Thank you fellow supporters, for getting us to 84K signatures!
On this day, the Singapore government has finally broken its silence. In response to the Malaysian government's pleas for leniency, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan conveyed to their Malaysian counterparts that Nagaenthran has been accorded full due process under the law. Nagaenthran’s lawyer N Surendran has since refuted the Singapore government’s claims, maintaining that procedural accommodations for an intellectually challenged person was not provided from the moment of Nagaenthran's arrest to the conclusion of the trial. However, Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin has told reporters that Malaysia “cannot interfere in terms of the affairs and legal processes in Singapore”, adding that Malaysia respects Singapore’s legal process.
This evening, drug users, ex-drug users, and their loved ones released an extremely powerful and enlightening joint statement in solidarity with Nagaenthran. In the letter, they elucidate the adverse conditions and afflictions they face which lead them towards using and dealing drugs, emphasising the need for rehabilitative rather than punitive measures:
“For many of us, drugs become a way to cope with violence, illness, poverty, discrimination, broken relationships that we struggled with before we started using. Drugs help us cope in ways that institutions and the system cannot, or refuse to address.
Participating in the drug trade eventually becomes a way for many of us experiencing addiction to sustain our use amid poverty … While some of us participate in the trade voluntarily, others are coerced, exploited and manipulated into doing so. Given a choice, do you think we’d risk our lives if our lives weren’t already at risk? So simply saying that drugs destroy lives is a distortion of our lived experiences - undermining the trauma and injustices that many of us face prior to drug use and trafficking.”
“How has your compassion for us, as children of circumstance, turned into disgust, the moment we are criminalised for trying to get by? It is a pointed reminder that at this moment, our country views capital punishment as a more effective way of deterring drug use, than addressing the inequities and injustices that led to our own use and participation in the drug trade in the first place. We need compassionate leaders who can make courageous decisions around the changes we need to protect the most vulnerable in our society. How many more vulnerable lives do we need to sacrifice ... before we eventually get there?
We and our families need systems of care. We need healthcare, rehabilitation, harm-reduction, social and community support. Not more violence in our lives from the system that’s meant to protect us. Systems like the Drug Rehabilitation Centre and Community Rehabilitation Centre are in fact prisons by another name. These institutions do more to punish, humiliate, isolate and traumatise users, than offer resources, connection and agency over their own healing. We don’t just need a second chance, we need a chance to live our lives beyond pain and trauma. Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam deserves this chance as well.”
“Don't kill Nagaenthran in our name, It doesn’t protect us and our families. Nothing about us, without us.”
(Please read the full statement here.)
Nam, an ex-drug courier who spoke during a Facebook livestream event organised by Transformative Justice Collective, reiterated the points brought up in the letter. Ram highlighted the ineffectiveness of government rehabilitation programs and harsh punishments, which only serve to exacerbate the feelings of isolation and alienation experienced by drug users, and fail to deter drug couriers from participating in the drug trade. Furthermore, he explained how drug kingpins groom vulnerable and impoverished people who lack social support into trusting and idolising them. Ram informs us that the drug lords do not care about the conviction and sentencing of their drug couriers, as there is always a supply of poor people for them to exploit and sacrifice. Most significantly, Ram emphasised the importance of providing community, meaning, purpose and opportunities to drug addicts, so that they no longer need to be dependent on drugs.
Recently, our petition has gathered new supporters from Australia. Thank you, Australians, for your compassion and humanity! We deeply appreciate your show of solidarity. However, the signatures coming in from Singapore and Malaysia have come to a standstill over the past few days. Let’s continue to advocate relentlessly for Nagaenthran and his family, as well as encourage our friends and family to be involved in our campaign to #SaveNagaenthran. Our silence is complicity.
"These people whom we want to hang, are people who can be reformed, who could be made valuable assets. These are our brothers and sisters, our flesh and blood. They are not subspecies, and it is not necessary to kill them in order to prevent others from doing the same. Killing them is to cheapen life and when the state cheapens life, the people cannot be blamed for following suit." - David Marshall, Former Chief Minister of Singapore
"Incarceration is also limited as a tool because it treats violence as a problem of ‘dangerous’ individuals and not as a problem of social context and history. Most violence is not just a matter of individual pathology - it is created. Poverty drives violence. Inequity drives violence. Shame and isolation drives violence. And like so many conditions known all too well to public health professionals, violence itself drives violence.” - Danielle Sered