Capital punishment in Singapore - Public debate

Public debate in the Singaporean news media on the death penalty is almost non-existent, although the topic does occasionally get discussed in the midst of major, well-known criminal cases. Efforts to garner public opinion on the issue are rare, although it is generally assumed that most Singaporeans support it and believe it plays a part in keeping the crime rate in Singapore low.

Joshua Benjamin Jeyaretnam, the first ever opposition Member of Parliament in Singapore, was only given a few minutes to speak in parliament on the issue before his comments were rebutted by the Minister of State for Law and Home Affairs. Few other opposition members in parliament would bring up the issue, which may be reflective of a population generally indifferent to the matter.

The government states that the death penalty is only used in the most serious of crimes, sending, they say, a strong message to would-be offenders. They make no apology for their tough stance on law and order in the country. They point out that in 1994 and 1999 the United Nations General Assembly has failed to adopt resolutions calling for a moratorium on the death penalty worldwide, as a majority of countries opposed such a move.
The Permanent Representative of the Republic of Singapore to the United Nations wrote a letter to the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions in 2001 which 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."

Before the hanging of Shanmugam Murugesu, a three-hour vigil was held on May 6, 2005. The organisers of the event at the Furama Hotel said it was the first such public gathering organised solely by members of the public against the death penalty in Singapore. Murugesu had been arrested after being caught in possession of six packets containing just over 1 kg of cannabis after returning from Malaysia. He admitted knowledge of one of the packets, which contained 300 g, but not the other five. The event went unreported on the partially state-owned media and the police shut down an open microphone session before the first person could speak.

After the hanging of Van Tuong Nguyen, a Vietnamese Australian man from Melbourne, Australia, on December 2, 2005, Sister Susan Chia the province leader of the Good Shepherd Sisters in Singapore took the opportunity to declare that "The death penalty is cruel, inhumane and it violates the right to life." Chia and several other nuns took it upon themselves to comfort Nguyen's mother two weeks before his execution for heroin trafficking. [1]

Singapore's death penalty laws have drawn comments in the media. For example, the science fiction author William Gibson, while a journalist, wrote a travel piece on Singapore in which he sarcastically referred to it as "Disneyland with the death penalty." [2]