Zulfikar bin Mustaffah, 32, an Indian migrant worker, was sentenced to death in November 2000 after being found in possession of a package containing approximately 70 grams of heroin and was executed in 2001. A drug addict since the age of 14, he dropped out of school at 15 and has spent most of his life in drug rehabilitation centres or in detention. Zulfikar was unemployed at the time of his arrest and had reportedly found it difficult to find work due to his criminal record for drug addiction. The evidence against him was that he agreed to deliver the package to a man he did not know, but claimed that he was unaware of the contents. This man also turned out to be an undercover agent. Amnesty International also joined in the outcry against the death sentence. A delegation of the Indian rights group Peoples Union for Civil Liberties met Singapore Consul Koh Siew Mui in Madras in another desperate bid to save his life. During a sitting of parliament in July 2001, the then MP and human rights campaigner, the late J.B. Jeyaretnam, called for a parliamentary debate on the case, saying: 'It is a known fact that someone who is given to drug-taking over a period of time will have his mental faculties affected, his power to think carefully and to rationalise. He becomes weak-minded and particularly vulnerable to people who try to use him or exploit him'. JBJ, as he was affectionately known to his friends and admirers, urged the Cabinet to consider various aspects of the case during examination of his clemency appeal. JBJ was given just a few minutes to speak before his arguments were rebutted by the Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs. No further discussion took place about this particular case or about the death penalty in general and the execution went ahead two months later. Like all those who preceded him on the gallows, Zulfikar was hanged on a Friday morning in September 2001 just as the sun was coming up.
Thiru Selvam, 28, a Singaporean father of two young children, was arrested after a friend of his was found in possession of approximately 800 grams of cannabis. The friend reportedly told the police that the drugs actually belonged to Selvam who denied this from start to finish. At his trial the judge reportedly told Selvam that if he confessed he would be sentenced to 25 years in prison and 24 strokes of the cane. If not, he would be hanged. However Selvam stuck by his guns and refused to confess to a crime he had not committed. T am completely innocent', he told the judge. And, as the judge promised, he sentenced him to death in September 2000, while his friend was given a 25-year prison term. Selvam's mother died when he was a baby. His father remarried but began drinking heavily and died alcoholism when he was only 16. He had been using drugs from the age of 14 and was admitted to a drug rehabilitation centre the following year. Because he would not confess to something he had not done, Selvam was hanged quietly at dawn one Friday morning in September 2001. Had these tragic stories been reported by an independent press free to champion the civil rights of the likes of Selvam, Zulfikar, Rozman and Vaithilingam, and to ensure they had fair trials the outcome of each case might have been completely different.
These cases are just the tip of the iceberg. They are not rare at all. According to Amnesty International, they highlight Singapore as having one of the harshest justice systems and the highest per capita rates of executions in the world. In particular, says Amnesty, studies have shown that the death sentence is more likely to be imposed in Singapore on those who are poorer and less educated making them more vulnerable than average. Local groups are also concerned about the poor working and living conditions of migrant workers in Singapore that make them more vulnerable. "They and international human rights organisations, stress that death penalty is a violation of right to life and should be repealed', said one report. Singapore, which has a reputation of being a relatively crime-free society, has resisted pressure mainly from Western countries and groups to drop its death penalty law, saying it was crucial in the fight against criminality. An internet poll showed a majority of Singaporeans support the death penalty. Of the 2,899 respondents, 55 per cent supported capital punishment 'as it helps keep the crime rate down'. Another 27 per cent also gave their support but said its use should be restricted. Only 14 per cent opposed the death penalty, while two per cent were unsure.
'The death penalty is an inherently unjust and arbitrary punishment, however heinous the crime for which it is provided. Studies have shown that it is more likely to be imposed on those who are poorer, less educated and more vulnerable than average', says Tim Parritt, of Amnesty International in a recent annual report. The risk of error in applying the death penalty is inescapable, yet it is irrevocable. While Amnesty recognises the need to combat drug trafficking, there is no convincing evidence that the death penalty deters would-be traffickers more effectively than other punishments. Furthermore, there is always a risk that drug abusers may be executed, while those who mastermind the crime of trafficking evade arrest and punishment. Persistent drug addicts who have been admitted more than twice to a drugs rehabilitation centre are treated as criminals who may be imprisoned for up to 13 years and caned. Despite these draconian anti-drugs laws, drug addiction continues to be a problem.
