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Thursday 28 April 2011

Hanging drug mules in Singapore

SingaporeChun Yin, sits on death row in Singapore, convicted in 2010 of smuggling 2.7 kg of heroin into the country. It’s a harsh punishment for a first offender. But under Singapore’s laws, judges have little choice but to impose a mandatory death penalty. Anyone caught with more than 15g of heroin is presumed to be trafficking, and once found guilty, will almost certainly be hanged.

Chun Yin is not alone. A long string of drug mules have been strung up in the island republic. The issue has come to the fore now in particular in the wake of the prosecution of a British author, Alan Shadrake, for allegedly insulting Singapore in his book Once a Jolly Hangman for its eager use of the hangman’s noose in a way that casts doubt on its image as a strict but fair state.

It’s not clear how many drug mules Singapore sends to the gallows each year, since the government doesn’t publish figures. But the city-state and neighboring Malaysia have some of the most draconian drug laws in the world. Supporters say they are necessary in order to prevent what Singapore’s Law Minister K Shanmugum describes as an “unstoppable stream of people” from dealing drugs.

Opponents disagree. They say the law targets those low down in the supply chain – mules like Chun Yin who may or may not be aware of what they were carrying – while allowing the real culprits to go free. Cheong says Chun Yin was tricked by an acquaintance who had promised him a holiday in Burma and a nice bit of cash in exchange for carrying gold bars into Singapore. The father and son duo ran a small but profitable business selling DVDs across the strait in Johor Bahru and were not desperate for money. Cheong says he didn’t want Chun Yin to go but relented in the end.

“I told him to come back soon. Come back because I can’t run the business on my own.”

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