Hundreds of protestors held a rare rally against the death penalty in tightly controlled Singapore on Sunday, as worries mount that the city-state is about to carry out a wave of hangings.
Authorities hung a drug trafficker last week, the country's first execution since 2019. Several other death row inmates have recently had their appeals denied.
Around 400 people, organizers claimed, gathered at "Speakers' Corner" in a downtown park, the city-sole state's location where protests are permitted without prior police authorisation.
They carried posters that said "Capital punishment does not make us safer" and "Do not kill in our name," and screamed anti-death penalty chants.
"Capital Punishment is a barbaric institution that turns us all into brutes," Kirsten Han, a popular local campaigner, told the gathering.
"Rather than encouraging us to solve injustices and exploitative and oppressive institutions that leave people marginalized and abandoned, it makes us our worst selves."
Protests are uncommon in Singapore, which is regularly criticized for its restrictions on civil freedoms.
Aside from "Speakers' Corner," it is prohibited for even one individual to stage a demonstration without first obtaining a police permission.
Abdul Kahar Othman, a 68-year-old Singaporean drug trafficker, was hung Wednesday, despite United Nations and human rights organization petitions for leniency.
Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam, a mentally challenged Malaysian convicted of heroin trafficking and who lost his final appeal last week, might be next in line for execution.
His case has drawn widespread condemnation, particularly from the European Union and wealthy British businessman Richard Branson.
Three further prisoners facing the death penalty for drug offenses had their appeals denied earlier in March.
Prosperous but conservative socially Singapore has among of the strictest drug regulations in the world and has received rising pressure from human rights organizations to abolish the death sentence.
Authorities maintain that death penalty remains an effective deterrent to drug trafficking, contributing to the city-reputation state's as one of the safest in Asia.
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