There is no public debate about the use of the death penalty in the country. Controls imposed by the government on the press and civil society organisations curb freedom of expression and are an obstacle to the independent monitoring of human rights, including the death penalty. Despite such restrictions, there have been some attempts at raising public awareness about death penalty issues. For example, the non-governmental organization, the Think Centre, has published its concerns on its website and in October 2003 it urged the government to impose a moratorium on executions. The Singapore authorities have been criticised by both the United Nations and the European Union for their use of the death penalty. The EU has expressed particular concern about Singapore's use of the mandatory death penalty and high executions rates. The government of Singapore has consistently argued that the use of the death penalty is not a question of human rights. It has vigorously defended its stance that executions have been effective in deterring crime, particularly drug trafficking. In a letter addressed to the UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions and circulated in 2001 at the 57th session of the Commission on Human Rights, the Permanent Representative of Singapore to the UN stated: 'the death penalty is primarily a criminal justice issue, and therefore is a question for the sovereign jurisdiction of each country. The right to life is not the only right, and it is the duty of societies and governments to decide how to balance competing rights against each other'. In 2002 the government of Singapore criticised the work of the then Special Rapporteur, claiming she had 'repeatedly exceeded her mandate and degraded the credibility of her office' after she expressed concern about the case of two men facing execution for drug trafficking. Singapore signed a statement disassociating itself from a UN resolution adopted in April 2003 calling for the establishment of moratoria on executions pending complete abolition and stating that the abolition of the death penalty contributes to the progressive development of human rights. Claiming that the death penalty has been effective in controlling the trade in illicit drugs, the Singapore authorities reported an overall decline in the number of drug users arrested between 1994 and 2001. However, drug addiction has since continued to be a problem, particularly among the poorly educated, impoverished, unemployed and young people from broken homes.
On 16 January 2008, The Straits Times reprinted a surprise report posted on the Central Narcotics Bureau's website, revealing that heroin arrests had shot up by a whopping 600 per cent in 2007 after hitting an all-time low in 2005. 'The number of arrests linked to its use reached 670 - a six-fold jump over the previous years and the highest since 2002', said the report. "The white powder was the drug of choice for three in ten drug abusers nabbed. At a briefing on last year's drug scene, the Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB) disclosed that 2,600 people had been arrested for drug use last year'. It offered two reasons for the jump in heroin use.
First, the increase could simply have been due to the fact that heroin was now cheaper than Su
butex. Subutex was introduced in 2002 as a prescription drug to wean heroin addicts off their habit. The following year, the number of heroin abusers - which had already been dropping since the mid-1990s - fell to just 567, the first time since the 1970s that the figure was below 1,000. But addicts began abusing Subutex forcing the authorities to reclassify it as a controlled drug in August 2006. This meant that people caught trafficking in Subutex, could attract similar harsh penalties to those facing heroin abusers: long jail terms and caning. Over 40 per cent of the 285 heroin addicts arrested were former Subutex users who returned to 'chasing the dragon'. But CNB deputy director S. Vijakumar called this a 'limited' switch back to heroin. The 285 heroin addicts who were formers Subutex users made up only 6 per cent of the 5,000 known Subutext users, he said. He pointed out that some addicts could have gone back to heroin because heroin costs $50 per 0.2 gram straw against Subutext's street price of $120 per 8 mg tablet.
