I will now move on to deal with attempts by some to undermine our approach. The evidence for our approach is compelling. People can see what is happening around the world, which is why I took some time to explain country by country some of the countries – first-world; South America; the US; this region.
Despite that, in recent years, there has been a small group of people who attempt to mislead the public with misinformation on drug traffickers and the death penalty. They seek to evoke sympathy by presenting an image of an unfair criminal justice system stacked against drug traffickers. They publish videos, pictures, stories from the traffickers' childhood, sharing interviews with family members. He has got a brother; he has got a sister; he has a child; he had a childhood. Poor guy. And portraying the trafficker as a victim of unfortunate circumstances. He did not have money and therefore, he trafficked in drugs.
But they leave out the facts of the cases. They leave out the accounting of the harms caused to the victims of the traffickers. They glorify the trafficker. They do not give any voice to the victims, the number of lives lost or wrecked by drugs; and the reason the traffickers were trafficking the drugs in the first place, which is to make money. The victims also have wives, sisters, children, parents. All of these people will also suffer.
If you face financial difficulties, if you need money, get a job. You do not have to traffic in drugs to make money.
Earlier, I recounted some stories of drug abuse overseas. We have seen shocking stories in Singapore too. Early last year, a man was convicted of committing incest with his 17-year-old daughter after sharing methamphetamine (meth) with her. She became reliant on him for sustaining her addiction and did not come forward with the truth for months.
In another case last year, a 31-year-old man: he had consumed various drugs, went on to drive under the influence of drugs, crashed his rental car into a public bus, killed himself; injured seven other passengers in the bus.
The next slide shows photos of a crime scene, where a man who was under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), brutally stabbed his own mother and punched his grandmother to death. Drug abuse is not victimless and all of these are caused by the drug traffickers, whom people glorify.
The next slide shows a heartbreaking case where a life was taken even before the victim had any voice of her own. The remains of a two-and-a-half-year-old girl. She was assaulted to death by her own father, who was a meth abuser. The man burnt the body and hid it in a pot to conceal his crime.
Several studies have shown that the harms of drugs are far-reaching into the next generation. A recent literature review by the KK Women's and Children's Hospital, found that drug abuse by pregnant women can cause serious harms to the foetus. Their babies could be born with congenital defects, such as respiratory distress syndrome or smaller brain matter. The newborns may also suffer from drug withdrawal, increased risk of disease and even infant death.
A 2020 study by the Ministry of Social and Family Development found that children whose parents had committed drug offences, were five times more likely than other children to unfortunately come into contact with the criminal justice system in the future.
But these facts and images are usually missing from the speeches, posts of those who campaign against the death penalty. Instead, there are baseless allegations, one-sided claims and half-truths. These baseless allegations are also made in relation to prisoners awaiting capital punishment – I will call them PACPs. They cast doubt on the process, the legal process. They cast doubt on the convictions and the sentences.
For instance, in May 2023 last year, Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act, or POFMA, directions were issued against 10 social media posts and two online articles for containing false statements about a capital sentence meted out by the Courts. Five parties – Transformative Justice Collective, The Online Citizen Asia, Andrew Loh, Kirsten Han, M Ravi – continued to make false statements alleging that a PACP was denied an interpreter during the recording of his statement. This, despite the Court's clear statement to the contrary – a blatant, false attack on the criminal justice system.
Some of these activists have helped to file unmeritorious legal applications on behalf of convicted drug traffickers. Applications are often filed at the last minute and those who help with these applications often hide behind the PACPs and their families. In one case, there were seven post-appeal applications, all dismissed by the Courts because they were all without merit. Seven, one after the other, no basis, after the substantive appeal was dismissed. In the seventh post-appeal application, the correspondent's email address – [email protected] – was provided by a family member to the Court.
This obviously does not belong to the family, but to perhaps an anti-death penalty activist. The Court dismissed that application, said it was a blatant and ill-disguised application to disrupt the carrying out of the sentence. In other words, a clear abuse of the process.
The person, with the email account by the name of Kirsten Han, if she was involved, was helping in the abuse of process.
Based on what the Court said, you can see what the persons who were assisting in the applications were trying to do.
As a result of many such applications today, we have PACPs whose sentences have not been carried out, despite their cases being decided more than a decade ago.
One such PACP is Iskandar bin Rahmat. He is not a drug trafficker, but his applications are somewhat illustrative of the point I am making. He killed a father and son – brutal murders. I think people remember them as the “Kovan double murder case” – a 67-year-old father and a 42-year-old son. In fact, one of the victims was even dragged almost one kilometre along Upper Serangoon Road. And he did it for money. He was sentenced to capital punishment on 4 December 2015 by the High Court. His appeal was dismissed by the Court of Appeal in February 2017, seven years ago. Since then, he has filed nine applications. [Please refer to "Clarification by Minister for Home Affairs", Official Report, 08 May 2024, Vol 95, Issue 136, Correction By Written Statement section.] Some of them are still ongoing and I make no comment whatsoever about those which are currently before the Courts. Those that have been dealt with, have all been dismissed. And quite clearly, unmeritorious and an abuse of process.
So, to deal better with this situation, to deal better with unmeritorious applications being filed at the very last minute before capital punishment is carried out, this House passed an Act, the Post-appeal Applications in Capital Cases Act, or PACC. That Act will come into force very soon, within a few weeks. The Act will seek to safeguard the administration of justice and the rule of law. It introduces new requirements to reduce potential delays to proceedings.
For example, if the PACP had already had his or her sentence upheld by the Court of Appeal, then he or she will be required to apply for permission to make a PACC application. There will be a streamlined procedure under which only the Court of Appeal may hear PACC applications and grant a stay of execution. As part of the application, the person will be required to state the grounds of the application and the reasons for not filing the application earlier.
But even before the law has come into force, a post-appeal application was filed by 36 PACPs in September last year to challenge the constitutionality of that law. The application was dismissed by the Court of Appeal recently. The Court of Appeal said the PACPs had no standing to bring such a challenge and the fact that such a challenge has been brought at all, spoke only to the PACPs' abuse of the process of the Courts.
Just one day after the appeal was dismissed by the Courts, 36 PACPs, of whom 34 were the same parties involved in earlier post-appeal applications, filed another post-appeal application, relying now on some other matter. I make no comment on the merits of those current applications. My comments about unmeritorious applications, abuse of process, all other similar comments, apply only to applications which have been determined by the Courts and dismissed. And I rely on what the Courts themselves have said.
This is not the first time that large groups of PACPs have jointly filed applications to the Court, after all avenues of appeal and clemency have been exhausted. In the past few years, there were at least five other such jointly filed applications, each involving more than 10 PACPs. The PACC Act, when it comes into force, will deal with many such applications.
We are now considering, what else needs to be done to make sure that this new legislation can be properly supported. We will come back to the House, if necessary. And I wish to make it clear to Members and Singaporeans: be assured, we will take all necessary steps to ensure that this sort of abuse of process is dealt with.
