Global News Podcast - Bonus: The Global Story - Does Singapore's death penalty deter drug crime?

Episode Date: November 17, 2024

Singapore has some of the harshest drug laws in the world and the government. Trafficking illegal narcotics can result in decades in prison and even a death sentence. But do they really deter drug crimes?The Global Story brings you trusted insights from BBC journalists worldwide, one big story every weekday, making sense of the news with our experts around the world.For more, go to bbcworldservice.com/globalstory or search for The Global Story wherever you got this podcast.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. How are we going to unravel this all? From the BBC World Service, this is World of Secrets, season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your pods and be sure to subscribe so you don't miss a single episode. Here's my colleague Katya Adler.

Singapore has some of the harshest drug laws in the world. Penalties for trafficking illegal narcotics include decades in prison, even a death sentence. Nobody can take one's life except for God. That's why I believe in that. Citizens of Singapore face consequences even if they're found to have consumed drugs abroad. The government argues this zero tolerance policy, including for cannabis, is an effective deterrent. If you can convince me or anyone can convince me that removing death penalties saves more lives, we will do it tomorrow. But is it really? And should the death penalty be involved? With me today is Linda Presley, a journalist who makes radio programs and documentaries

for the BBC. Hello Linda. Hi, Kat here. You've worked for the BBC for many years and you've made documentaries all over the world. Now you do have an interest in stories around drugs, but Singapore, I mean, Latin America is something that springs to mind. When did you first get interested in Singapore? Well, I kind of follow drug stories because I have, as you say, done a lot of stories Latin America is something that springs to mind. When did you first get interested in Singapore? Well, I kind of follow drug stories because I have, as you say, done a lot of stories about drugs fentanyl in the US and Mexico, Yabba in Bangladesh, First Nations communities

in Canada, Oxycontin, opioid crisis. But I suppose what really crossed my desk last year was a story about the death penalty being given to somebody in Singapore for the trafficking of marijuana. And I thought, Whoa, that's interesting. On one side of the world, the United States, you've got so many states that have legalized marijuana. And here you've got Singapore imposing the death penalty for the trafficking of marijuana. So that stayed with me. Singapore in general has some of the harshest drug laws in the world. Can you sort of run us through those laws? What is illegal? Because as you say, we see more and more countries

and more and more US states legalizing the personal use of cannabis. What is the state of affairs in Singapore? Well, what is illegal? Pretty much everything. So it's illegal for anybody to take drugs in Singapore. But it's also, interestingly, illegal for any Singaporean to take a drug overseas, i.e. not in Singapore territory. And if a Singaporean comes back to Changi Airport and they're drug tested and they have found to have drugs in their system, they're not going home. and they're drug tested and they have found to have drugs in their system, they're not going home. Yeah, so once we open it up, we'll swap the cheeks or the tongue. The suspect can choose to do it himself or we'll do it for him if he needs assistance.

And then we'll run the test and it will tell us whether it's positive or negative. How long does that take? It takes about 10 minutes. But this also applies to foreigners as well. So if you arrive as a foreigner in Singapore and you happen to be drug tested, also you're not going to your hotel, you will be taken. Perhaps you'll be deported, you won't have to go into drug rehabilitation. But Singapore takes this immensely, immensely seriously.

Yes, as you say, the death penalty exists. Does that include personal use? I mean, what happens if you're caught, you've explained the airport process, but if you're in Singapore already and you are caught with drugs on you or taking drugs, what is the process? I mean, is there like an immediate sentence? Well, it depends. If you're personally taking drugs, so you're puffing away on marijuana and you're caught doing that, that's one thing. But the thing about the way that the law works in Singapore is that it depends how much drugs you have. So there's a presumption of trafficking kicks in. If you have two grams of heroin, 15 grams of cannabis, three grams of cocaine. There's a presumption of trafficking.