The second reason offered for the rise in heroin is linked to the release of about 4,000 hard-core drug abusers from prison over the years. 'They could have influenced each other or drawn other people into taking up the habit again. We can't make it impossible for them to fraternise and meet each other', said Vijakumar. 'Nine out of ten heroin addicts caught last year were repeat abusers. For more than 60 per cent of them, the return to the habit will put them behind bars for long terms'. The CNB reported that it had seized 17.2 kilograms of heroin in raids in 2007, about three times more than in 2006. It arrested 769 traffickers, while only 590 were caught in 2006. But Vijakumar stressed that 'the rise in the supply of heroin was not a response to higher demand for the drug'. 'Rather', he said, 'it came from syndicates bringing in the drugs in the hope of finding buyers'. He said there had been reports of bumper harvests of opium poppies in the region. 'This could swell the heroin supply, but the CNB will continue to be vigilant'.
17
The High Society Drug Ring
It's Friday night. The rich and privileged are iced up dancing wildly to the thumping beat of techno music. They have popped a pill or two eased down with vintage champagne and they are having a whale of a time. It was very likely one of those Friday nights after a Friday morning when a hapless mule - one who possibly provided the cocaine they'd just stuck up their noses - had been dancing, too. But for him or her it was no fun. Their jerky moves were grotesque on the end of a rope. Every Friday at sunrise the hangman goes to work. No music can be heard. Only screams of terror or muffled sobs and a sickening thud. Or the hangman's hopeful refrain: 'I am sending you to a better place than this'. But 18 hours or so later, the revellers, like the majority of the population, would not know or care who had been hanged anyway. Changi Prison's execution chamber is a closely guarded secret. Little news of what goes on behind its grim walls ever gets out. These glamorous young things and their nattily-dressed partners are in a drug-hazed here-and-now world, bent on enjoying themselves as intensely as possible. As members of Singapore's so-called high society - often privileged and pampered sons and daughters of Singapore's newest batch of production-line tycoons or expensive foreign talent and entrepreneurs from Australia, Britain, the US or Germany - they are the ones who get photographed and written up for the glossies' celebrity news pages to be admired by their peers or worshipped or envied by the less fortunate. They see themselves as invincible and beyond the law. During the small hours when the nightspots around Boat Quay and Clarke Quay are closing they jump into limos to be whisked away to join house parties where cocaine is just as plentiful. They snort it off the backs of their hands or stick 'loaded' rolled banknotes up their noses with total abandon.
The surprise round up began 7 October 2004. It was a lengthy investigation. Those arrested - 16 Singaporeans, seven foreigners, including two permanent residents - were from the upper classes, and included brokers, businessmen and executives, an award-winning French chef, a showbiz personality and a pretty television news reporter. They were known to zoom around town in flashy cars, ate at expensive restaurants and hang out at glitzy nightclubs and bars and along the Singapore River. Of the arrests that night, the most surprising was that of a former High Court judge's son, Dinesh Singh Bhatia, 35, a private equity investor. His father, Amarjeet Singh, a former judicial commissioner and also a senior counsel, served on the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the Balkans. Dinesh's mother, Dr Kanwaljit Soin, was a former Nominated MP and orthopaedic surgeon, and a director of the London-based Help Age International, a global network helping the disadvantaged elderly. Dinesh was charged with cocaine consumption, and was facing 10 years behind bars or fined S$20,000 or both. But funny things often seem to happen on the way to court houses in Singapore. Instead of getting ten years and a heavy fine, Bhatia, was jailed for only 12 months for consuming cocaine. His lawyer, a People's Action Party MP, K. Shanmugam, had told the court that Bhatia was not an addict at all. He was given the drug by a friend but 'did not know that it was cocaine' although he had a 'fleeting suspicion' the substance could be illegal. 'He took it on impulse', said Shanmugam. An internet blogger wryly commented: 'I would not remotely suggest that it might have helped Bhatia's case that his father was a judge, and his mother a former Singapore Member of Parliament. Ignorance of the law is no defence!'
So should Bhatia, a sophisticate about town, have known he was sticking something illegal up his nose? On 7 April 2005, according to court records, Bhatia appealed against his 12-month sentence and asked for a heavy fine instead. Calling the previous sentence 'excessive', the appeal judge, V.K. Rajah, said that the district judge erred by not tailoring the sentence to fit the offender and failed to 'attach adequate weight and merit to all the relevant mitigating factors'. He said the trial judge did not adequately consider the fact that Bhatias consumption was neither planned nor purchased. Justice Rajah then cut Bhatias sentence to eight months. On 7 July 2005, The Straits Times reported that Bhatia was 'now at home serving out his sentence wearing an electronic tag he cannot remove'. It did not say when this favourable treatment began.
