Singapore (BLAZETRENDS).- Singapore executed this Friday a citizen of the island for trafficking around 30 grams of heroin.
She is the first woman to be executed in nearly two decades, amid a new uptick in drug-related executions in the city-state.
In addition, according to the NGO Transformative Justice Collective (TJC), she has also been the first woman executed in the Southeast Asian country since 2004 and the fourth person sent to the gallows so far this year, in all cases for drug trafficking crimes.
Saridewi Djamani, a 45-year-old Singaporean, was sentenced to death in July 2018 and was one of two women remaining on Singapore’s death row, according to information provided by the onegé.
On October 6, the Supreme Court of Singapore rejected an appeal by Saridewi’s lawyers, and the process went ahead.
Record executions in 2022
Singapore, one of the countries with the most draconian drug laws in the world, has pushed executions recently.
On Wednesday, a 56-year-old man, also from the Asian city-state, was hanged for trafficking around 50 grams of heroin, and TJC reported on Thursday another execution scheduled for Aug. 3.
In total, the island has executed four prisoners since April, according to NGO calculations, and 15 since March 2022.
The first execution of the year, in April, aroused much criticism, as it was an attempt to traffic marijuana -whose consumption is legal in neighboring countries such as Thailand- and due to doubts about the judicial process, since both the executed person and his entourage affirmpn that he had never seen or touched the drug.
The UN unsuccessfully petitioned Singapore to stop the execution.
The prosperous nation, with one of the highest per capita GDPs on the planet, contemplates the death penalty for a minimum of 500 grams of marijuana trafficking and 15 grams of heroin and uses hanging as a method of execution, in highly opaque procedures.
After a two-year hiatus due to the covid-19 pandemic, Singapore broke execution records last year, hanging 11 prisoners, including a heroin dealer with intellectual disabilities, in just a few months.