And in Singapore, under Singapore law, trafficking is the most serious offence and the way that the law is drawn is really broad. So if you sell, give, deliver, administer, transport, distribute drugs, that's trafficking, regardless of how much you have. And then the mandatory death penalty kicks in if you have higher quantities. So 15 grams of heroin, 30 grams of cocaine, 500 grams of cannabis. So there's two things. There's are you a drug user or are you seen to be somebody who is trafficking or committing some other kind of drug related offence? And what makes your reporting so powerful is the people you speak to. You spoke to a

woman called Kim. Yeah, Kim kind of came my way from a contact of a contact. She was awaiting sentencing when I was in Singapore. And she's a kind of bubbly 20-something young professional. Things have gone slightly awry in her life. She's having problems at home, her family. Love affairs are not quite working out, perhaps, in the way that she would have liked them to. And she started to use cannabis in a way

that some people might use alcohol, self-medication, but just to feel a bit calmer and more relaxed. Many young Singaporeans will have used cannabis at least once or twice, but I was in a small group of regular cannabis users. And then one of her friends said, well, actually you've got a regular supplier and my suppliers kind of got underground. I can't get any, can you get some for me? And she said, yeah, I can do that.

So what she did was she sourced the marijuana, gave it to her friend. She wasn't making any money. She told me on this, it was just, she was the kind of middle woman. And then one of the friends that she was doing this for got caught. And then another was picked up and they go through people's phones. And then she was fingered for this and she was charged for trafficking. And this was a very shocking thing for this young woman. I mean, in Singapore, everybody knows how serious trafficking is.

What Kim told me was that she didn't realise that what she was doing was trafficking. She was thinking about huge quantities of drugs coming across the causeway. She wasn't thinking about, okay, giving a bit of marijuana to one of her mates was also classed as trafficking in Singapore. I was wrecked with horror. I've heard of friends of friends getting caught for consumption but to have charges of drug trafficking leveled at me? That was just overwhelming. Complete and utter fear of what is going to pan out for me. And so she was looking at a sentence she told me up to 20 years. Since I got back from Singapore, she's been sentenced, she's now in prison and she got a sentence of five years. So she

was lucky. And we'll come back to the government's defense of its own policy and to the use of the death penalty a little bit later in this episode. But first of all, I want to start right at the beginning of the rung, if you like, of drug use, when it's for personal drug use. Even then, there's mandatory drug rehabilitation, right? Yeah. And I realized that Singapore had this system, which I hadn't heard of at all. So you're caught taking a drug, like I say, you're not going home. So you are risk-assessed, high, medium or low risk assessment. And if you're assessed as being high or medium risk of taking a drug again, then you will

be taken to the drug rehabilitation centre. When you visited the drug rehabilitation centre, how did it seem to you? Were you surprised by how it was? I mean, take us there. Well, I expect you've been into quite a lot of prisons in your working career at Katia, as I have as well. So this was a prison by any other name. It's incarceration. There's a control room. There's barbed wire.

Prisoners are dressed identically. They're sleeping seven to eight to a cell. They're sleeping on a concrete floor on a very thin rush mat. There are two toilets within the cell. They are expected to sit in this box, this yellow box over here. That's where the CCTV will be able to capture their images. There are no beds? There are no beds in any of our prisons,

only in our medical wards. But this is drug rehabilitation. It's not prison. So, whilst it is rehabilitation, it is still a very deterrent regime. So, while we rehabilitate you, we also want you to remember that it's not an offence that you should repeat. The difference, I think, in terms of what you see in the drug rehabilitation centre

and what I've seen on videos of prison in Singapore, is the way that the prisoners spend their time. So, in the DRC, they are spending up to six hours a day in psychology based programs, CBT therapy, group therapy, and they're talking about the challenges that drugs present them with, and how they're going to try and write this in their lives, you know, how they're going to be able to live their lives without drugs. This is the art room. Oh, show me the art. Oh.

So art is a popular activity here. It rehabilitates. It's great because you can express yourself throughout that you normally wouldn't be able to through words. And Singapore has a lot of trained psychologists, trained addiction therapists. So that, I think, is the main difference between the DRC and prison in Singapore. You spoke to several people who'd gone through the treatment as you described. What did you hear Jack, for example, a meth user in his late 20s, what did he tell you?

This was his second time in the drug rehabilitation center. Now, you know, bear in mind that the people who were chosen to speak to me were people who were chosen by Singapore's prison authorities. But I did feel that, you know, bear in mind that the people who were chosen to speak to me were people who were chosen by Singapore's prison authorities. But I did feel that, you know, the two men I spoke to, their experiences were very authentic, what I know about kind of meth use. So basically, Jack had been picked up, he'd relapsed, he'd been in the DRC before. He had a love affair that had gone very, very wrong. He was heartbroken, you know, deeply disappointed. He relapsed, you know, deeply disappointed. He relapsed and then he had a psychotic episode because he was using methamphetamine and he

