Singapore prison authorities should cease withholding letters addressed to death row inmates without giving “clear justification” as to why such a decision must be made, said the Transformative Justice Collective (TJC) on Thursday (22 Apr).
In a Facebook post, TJC stressed that death row prisoners already lead “extremely isolated lives, cut off from society”, on top of grappling with daily anxiety stemming from an unknown execution date.
“They should not be arbitrarily deprived of contact with the outside world,” said TJC.
Referencing its #DearSyed campaign, dedicated to Syed Suhail bin Syed Zin, whose execution was stayed twice last year, TJC said that Mr Syed did not receive any of the approximately 20 letters addressed to him by members of the public as of 3 Apr.
While some of the letters are still in TJC’s possession and will be delivered during family visits, others were posted directly to Mr Syed, the collective said.
Around six of the letters that were posted were rejected by the prison authorities, citing “security issues” as prison management did not know who the letter-writers were, according to Mr Syed.
“While prison authorities are responsible for the administration and security of prisons, this power should be exercised judiciously, and should not be used as a reason to withhold correspondence without clear justification,” said TJC.
TJC also criticised the Prison Service’s “unfair” act of prohibiting such letters to be passed to death row inmates when it has been forwarding inmates’ correspondences with their families and lawyers to the Attorney-General’s Chambers.
In the course of a hearing for pre-action disclosures sought by 22 death row inmates against the Attorney-General (AG) and the Singapore Prison Service (SPS), it was revealed that the AGC had sought access to the private correspondence of 13 of the 22 death row inmates and had received the letters from the SPS.
In dismissing the inmates’ application for pre-action discovery and pre-action interrogatories against the AG, Justice See Kee Oon said in a written judgement on 16 Mar that there is no express provision for pre-action disclosures against the Government in statutory law.
“We urge the Singapore Prison Service to allow the #DearSyed letters—full of goodwill and harmless expressions of best wishes—to reach Syed as soon as possible,” said TJC.
TJC has published some of the letters addressed to Mr Syed on its website. The letters ranged from poems to drawings to descriptions of birds and messages from children.
