[{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/#NewsArticle","mainEntityOfPage":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/","headline":"Capital Punishment in Singapore: Why We Should Be Thinking About It","name":"Capital Punishment in Singapore: Why We Should Be Thinking About It","description":"Fill Me In On 11 September, family members of Syed Suhail Syed Zin received a letter notifying them that Syed would be executed at Changi Prison in a week, following a 2015 conviction for trafficking 38.84 grams of heroin in 2011. Syed previously had applied for an appeal, but was dismissed on 18 October 2018. […]","datePublished":"2020-09-29","dateModified":"2022-04-15","author":{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/Claudia%20Tan\/#Person","name":"Claudia Tan","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/author\/Claudia%20Tan\/","identifier":73,"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6f2004e13e937d58b50adb5fc43b2f9a318d48ec017194d5e4f2b87e462a5219?s=96&d=mm&r=g","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/6f2004e13e937d58b50adb5fc43b2f9a318d48ec017194d5e4f2b87e462a5219?s=96&d=mm&r=g","height":96,"width":96}},"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"TheHomeGround Asia","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo_2021-07-22-222533.jpeg","width":640,"height":640}},"image":{"@type":"ImageObject","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/1601285201504_gavel-3576969_1920.jpg","url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/wp-content\/uploads\/1601285201504_gavel-3576969_1920.jpg","height":880,"width":1600},"url":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/","commentCount":"3","comment":[{"@type":"Comment","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/#Comment1","dateCreated":"2026-05-03 00:29:46","description":"Great job, keep it up!","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"world tv live free","url":"https:\/\/www.youtube.ba\/redirect?q=https:\/\/www.oneotv.com"}},{"@type":"Comment","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/#Comment2","dateCreated":"2026-04-27 22:31:22","description":"Impressive clarity and structure.","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Salomon shoes feid","url":"https:\/\/globalshoepalace.com\/product-category\/men\/Salomon-Men-Shoes"}},{"@type":"Comment","@id":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/#Comment3","dateCreated":"2026-04-24 04:45:00","description":"Great job, keep it up!","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Salomon xt-6 trail running shoes","url":"https:\/\/globalshoepalace.com\/product-category\/women\/Salomon-Women-Shoes"}}],"about":["Community","Local","Singapore"],"wordCount":1394,"articleBody":"Fill Me InOn 11 September, family members of Syed Suhail Syed Zin received a letter notifying them that Syed would be executed at Changi Prison in a week, following a 2015 conviction for trafficking 38.84 grams of heroin in 2011. Syed previously had applied for an appeal, but was dismissed on 18 October 2018. Subsequently, his petition for clemency was rejected on 5 July 2019.\u00a0Just 72 hours before his execution, Syed reached out to human rights lawyer M Ravi, imploring him to help. The latter filed a judicial review before the High Court of Singapore on 16 September, which was dismissed, but Syed was granted a stay of execution pending the hearing of his appeal against the judicial review. On 22 September, the Court of Appeal extended the stay on his execution until further notice, pending further submissions to be filed by both the prosecution and the defense. The next hearing will be fixed after 7 October.\u00a0Grounds for appealIn the appeal for judicial review, M Ravi argued that Syed\u2019s execution \u201cviolates his right to equality guaranteed under Article 12 of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore\u201d as the Singapore Prison Service (SPS) had practiced differential treatment between foreigners and Singaporeans in carrying out the death sentence. He alleged that due to COVID-19 border closures that prevent visitation access to foreign inmates, the executions of foreigners have been put on hold while that of Singaporeans have been brought forward instead.Additionally, M Ravi also revealed in court that the Attorney-General\u2019s Chambers (AGC) had received Syed\u2019s private letter to his former lawyer, which was forwarded by the SPS \u2014 a breach of attorney-client privilege. However, Senior State Counsel Francis Ng clarified that he had not seen any such letter. The ministry also explained that SPS\u2019 actions were not against the law.\u00a0Taking it into the the public sphereIn addition to filing for a judicial review, M Ravi has also taken to his personal Facebook page to appeal for public support against Syed\u2019s execution by joining a campaign against the death penalty.\u00a0Many other concerned citizens have also shown their support for Syed\u2019s case online.\u00a0Singaporean rapper, Subhas Nair, has written an online petition on change.org, directly addressing President Halimah Yacob to spare Syed\u2019s life. The petition has more than 30,000 signatures so far.\u00a0Local journalist and anti-death penalty activist, Kristen Han, has also written multiple online articles to urge citizens to play a part to halt Syed\u2019s execution. In the article, she explains the wider implications of the death penalty in Singapore, mentioning that very little information about death row and its inmates is made available to the public, in a bid to keep \u201cthe death penalty distant and abstract for most of Singaporean society\u201d. She urged Singaporeans to write to their Members of Parliament or Cabinet ministers, who have the power to advise the President to grant clemency to Syed.\u00a0Media as one of the only outlets for death row inmatesAs mentioned by Han in her article, not much is known about death penalty in Singapore. Executions are typically not announced publicly ahead of time, nor publicly confirmed to have been carried out \u2014 unless the inmate has already garnered prior media attention.In recent years, many family members and relatives of convicted death row inmates have taken to the media to appeal for their loved ones.