was picked up by the police. And what he did say to me was that this time he had been through all those psychology programs last time, but they hadn't really touched the sides. So he said this time he was paying attention and he didn't want to say that he was never going to come back but he was really going to try and stay on this road to sobriety. So in hindsight when I think about my first sentence, I felt that I never actually did the work. Coming back here, although being away from family, being away from friends is painful, coming back here, I really needed to understand,

to learn, to live a better life. So I cannot say that I will not come back, but I will do whatever it takes to stay on this journey of sobriety. We know how difficult it is for people to stop drugs. I mean, I think that the question in Singapore is whether this is one size fits all. It's a sledgehammer. So whether you're a casual weekend drug user, as so many millions of people are around the world, or whether you really have a problem

where your life is spiraling out of control and you might need some kind of emergency help, Singapore doesn't distinguish between those two. And as far as these rehabilitation centers are concerned, as you say, Jack was there for the second time. Did you see evidence that what the Singaporean authorities would describe as this tough love is effective? Well, I talked to some drug users outside and actually a couple of them, one in particular said that actually that his stay in the drug rehabilitation centre really just came at the right time for him. He was trying so hard to stop

his use of methamphetamine and ecstasy and he was failing. So when he was picked up, he said that actually that gave him the space, that gave him the months that he needed to be able to kind of retune himself. As you say, if you are a regular drug user, if you have a real habit, it is infamously difficult to kick. But once people leave these rehabilitation centers in Singapore, the government is very much watching, it's still Big Brother watching you. How does the supervision continue? And is it in every case? It's in most cases, I think. I think tags, people will put on electronic tags and so they will have an agreed way they can go to

work, where they're allowed to be. So you know the authorities can see at any moment where those people are in the city. That's the first thing, electronic tagging. And then urine testing. You know they've got this kind of state-of-the-art absolutely incredible kind of urine testing centre where you go in a bit like going through airport security. The technology that you see here is actually the first of its kind in the world. So from the moment somebody pees in the urinal until getting the test result, how long does that take? It takes an average of five to seven minutes.

And during that time the person who's urinated stays in the cubicle? Yes, but we have also prepared videos for him to watch. Mr Bean, for example. Mr Bean! So it's not so boring. It takes six or seven minutes for the test to come through and then when the light goes green, you're alright. You come out, off you jolly well go.

If the light's red, again, you're not going home. So we've looked at Singapore's harsh drug laws, the compulsory rehabilitation centres. Next, I'd like to find out how effective the country's zero tolerance policy towards drugs really is. Also, we'll hear about the ultimate punishment for drug crimes, the death penalty. Witness the stories that have shaped our world. On the launch pad, in the dawn light, a towering symbol of an ambitious nation. Three, two, one. The whole of India was watching. Told by the people who were there.

I still don't regret that I was part of the Rolls-Royce Revolution. I was a witness of very exciting days. Witness History, from the BBC World Service. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This is The Global Story. We bring you one big international story in detail five days a week. Follow or subscribe wherever you listen. With me today is Linda Presley. Linda, in Singapore, zero tolerance is something you hear a lot. Zero tolerance about corruption, all sorts of things. It is really proud of its zero tolerance drug policy, but this does include the death penalty.

How popular is that amongst Singaporeans? Well, I think that most studies say that actually most Singaporeans support it. Now in my forays out in Singapore when I kind of wasn't working in coffee bars and restaurants and things, I did always ask people about it. Most people I spoke to, you know, supported the death penalty for trafficking. They thought that users should be left alone. And one of the key things for users actually is that they don't get a criminal record. That's really important to say. There was one study that was done relatively recently. And the thing is that when you drill down, it seems people are less

committed to a mandatory death penalty. They think that judges in the courts should be able to decide if somebody is hanged or not. Although I've stayed clean for many years, I know that the addiction has not left me yet. The very minute I let my guards down would be the start of my downfall. Georgie Hedges Bruce, he's quite an incredible man and he's rebuilt his life, having been involved in crime and drugs for many, many years. And Bruce does a lot of outreach work. He talks in schools and community groups and he advocates for Singapore's position. He says that Singapore would not be where it is in the world if it

wasn't for the fact that it had this really harsh zero tolerance attitude to drugs. It is this rules, regulations and law that allows our country to remain safe. Singapore has a zero tolerance drug policy. And it is with this law that Singapore is what it is today. You know, my daughter could go out at 3 a.m. in the morning and I wouldn't feel fearful that she might get hurt. I think our listeners won't be surprised to hear that not everyone agrees with Bruce. Nazira was somebody you spoke to, her brother was executed, wasn't he, for involvement in drugs? Yeah, he was. Nazire was executed for heroin offenses. I mean, the thing to say about

