Key Points
- A man has been hanged in Singapore for trafficking 1kg of cannabis.
- Human rights organisations urged the country to reconsider the decision.
- There are calls to abolish the death penalty in Singapore.
Singapore has hanged a prisoner convicted of conspiracy to smuggle 1kg of cannabis, authorities said, ignoring international calls for the city-state to abolish capital punishment.
The man was hanged on Wednesday despite a plea by the United Nations Human Rights Office for Singapore to "urgently reconsider" the execution and calls from British tycoon Richard Branson to halt it.
"Singaporean Tangaraju Suppiah, 46, had his capital sentence carried out today at Changi Prison Complex," a spokesman for the Singapore Prisons Service told AFP.
An activist lights candles for death row inmate Tangaraju Suppiah during a vigil for him at a private office in Singapore. Source: EPA / HOW HWEE YOUNG
Tangaraju was convicted in 2017 of "abetting by engaging in a conspiracy to traffic" 1,017.9 grams of cannabis, twice the minimum volume required for a death sentence in Singapore.
He was sentenced to death in 2018 and the Court of Appeal upheld the decision.
Mr Branson, a member of the Geneva-based Global Commission on Drug Policy, wrote on Monday on his blog that Tangaraju was "not anywhere near" the drugs at the time of his arrest and that Singapore may be about to put an innocent man to death.
Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry responded on Tuesday that Tangaraju's guilt had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
The ministry said two mobile phone numbers that prosecutors said belonged to him had been used to coordinate the delivery of the drugs.
Human rights groups call for change on the death penalty in Singapore
The United Nations said the motivation of having a death penalty to discourage crime was a "myth".
The Asian financial hub has some of the world's toughest anti-narcotics laws and insists the death penalty remains an effective deterrent against trafficking.
But the UN's Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights disagrees.
"The death penalty is still being used in a small number of countries, largely because of the myth that it deters crime," the OHCHR said in a statement on Tuesday.
Tangaraju's family pleaded for clemency while also pushing for a retrial.
