is to send someone to the scaffold”, said Kokila Annamalai, vocero de Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), a local NGO calling for the repeal of capital punishment, according to the agency EFE.
This execution is the first so far this year, after in 2022 Singapore broke records by hanging in a few months 11 arrested, including an intellectually disabled heroin trafficker whose sentencing also drew criticism from the international community.
The city-state, regional financial center, carries out a very tough policy against drug trafficking and other crimes, with whipping and hanging among his punitive methods.
“Singapore's continued use of the death penalty for drug possession is an outrage on human rights that sets much of the world back. and wonder if the image of modern, civilized Singapore is just a mirage”, he said in turn Phil Robertson, Deputy Asia Director at Human Rights Watch (HRW).