Nazira is that this happened in 2022 and she is still heartbroken, absolutely heartbroken. Her brother had become a heroin addict very early on. 14 years old, he was taking drugs. She comes from a family of 10. Their father had died early. My brother mixed with wrong company at the age of 14. He hooked to drugs. In his life, he's out of prison

for petty crime, that kind of thing. So there is a rehabilitation by the government, but it doesn't work on him. So he went in and out of rehabilitation? He went out of this jail for three quarters of his life. But there are a couple of things that she's still really, really upset about. The first thing is that she couldn't touch him. She could never touch him until he was a corpse.

Even though the family were allowed to see him much more in the week before he died, he wasn't huggable. So that has stayed with her. And the other thing that has stayed with her is that the co-defendant in his case was actually given a life sentence and wasn't sentenced to death. And that, you know, she feels very, very badly still. Nobody can take one's life except for God. That's why I believe in that. So you give him a life sentence, that's deterrent enough to punish them. So if you put life sentence, at least I can see my brother every now and then. How often though is the death penalty meted out? Is it more a threat than a reality?

No, there are perhaps 50 people on death row. We don't know exactly. This is what the Transformative Justice Collective, a local NGO in Singapore estimates. I asked the Singaporean government this, could they tell me how many? They couldn't. We surmise that perhaps most of those people are on death row for drug-related activity. And we know that since 2022, 21 people have been hanged in Singapore, and 20 of those are for drug-related offences. And how common is that? You know, as we've said, you've done a lot of reports and investigations into drug policy and, you know, drug use, drug crime, you know, in various parts of the world.

How common is the use of governments of the death penalty? Well, Singapore keeps company with Iran, China, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait. Those are countries that we know have recently executed people for drug- offences. And then there's probably Vietnam and North Korea too. But of course, we don't know the details of what happens there. And where does the government fit in as far as authoritarianism? I mean, how easy is it in Singapore to speak out about the death penalty if you disagree with it? It's difficult, I think. I interviewed Kirsten Han, who's one of the members of the Transformative

Justice Collective. And, you know, various obstacles are put in the way of an NGO like Transformative Justice Collective in getting their message out. One of the things that recently happened was that they were planning an exhibition on the history of the death penalty in Singapore, but the government refused to give them a license for that, so they had to cancel it. But also I should say, I think that the kind of number of activists in Singapore, there's a tiny number of activists. And when there were protests in 2022, when the executions resumed, you know, I saw pictures of videos and in the park there's two, three

hundred people, four hundred people. Now, there might well be far more Singaporeans who are against the death penalty. We don't know. But the number of activists and the number of people willing to take this on as an issue is very small. Obviously, due diligence, as we call it, the BBC. If there are implicit criticisms made of a system, then we go to the horse's mouth. In this case, the Singaporean government staunched defenders unsurprisingly of their zero tolerance policy to drugs. You spoke to the Minister for Home Affairs and Law, didn't you? Yes, I did. And he gave me a lot of his time and he answered all my questions.

The main argument that the government has in favour of the death penalty is deterrence. And they say that they have good evidence to suggest that by Singapore keeping the death penalty on its books, it deters people from trafficking drugs into Singapore. If you can convince me or anyone can convince me that removing death penalties saves more lives, we will do it tomorrow. The real issue is what is in the interests of Singaporeans and does it save more lives than it takes away? But the finality of this punishment sits easily with you, does it?

Not at all. It sits very badly because taking away life is not something that any of us can be sanguine about but our individual actions should be separated from our duty as policymakers acting for the benefit of the community as a whole. One of the things they point to is they've done a study and I think I think 83 or 86% of the people that they asked in the region, they don't say in which cities they did this. I'm assuming perhaps in Malaysia and other countries in the region.