\u00a0Petitions to save from executionA death row inmate that was able to have his sentence commuted to life imprisonment is Yong Vui Kong, a Malaysian who was convicted of trafficking 47.27 grams of heroin, thereby incurring the mandatory death sentence. Yong was only 19 at the time of his arrest.\u00a0A webpage was set up to urge Singaporeans and Malaysians to come together to save him from execution. An online petition was also created, which received more than 109,000 signatures.\u00a0Another death row inmate that has received substantial support from online netizens is Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, a Malaysian that was convicted of carrying 51.84 grams of heroin at Woodlands Checkpoint in 2014. His letter, titled On my birthday, from death row in Singapore went viral on the Internet, which resulted in a petition to save him from the death penalty. A website has also been created, which provides information and updates about his case.\u00a0Amendment to law on death penaltyIn Singapore, there are 32 offences that could potentially warrant the death sentence. Four of these call for the mandatory death penalty, where the death penalty must be given and judges are not able to take into consideration mitigating circumstances when sentencing \u2014 murder, drug trafficking, terrorism, possession of unauthorised firearms, ammunitions or explosives.\u00a0However, in 2012, an amendment was made to the law, whereby the mandatory death penalty for drug trafficking and murder can be lifted under certain conditions, and the courts may decide to impose life imprisonment instead. In the case of drug trafficking, the accused must have:\u00a0only played the role of courier (i.e. transport, send or deliver) for a controlled drug; andeither cooperated with the Central Narcotics Bureau in a significant way that has disrupted drug trafficking activities within or outside Singapore; or had a mental disability that impaired their judgement of the severity of their actions in relation to the offence.Since the amendment of the law, a few have managed to narrowly escape the gallows, such as Vui Kong and Subashkaran Pragasam, who were both given life imprisonment and 15 strokes of the cane.\u00a0Why should Singaporeans be thinking about the death penalty?For a very long time, very little has been published about the death penalty in Singapore, save for cases that have managed to gain media exposure. But what actually goes down within the confines of death row at Changi Prison?\u00a0There is much difficulty in obtaining reliable information about death row in Singapore because prison officers, executioners, and counsellors who interact with death row inmates are bound by the Official Secrets Act. The main piece of official information only comes from the number of judicial executions that have taken place the year before, published in the annual reports by the SPS. Even then, official execution dates aren\u2019t announced, unless they are flagged out by the media, like in Syed\u2019s case.\u00a0To dig further, there are no exact figures about the number of people who are on death row \u2014 no breakdown of gender, age, race, education level or socioeconomic status.A distant topic for Singaporeans?With so little to work with, it\u2019s no wonder that the death penalty seems to be a rather distant topic for many Singaporeans. In a 2016 survey on public attitudes towards the death penalty, which was conducted by the National University of Singapore, almost two-thirds of the 1,500 respondents said they either knew nothing or very little about the death penalty in Singapore. When asked about the level of interest and concern about the issue, the respondents were split down the middle, with half saying they were either \u201cnot interested or concerned\u201d or \u201cnot very interested or concerned\u201d.But what are the implications of maintaining status quo?It\u2019s not just about the death penalty acting as a \u2018deterrent\u2019 for drug-related and violent crimes; not thinking about the death penalty also affects how we, as a first-world country, view the rehabilitation of drug offenders in Singapore. Thinking about whether the death penalty should be enforced will affect how this country and its policy-makers want to do about individuals like Syed, and many others like him.\u00a0In recent years, the government has also received much flak for its strict implementation of capital punishment, not just by local activists like Han, but also from the international community. For instance, seven years after the execution of Van Tuong Nguyen, Australian journalist Brigid Delaney wrote a poignant tribute to him, expressing how she still feels the after effects of his execution.\u00a0Regardless of your personal opinion about whether or not the death penalty is just, perhaps it is a good time to consider the wider ramifications of what the death penalty entails not just for its victims and their family members, but also our views on capital punishment as a nation.\u00a0Perhaps we need to start asking more questions about how the death penalty works in Singapore, and engage those whose lives have been radically altered because of it, before we can truly come to a conclusion as to whether the death penalty is warranted.\u00a0"},{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org\/","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Destinations","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Singapore","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/\/singapore\/#breadcrumbitem"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Capital Punishment in Singapore: Why We Should Be Thinking About It","item":"https:\/\/thehomeground.asia\/destinations\/singapore\/capital-punishment-in-singapore-why-we-should-be-thinking-about-it\/#breadcrumbitem"}]}]