A man has been sentenced to death via a Zoom video call in Singapore, as the country remains on lockdown following a spike in Covid-19 cases.<\/p>\n
Punithan Genasan, 37, received the sentence on Friday for his role in a drug deal that took place in 2011.<\/p>\n
It marks the city’s first case where such a ruling has been done remotely.<\/p>\n
Human rights groups argued that pursuing the death penalty at a time when the world is being gripped by a pandemic was “abhorrent”.<\/p>\n
The vast majority of court hearings in Singapore have been adjourned until at least 1 June, when the city’s current lockdown period is due to end.<\/p>\n
Cases which have been deemed to be essential are being held remotely.<\/p>\n
“For the safety of all involved in the proceedings, the hearing for Public Prosecutor v Punithan A\/L Genasan was conducted by video-conferencing,”\u00a0a spokesperson for Singapore’s Supreme Court told Reuters<\/a>.<\/p>\n Mr Genasan’s lawyer, Peter Fernando, said his client is considering an appeal.<\/p>\n Singapore has a zero-tolerance policy for illegal drugs. In 2013, 18 people were executed – the highest figure in at least two decades, according to Amnesty International.<\/p>\n Of those 18, 11 had been charged with drug-related offenses.<\/p>\n Kirsten Han, a Singaporean journalist and activist, said: “The delivering of a death sentence via Zoom just highlights how clinical and administrative capital punishment is.”<\/p>\n She added that by bypassing a courtroom appearance, the accused’s family had missed out on an opportunity to speak and hold hands with him.<\/p>\n Amnesty International said the ruling was a “reminder that Singapore continues to defy international law and standards by imposing the death penalty for drug trafficking.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a time when the global attention is focused on saving and protecting lives in a pandemic, the pursuit of the death penalty is all the more abhorrent.”<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch Asia deputy director Phil Robertson told the BBC: “It’s shocking the prosecutors and the court are so callous that they fail to see that a man facing capital punishment should have the right to be present in court to confront his accusers.”<\/p>\n Singapore officials are not the first to issue a death penalty over a video conference call.<\/p>\n Human Rights Watch\u00a0condemned a similar ruling made in Nigeria earlier this month<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lagos judge Mojisola Dada sentenced Olalekan Hameed to death by hanging for the murder of his employer’s mother.<\/p>\n Hameed had pleaded not guilty to killing 76-year-old Jolasun Okunsanya in December 2018.<\/p>\n “The irreversible punishment is archaic, inherently cruel and inhuman. It should be abolished,” Human Rights Watch told the BBC at the time.<\/p>\n Singapore prides itself on its low crime rate and is fiercely anti-drugs, with a zero-tolerance approach to drug trafficking.<\/p>\n Until recently, drug trafficking was one of four crimes that brought a mandatory death sentence. Judges can now reduce that to life with caning, under certain conditions.<\/p>\n The government maintains that hanging drug traffickers sends a powerful message of deterrence against a socially destructive crime.<\/p>\n Human rights campaigners have long argued that the process is too secretive, and say that executions disproportionately target low-level drug mules, while doing little to stop the flow of drugs into the country.<\/p>\n Among Singaporeans, however, the use of the death penalty is largely uncontroversial.<\/p>\n Executions rarely get prominent coverage in the national media, and opinion polls consistently show overwhelming public support for the death penalty in some form, making the few anti-death penalty campaigners a fringe group.<\/p>\n In a country where the media is rarely overtly critical of government decisions, there is unlikely to be much of a public outcry over Punithan Genasan’s fate being decided by video call.<\/p>\n Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Analysis: Death penalty uncontroversial in anti-drug Singapore<\/h2>\n
Anna Jones, BBC News, Singapore<\/h3>\n