According to supporters for human rights, Singapore is planning to carry out an execution of a woman for the first time in almost 20 years.
In 2018, the court found 45-year-old Singaporean national Saridewi Djamani guilty of heroin trafficking involving 30 grams (1.06 ounces) of the drug.
She will be the 15th drug offender to be executed since March 2022, and the second drug offender to be executed in Singapore in the past three days, following fellow Singaporean Mohd Aziz bin Hussain.
Singapore has some of the strictest anti-drug regulations in the world, which the country claims are essential for the protection of society.
Aziz was found guilty of distributing fifty grams of heroin into the community. The trafficking of more than 15 grams of heroin or more than 500 grams of cannabis can result in the death penalty in Singapore.
Aziz's appeal against his conviction and sentence was thrown out in 2018, according to Singapore's Central Narcotics Bureau (CNB), which stated that Aziz was given "full due process" during the proceedings.
Another Singaporean, Tangaraju Suppiah, was put to death in April for the crime of trafficking 1 kilogram (35 ounces) of cannabis, which he had never even tried. According to the authorities, he was the one who coordinated the sale using his cell phone.
Sir Richard Branson, a British billionaire who has previously criticized Singapore for its executions, has done so again, stating that the death penalty is not an effective deterrence against crime.
Mr. Branson stated on social media, "Small-scale drug traffickers need assistance, as most of them are bullied due to their circumstances." He also suggested that it was not too late to stop Saridewi Djamani's execution.
According to the Transformative Justice Collective, which is a human rights organization located in Singapore, she is one of only two women currently on death row in the country. According to the group, she will be the first woman executed by the city-state since the execution of hairstylist Yen May Woen in 2004.
The local media said that Saridewi testified during her trial that she was storing up on heroin for personal use during Ramadan.
She did not deny selling drugs such as heroin and methamphetamine from her apartment. However, the judge See Kee Oon noticed that she played down the scale of such operations.
The authorities believe that Singapore's stringent drug laws help retain the country as one of the safest places in the world and that there is widespread support for the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses. Those who oppose the use of the death sentence, however, dispute this.
Amnesty International's Chiara Sangiorgio stated that there is no evidence that the death penalty has a unique deterrent effect or that it has any impact on the use and availability of drugs.She stated that the only message that these killings send is that the government of Singapore is willing to once again break international protections on the use of the death penalty.
Singapore is one of four nations that recently executed drug offenders, according to Amnesty International. China, Iran and Saudi Arabia are among the four.
