Once a Jolly Hangman Read online

  A study carried out by the United Nations in 2001 concluded that Singapore had by far the highest per capita execution rate in the world, three times higher than Saudi Arabia, the next highest. The situation has not improved in the subsequent decade. Singapore takes a morbid pride in that fact that it is known worldwide for the strictness of its laws. Those accused of gun crimes or drug trafficking are sentenced to death. The Misuse of Drugs Act includes the death penalty for at least 20 drug-related crimes. For example, the mere possession of more than 500 grams of hashish or marijuana is punishable by death. The same applies to the possession of more than 15 grams of hard drugs such as heroin or amphetamines.

  The scale and breadth of the use of the death penalty has not gone unopposed. The law has been strongly criticised by human rights groups which say it contains provision that violate the right of presumption of innocence, as in the case of a young Nigerian soccer hopeful who was tricked into going to Singapore to join a club by a sophisticated adult. Even the judge who sentenced him to death said there was no evidence that he knew he was carrying drugs. Under Singapore's mandatory death penalty, many addicts have been executed for possessing relatively small amounts of drugs. At the end of 2005, Nguyen Van Tuong, a young Australian of Vietnamese origin was caught with 4.2 kg of heroin while in transit en route to his home in Melbourne. Despite protest rallies and a request for clemency by the Australian government - albeit at the eleventh hour with John Howard being accused of 'tardiness' at trying to save his life - the 25 year-old was hanged. Shortly before a young German woman, known to have been running a lucrative drugs ring in Singapore, was sentenced to only five years, of which she served three for good behaviour - a slap on the wrist which was arranged behind the scenes by the Singapore government under threat of economic reprisals by the German government. In contrast, a poor 36 year-old drug addict, Yen May Woen, who traded to support her habit, was executed for possession of 30 grams of heroin.

  Despite the severity of the law in most cases, drug abuse figures for heroin have showed an upward trend over the past four years - a fact that flies in the face of government claims that the threat of the death penalty is keeping Singapore squeaky clean. According to figures from the Central Narcotics Bureau of the 1,876 addicts who were arrested in 2009 some 60 per cent were heroin addicts; in 2008 46 per cent of 1,925 were heroin addicts. The Director of the Bureau believes that one of the reasons to explain the increase is the proximity of Singapore to one of the largest areas where opium is produced - the so-called Golden Triangle - an area of 210,000 square miles in the mountains shared by Myanmar, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand.

  Many of the cases I have investigated in this book show that justice in Singapore is patently biased against the weak and disadvantaged while favouring the wealthy and privileged. This is especially true for foreigners from powerful countries willing and able to use their economic might to have the death penalty 'abolished' for their citizens.

  Business for Singapore is far too important a matter to allow such a little local difficulty like killing someone.

  The generic case for abolition of the death penalty is fairly compelling. Adam Hugo Bedau of the American Civil Liberties Union, and doyen of the abolitionist movement in the United States, says: "The imposition of the death penalty is arbitrary and irrevocable. It forever deprives an individual of benefit of new evidence or new law that might warrant the reversal of a conviction or the setting aside of a death sentence. A perfect example of this in Singapore involves a corrupt police officer who quite possibly cooked up evidence against a young man of 21, to ensure that he hanged. Two years after the execution, this officer was jailed for 15 months for corruption in another case. The judge said his actions were akin to attempting to pervert the course of justice'. Everyone in the top echelons of law enforcement in Singapore knew of this case but did nothing to question the police officer's honesty in the death penalty case. If he had been tried first - both cases began at virtually the same time - the young man might well have been given the benefit of the doubt that he was telling the truth and not his accuser. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Extra Judicial Summary and Arbitrary Executions, Philip Alston, faulted another death penalty case in Singapore because the trial did not respect legal safeguards around the presumption of innocence: 'It is a fundamental human right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty'. Alston went on to note that 'Singapore cannot reverse the burden and require a defendant to prove beyond reasonable doubt that he did not know he was carrying drugs'.

  Supporters of abolition say that extreme sanctions like the death penalty have never deterred criminal behaviour in human society. Nor has it taken due cognisance of the fact that opportunistic criminality, which represents 70 per cent of criminal behaviour in developing countries, is largely a product of the basic instinct for survival not the sheer indulgence of base instincts. "The death penalty violates the constitutional guarantee of the equal protection of the laws. It is a relic of the earliest days of penology, when slavery, branding, and other corporal punishments were commonplace. Like those other barbaric practices, executions have no place in a civilised society', says Bedau.

