The Think Centre is organising an online petition campaign against the death penalty in Singapore. Please lend your support. http://www.petitiononline.com/TCaction/petition.html
No to death penalty! When a court wrongly sentences a person to death, the result is irreversible
* Save the life of Shanmugam and those on the death-row. This cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment has to stop. Shanmugam, and his family plead with fellow Singaporeans and the international community to stop all these cruel hangings. None, he adds, knows the grief of these families and the dependents of those who are executed.
* Express our concern as citizens and residents of Singapore that the death penalty is being used inconsistently with the criteria of absolute necessity and proportionality in relation to drug trafficking cases.
* Call on the government to remove the mandatory capital punishment for simple drug possession. Overcoming social problems and bring criminal masterminds to justice is much more effective then hanging those presumed to be traffickers for simple possession of drugs.
Twins Gopalan and Krishnan Murugesu, 14, distributed flyers detailing their fathers Shanmugam’s plight. They plea for help to save their father, Shanmugam Murugesu, from being executed after he was convicted and sentenced to hang last April for drug trafficking. They collected signature for a petition against the execution, saying their father’s death would make them orphans. The petition has been submitted to the president requesting the death sentence be commuted to imprisonment.
Shanmugram Murugesu, a Singaporean, 38, was arrested on the 29 August 2003 at Tuas Checkpoint. A search was conducted on his motorcycle and was found to contain 6 packets of cannabis.
After the trial at the High Court in April 2004, he was convicted as charged and sentenced to suffer death. His appeal against conviction and sentence of death was heard in the Court of Appeal on 26/10/2004. The appeal was dismissed.
26 April 2005, Singapore’s president rejected the plea for clemency. Shanmugams mother appealed for public help to save her son. His twin sons have pleaded with the public to help save their fathers life.
Note: The vigil for Shanmugam on 6 May 2005 at 7 pm has been changed to Furama City Centre Hotel.