Jakarta, 12 July 2017 – The Coalition for the Abolition for the Death Penalty in ASEAN (CADPA) strongly urges the Singaporean government to stop the plan of execution of Malaysian citizen, Prabagaran Srivijayan. Prabagaran’s family has received a letter from the Singaporean authorities informing them that his execution has been scheduled for 14 July 2014.
Prabagaran was convicted on 22 July 2012, after 22.24g of diamorphine, a pure form of heroin, was found in his car at the immigration checkpoint as he tried to enter Singapore. He has always maintained his innocence, claiming that he did not own the car that he had been driving and was not aware of the drugs found in it. Prabagaran was just 24 at the time, a poor migrant worker working in Singapore to support his entire family, and an acquaintance had offered him the car to allow him to get to work on time. That acquaintance has not been found since.
Earlier this year, he filed a leave application for judicial review in the Kuala Lumpur High Court. This was an effort to compel Putrajaya to start legal proceedings for denying their citizen a fair trial against Singapore before an international tribunal. However, the court denied his leave application, following which his lawyers filed an appeal on the matter.
CADPA condemns the failure of the Singaporean authorities to investigate the case properly, or even to call important witnesses such as the defendent’s mother, Eswari. According to her, the authorities were never able to find her son’s fingerprints on the drugs. She also confirmed that Prabagaran is not the owner of the car.
Moreover, Singapore has denied lawyers access to Prabagaran since February. Access to lawyers and to the courts is a fundamental right, which cannot be interfered with.
Sinapan Samydorai, Director of ASEAN Affairs,Think Centre also condemns the imminent execution of Prabagaran Srivijayan. The case of Prabagaran Srivijayan shows the death penalty regime is still as irrefutably flawed as before the amendment in 2012. The Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) has the sole prerogative over a drug courier’s life or death. They alone decide if the accused has provided “substantive assistance” to issue the Certificate of Cooperation (COC). Our judges’ hands are tied when no Certificate of Cooperation (COC) is issued by the prosecutors. It is also most troubling and unfortunate to see that in this case as with past recent executions, most of those sentenced to death are couriers and not highly placed masterminds, unfairly so. The State has failed to put forward any decisive case on whether these executions have successfully disrupted any major syndicate.”
Rafendi Djamin, Indonesia Representative to CADPA condemns the punitive culture in which execution becomes a state sponsored-torture, especially for the family of the death row inmate.
CADPA is a network of human rights activists and right to life advocates from ASEAN member countries that has been at the forefront of campaign for the abolition of the death penalty in Southeast Asia. The death penalty is irreversible. Once it is carried out, a wrongful execution is an injustice that can never be rectified. End crime, not life.
For more on this case, see the short video: http://www.endcrimenotlife.com/library/videos/madam-eswaris-story