  Reliance on the death penalty, opponents maintain, also obscures the true causes of crime and distracts attention from the social measure that effectively contribute to its control. 'Politicians who preach the desirability of executions as a weapon of crime control deceive the public and mask their own failure to support anti-crime measures that will really work', suggests Bedau. Capital punishment also wastes resources. It squanders the time and energy of courts, prosecuting attorneys, defence counsel, juries and courtroom and correctional personnel. It unduly burdens the system of criminal justice, and it is therefore counter-productive as an instrument for society's control of violent crime. It epitomises the tragic inefficacy and brutality of the resort to violence rather than reason for the solution of difficult social problems. 'A decent and humane society does not deliberately kill human beings. An execution is a dramatic, public spectacle of official, violent homicide that teaches the permissibility of killing people to solve social problems - the worst possible example to set for society'.

  For most of the past century governments have too often attempted to justify their lethal fury with reference to the so-called benefits such killing would bring to the rest of society. This is also Singapore's main argument for keeping the death penalty But the bloodshed is real and deeply destructive of the common decency of the community; the benefits are illusory. More than this, the implementation of capital punishment is highly discriminatory. According to Amnesty International, 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 that make them more vulnerable.

  The Singaporean authorities have 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 support 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 abolitionist activist Alex Au discounts the poll findings. He maintains that for Singaporeans the subject of the death penalty is entirely off-limits. "There is never any official discussion about it and no one really knows what happens when

  someone is hanged', says Au. He does not expect serious moves to even modify it any time soon:

  It will only happen when Singapore's biggest trading partners, the United States and China abolish capital punishment and that will only come about in those countries at a societal level, not a governmental one. This is a copycat society, which is not at all innovative and they might follow these powerful leaders. The subject of the death penalty is not even t
alked about on internet chatter which speaks to the nature of this society and how it sees - or doesn't see - the subject. When a rare protest was launched in Singapore over an execution the authorities did everything they could to sabotage the campaign. They even put a quick end to a forum being held by protesters who had hired a hotel room for the purpose by intimidating the hotel manager. They then sent in the police to intimidate those citizens who turned up to speak out against the hanging. They don't want the kind of publicity generated in the UK which resulted finally in the death penalty being abolished there. They don't want anyone to hear the hangman's stories or gallows jokes - such stories and jokes - published in newspapers or on the internet about decapitation or the condemned 'dancing on the end of the rope like a fish out of water'.

  This is the kind of powerful imagery that feeds into the abolitionist campaign. But Singapore's authorities don't want this kind of thing becoming current knowledge. Au continues:

  All governments dislike dissent and they will do anything to stop it taking on a life of its own. When the police were sent to disrupt the forum it was entirely typical, part of the whole pattern of this government in trying to put a lid on arguments that they find inconvenient. This tendency to act pre-emptively to smother dissent is given freer reign simply because the press is muzzled and civil society so quiescent and emasculated. No one questions this kind of repression. Everyone goes along with it and the government's campaign to squash dissent becomes even more effective. They are then emboldened to get even tougher - so much so that they sometimes act unlawfully themselves. But nobody stands up and challenges these attempts to crush freedom of thought and register dissent. The disruption of forum is entirely characteristic. To voice an opinion that the government finds inconvenient or worse in terms of the governments perspective to try to propagate that opinion. They intimidate everyone. That's how they've always been.

  The authorities in Singapore have been criticised by both the United Nations and the European Union who expressed particular concerns about Singapore's use of the mandatory death penalty and high executions rate. However, the government 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. This flies in the face of evidence that drug use has increased in recent years and that trafficking goes on despite the dire consequences. 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 Permanent Representaive bitterly attacked 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.

  During the months leading up to the execution of convicted the Australian drug trafficker, Nguyen Van Tuong, in December 2005 arguments for and against the death penalty raged across Australia and around the world. Singapore seemed determined not to give in to international pressure and to hang this young man come what may. And it pulled out all the stops to make sure its defensive publicity campaign got its opinion across - even to the point, it was suggested, that its operatives sent a letter published in The Straits Times purportedly written by an Australian citizen in support of hanging Nguyen and hailed as typical of the public sentiment down under! This particular execution came at an awkward time for the city state when, around the same time a German citizen, Julia Suzanne Bohl, who had been under surveillance for months by narcotics police as a high profile drug trafficker in Singapore, managed to escape the death penalty through political and diplomatic pressure from Germany. The charges against her were suddenly - and 'miraculously' - modified. The charges were reduced to a non-mandatory death penalty level and she was given five years of which she served only three.