Years earlier, when Michael Fay, the American student who was caned in Singapore for some paint-spraying vandalism, Bhatias father, a judicial commissioner and senior counsel at the time, supported the bloody, flesh-ripping thrashing, saying: 'You know, once you loosen up or the laws become lax, everything comes in. The floodgates are opened. It doesn't pay to mess around with the system'. That very week The New Paper reporter bravely wrote of those arrested: "Ihey live a lie. These are people on the move - young, urban and upwardly mobile professionals. At night they drive flashy cars and hit the expensive restaurants. This is the illicit cocaine party crowd right here in squeaky clean Singapore'. In one online chatroom, 'Sniff Snort', commented: 'Cocaine is nature's way of telling you that you are making too much money. Only someone with a brain the size of a pea wouldn't know the consequences of doing drugs in Singapore'. A veteran observer, Seah Chiang Nee, commented in his blog: 'Even as a liberal young journalist, I could agree with the reasons why Singapore and Malaysia had laws to hang drug traffickers. These countries are a stone's throw away from the Golden Triangle, one of the world's biggest heroin producers. If not stopped, the menace can write off hundreds of thousands of urban youth'. But during my meeting with Anandan he denied that Bhatia received special treatment because of his family connections. 'He was treated no differently than anyone else facing such charges', he said.
Briton Andrew Yeale, a top financial broker and a 10 year resident, who drove a Rolls Royce often with his Singaporean girlfriend, Penelope Pang Su-yin, 35, daughter of the organiser of the Miss Universe pageant, were next to appear in court. They too got off lightly with jail sentences amounting to no more than eight months with remission. Veale, was a broker with Structured Credit Desk dealing in derivatives and financial products, and the sort of people Singapore needs.
Next in the dock was Nigel Simmonds. Wearing a dark suit, the bald, bespectacled Briton kept his head bowed throughout. He was accompanied in court by his brother and Japanese
wife; Although Simmonds, 40, confessed to being a drug addict, his lawyers, Shashi Nathan and Peter Chean tried to distinguish their client from the rest of the pack. He never took part in 'drug parties' allegedly organised by his supplier, Ben Laroussi, said Nathan. It was Laroussi, who originally faced the mandatory death penalty, who mysteriously managed to slip out of the country while on bail after his arrest. In fact, Nathan said, the Briton 'always made a conscious effort to stay away' from these functions. 'He did not know any of the other 13 suspects well'. As for his supplier, Laroussi, he knew him only as 'the Arab'. Nathan said he was worried the arrests of many high-profile personalities gave the impression that all of them took drugs at private parties. But Simmonds was a loner, he said, who took drugs in solitude. 'He is an addict but not a member of these drug parties. He was so ashamed of his addiction that he had to hide it from his own wife', he said. Nathan also submitted a psychiatric report by Dr Lim Yun Chin of Raffles Hospital documenting Simmonds's 'tumultuous childhood and youth' which hooked him on drugs since he was young. He grew up in Malaysia where his father, an army officer, was posted. Lim said in his report: 'It is not surprising that drugs and alcohol were the only way he knew how to cope'. The psychiatrist added that Simmonds had tried to use his talent and ability to lead a normal life but he kept meeting misfortunes which 'aggravated' his drug use. His wife lost a baby the previous year due to medical complications. Then his father died of stomach cancer a few months later. The economic downturn also made his job more stressful. 'He had no chance to escape from the scourge of addiction because of his rollercoaster emotional experience', wrote Lim. Simmonds started psychiatric and counselling sessions after he was arrested and attended Narcotics Anonymous meetings. District Judge EG. Remedios noted that the standard minimal sentence imposed on first-time drug offenders was 12 months. 'There are no circumstances in this case warranting a higher or lower sentence', said the judge.
Once a Jolly Hangman Page 16