They asked people whether they thought that the fact that the death penalty existed in Singapore was more of a deterrence than life imprisonment and those people said yes. Well, in the course of my research for this programme, I looked quite a lot at deterrence and the theory of deterrence. And the studies that have been done on deterrence are from the United States and they're always about homicide and the death penalty. And actually, the studies that I looked at showed that when the death penalty disappeared, the number of homicides actually didn't go up. So I mean, I think that there are problems with the theory of deterrence and how deterrence

works, but the government actually really believes it and thinks that it's an absolutely credible reason. And perhaps they're right. It's quite clear that there would be some opponents anyway, even if publicly they're silent in Singapore, but also outside the country of the use of the death penalty. What about the drug rehabilitation centers we spoke about, which are pretty harsh? Are there critics of those as well? Yes, again, I mean, it's mostly the same NGOs who are involved in critiquing the use of

the death penalty in Singapore. But the transformative justice collective, Kirsten Han, who I mean, it's mostly the same NGOs who are involved in critiquing the use of the death penalty in Singapore. But the transformative justice collective, Kirsten Han, who I met, she did tell me how they have a lot of testimony. People have been through the system and people have been traumatized by it. I mean, imagine, you know, there you are with your friends, you're in a party, suddenly there's a raid, you happen to be smoking marijuana, you're taken off, you're not going home, you'll be held and then you'll be kind of drug tested again the next day and then you'll go off to the drug rehabilitation centre. And she said some people

have been very traumatised by that and she talked about how one person had said that it was like being kidnapped. You know, they couldn't kind of make the calls that they wanted to make to loved ones, family, etc. to say what had happened to them. So the thing about this system in Singapore is that it just treats everybody the same. It is a sledgehammer. Does it work? Well, they say that three out of 10 come back as repeat drug offenders. So as Karen Lee, one of the officers told me, that means that seven are out there, you know, they're fulfilling their lives

as Singaporean citizens. I mean, the problem with that kind of statistic, three in 10 will come back, so seven remain drug-free. We're not really comparing like with like. So in the UK, for example, the National Institute on Drug Abuse, they suggest relapse rates of between 40 and 60% after somebody's had treatment. But of course in Singapore, it's compulsory. So there's nothing to compare it to, you know, so it's

tricky. And also, Linda, I don't know if I, please correct me if I'm wrong, but I got the sense in your reporting that possibly you went to Singapore investigating what seemed like a really harsh punitive regime, this zero drugs policy, but some of it actually ended up persuading you. I'm not sure if I'm correct, but definitely you do talk about wraparound care, which is something that the UK doesn't have. I mean, the government would say it doesn't have the money for, but the support around drug addicts as well as punishment. Yeah, I thought that was really impressive. Very, very impressive. I mean, most people

who leave the drug rehab centre, you know, the aim is that they will have a job to go to. You know, a couple of months before they're going to leave, the family comes in, they have family counselling sessions. Once they leave there are drop-in centres and so once they leave they'll be mandated to carry on particular counselling, there'll be group therapy, there are peer groups that they can join. You know there's all kinds of things that they can get involved in and there's all kinds of agencies that they can actually approach in the community if they're struggling. They've got a system of halfway houses. I met one young woman who had been in the the DRC a number of times and in the halfway house it was only the last time

she's now kind of in her 30s, it's only the last time that she'd actually managed to kind of get to grips with what her trigger was and what she found out was that when she was in that halfway house and they went to do some voluntary work, I think it was in a blind school, she said, she said she got the same buzz from doing that voluntary work as she did from taking drugs. And that really made her think. So now she's kind of, she's out actually now, and she's reconnecting with her family. She's reconnecting with her teenage son who was hugely angry with her. And when she actually left the halfway house, her employer, who she's remained with, gave her a cake and a card and they all clapped her at work. And she said nobody had ever

done anything like that for her before, because she'd finished her sentence basically, and she's out and she's free and she's living her life. Linda Presley, thank you very much indeed for your time. Thanks very much for having me. And thanks so much to you for listening. If you want to get in touch with us, you can email us at theglobalstoryatbbc.com. Wherever you're listening in the world, this has been The Global Story. Thanks for having us in your headphones. Goodbye. to subscribe or follow. We'll have another edition of the Global News podcast later.

Until then, goodbye. When we left, there was this wonderful feeling, but it was only the beginning of a nightmare. This is a story that started with a job advert, a yacht owner looking for a crew to sell his recently renovated boat from Brazil to Europe. For me, it was going to be a great adventure and an opportunity to gain a lot of experience. But when police raided the vessel and discovered drugs... Cocaine.

Hidden under one of the beds. It can't be. ...a key suspect was miles away. Everything revolved around him. Who's the boss? A British guy. Fox. Fox. This is World of Secrets from the BBC World Service, season five, Finding Mr. Fox.

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