  Two days before Nguyen was hanged on 2 December 2005, Joseph K.H. Koh, the Singapore High Commissioner in Australia, wrote an article in support of the execution of the young Australian citizen which was published in various Australian newspapers and the internet. Capital punishment, he claimed, remains part of the criminal justice systems of 76 countries, including in the United States, where it is practised in 38 states. 'We respect Australia's sovereign choice not to have capital punishment. We hope Australia will likewise respect Singapore's sovereign choice to impose the death penalty for the most serious crimes, including drug trafficking. The overwhelming majority of Singaporeans support this'. The claim by abolitionists that the death penalty has not deterred drug trafficking is incorrect, he added. "This logic is flawed. The death penalty has not completely eliminated drug trafficking, but it has certainly deterred drug trafficking. Since the introduction of tough anti-drug laws in the mid-1970s, drug trafficking and drug abuse in Singapore have come down significantly. Potential traffickers know that, once arrested, they face the full weight of the law'.

  As Singapore propaganda machine went into higher gear, Asad Latif, a former senior reporter with The Straits Times, and a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, wrote:

  It is unfortunate Nguyen has to die, but the law against drug trafficking must be implemented uniformly. What is surprising, though, is how those aspects appear to have been subsumed by condemnations of an upstart city-state for having dared to condemn to death a citizen of an island-continent. They have the right, if they so wish, to argue that their laws are better than those of Singapore. But - and this is the critical caveat - no one has the right to expect, let alone demand, that Singapore bend its laws to suit the laws of another country. Incidentally, expecting special treatment for foreign criminals reveals a sense that their lives are more precious than those of Singaporean criminals. Where is the justice in that view? But we also understood that a country whose sovereign right of action is held hostage by external forces will soon have little to protect. Sovereignty, then, is the key issue.

  2

  A Tale of Two Hangmen

  For fifty years Darshan Singh was called upon by Singapore city state to kill people its justice system considered unfit to live or deserved to die. Since 1959, as chief executioner, Singh estimates that he has executed around 1,000 men and women until he finally retired at the age of 75 in 2006. He was nothing like I imagined an executioner when I first met him on the doorstep of his flat in a working class suburb wearing only a pair of baggy shorts and sandals. He seemed more like a kindly, if dishevelled, grandfather as he stood looking at me through the iron bars of the security gate, with a quizzical expression on his weathered face. Before he appeared I was not expecting someone with such a record of killing so many of his fellow human beings to look so ordinary, a person who would not necessarily stand out in a crowd, or someone you might see sitting quietly at a bar drinking a glass of beer. I introduced myself as a freelance journalist and explained why I had come to see him. He smiled, unlocked the barred iron gate separating us and invited me in to talk about his career and the exec
ution of the Australian drug trafficker, Nguyen Van Tuong, then on death row in Changi Prison. Sitting comfortably in armchairs opposite each other and sipping drinks in his living room, Darshan Singh began reminiscing about his grim calling. It all began, purely by chance, when he was in his mid-twenties. He then talked enthusiastically about his strong belief that the role he played as master of the gallows for nearly half a century was key to why Singapore had become one of the safest nations on earth to live in. And he emphasised that he had no regrets or conscience at having killed so many men and women in a career few would even dream of following. 'I was just doing my job, lah', he said many times. 'It was an important job'.

  Another executioner whose methods on the gallows Darshan Singh assiduously followed was Albert Pierrepoint, Britain's most prolific hangman. Until he retired, he too was proud of what he had done on behalf of the state while carefully keeping detailed records of those he killed. When he retired Pierrepoint's 'kills' totalled 435 carried out in prisons all over Britain and occupied Germany from 1931 to 1956. Some of those he hanged were Second World War Nazi criminals and spies and their executions were mostly carried out in the British- occupied zone of Germany after the Third Reich collapsed. Pierrepoint, too, was proud to have served his country in such a distasteful way.

  Accepting his approximate one thousand executions as accurate, Darshan Singh, an Indian Sikh and Muslim convert who grew up in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is arguably the world's most prolific official hangman of all time or since records were kept. He was born in 1933. For his part, Pierrepoint began his career just two years later, following in the footsteps his uncle, Thomas Pierrepoint, and his father, Henry Pierrepoint. For more than half a century the Pierrepoint dynasty dominated the list of all official executioners in Britain. But the total number of convicts they hanged comes nowhere near Darshan Singh's astonishing record taking into account the difference in the populations of both countries.