Today, several news outlets from Malaysia, India, Bangkok and Thailand have released articles detailing the pleas of Sarmila, Nagaenthran’s oldest sister, for Nagaenthran to be given a “second chance". Despite the fact that Nagaenthran has already lost a series of appeals, his family has not given up. “We hope the Singapore government will spare his life … He is suffering from an intellectual disability,” the 35-year-old  conveyed in an interview Sunday from the family home in Tanjung Rambutan in Perak.

“All our family members are holding prayers for his life to be spared,” said the 35-year-old housewife, who is ethnic Indian and a member of the Hindu minority in mostly Muslim Malaysia. “I believe in miracles … With God’s grace, a miracle will happen.”

After more than a decade, Sarmila still struggles to accept that her brother is a convicted drug smuggler, and still has fond memories of playing childhood games with him. He was a “lovable person. He was very caring”, she recollects. During more than a decade behind bars, Nagaenthran developed a passion for arts and crafts, making cards for his family back home to mark occasions such as Mother’s Day.

His sister also believes he was coerced into drug smuggling, as he was “timid and easily influenced by others”. During recent prison visits, relatives have found Nagaenthran “erratic and depressed”, according to Sarmila. “He knows he is going to be hanged but… he says he wants to come home and take care of his mother,” she said. 

Fighting back tears as she clutched a photo of Nagaenthran as a child, she pleaded: “I want my brother to come home.”

In response to the Singapore government’s claims that Nagaenthran was awarded “full due process,” Rights group Lawyers for Liberty (LFL) have countered that Nagaenthran was in fact denied due process from day one, as Singapore at the time had no procedures to accommodate his disabilities.

LFL adviser N Surendran, who is representing Nagaenthran’s family, explained that due process for a person like Nagaenthran must include accommodations and specific procedures in the criminal justice system that take into account his disabilities and make crucial adjustments for it. 

“If treated like any other defendant with normal mental abilities, Nagaenthran would not have been accorded a fair trial … But this is precisely what transpired: Nagaenthran was dealt with like any normal suspect or accused person,” Surendran informs us.

Surendran has also criticised the Singapore government’s statements as being “false, callous and untenable”.“It was this fact that a person with such mental disabilities was to be hanged that triggered the worldwide condemnation we have seen in recent weeks,” he emphasised. “To say that ‘due process’ has been granted to a person with Nagaenthran’s mental disabilities means nothing at all.” 

Further, Surendran contends that police interrogations and statements were recorded, and used against Nagaenthran in court. ​​Reminding Singapore again of its obligation as a state part to the UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), he said that granting Nagaenthran clemency would be the only response Singapore could make that would be consistent with the CRPD as well as its own constitution.

Journalist Surekha Yadav has also released an opinion piece in Malay Mail on the death penalty in Singapore. According to her, Singapore has long operated a zero-tolerance policy on drugs, and has historically executed hundreds of drug traffickers with fairly limited public criticism. 

“As a very poor young man with low intellectual capacity, it seems likely that Nagaenthran was at most a very low level pawn in whatever drug smuggling operation he was part of So there have been questions about the need to impose the death sentence in his case,” she opines. 

“Singapore is one of only a handful of developed nations to carry out death sentences along with the USA, and Japan. South Korea has effectively suspended the practice and low-crime Hong Kong, long a point of comparison for Singapore, abolished the death penalty in 1993.”

“If there is a case for execution here, surely it should be made against the higher-level members of this smuggling ring. In general, the bar for courts and the state to take a person’s life should be very high. These are all ultimately fallible institutions; no one and nothing gets it right 100 per cent of the time and the death penalty is irreversible,” Sukha concludes 

Similarly, Straits Times released an opinion piece highlighting the ineffectiveness of the death penalty as a deterrent. University student Zenith Wong opines that “calling death a deterrent assumes that all or most potential criminals will feel that losing their opportunity to continue living is a worse punishment than imprisonment.”

“Offenders may be driven to crime because of a lack of regard for the risks involved and a lack of important things at stake for them. This might stem from a lack of satisfaction with their lives before the crime. So death would seem a lighter punishment than imprisonment, since it would just mean leaving a life which they felt they had little stake in anyway,” he writes.

Alongside these opinion pieces, numerous international news outlets have shined a spotlight on the death penalty in Singapore. In an article by Al Jazeera, Executive Coordinator of the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network, Dobby Chew, highlights the ineffectiveness of the death penalty in deterring crime syndicates, arguing that the death sentence “punishes small players in a much larger game.”

“Drug trafficking is still as prevalent in the region and Singapore is no different. Most of the executions witnessed over the years have largely been mules or trafficking in relatively minor quantities,” Dobby commented. “The syndicates behind the drug trade are still very much present and in operation even with multiple executions over the years.”

By the same token, Human Rights Commission of Malaysia, Suhakam, has urged Singapore to declare a moratorium on the death penalty, in order to demonstrate respect for human dignity and rights. In an article by The Sun Daily, Suhakam reiterates that the mandatory imposition of the death penalty violates the basic right to life as enshrined in international human rights laws, as it constitutes an arbitrary deprivation of life.

Suhakam also believes that capital punishment “denies judges the possibility of considering the context of the offence or the characteristics of each individual offender.” He further emphasises that the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) makes exception for the imposition of the death penalty only for the "most serious" crimes, and drug offences fail to meet this threshold.

A previous article by the SBS News has similarly called into question the effectiveness and morality of Singapore’s notoriously draconian Misuse of Drugs Act, which stipulates that trafficking of more than 15 grams of heroin or 500 grams of cannabis is punishable by death

Campaigning efforts have appeared to slow down, and the number of signatures has stagnated at 85K. Let’s continue to honour the life of Nagaenthran and his family, by persevering in our fight to #SaveNagaenthran and advocating for his life till the very end. As long as his his family have not lost hope, we won't either.

“Dripping water hollows out stone, not through force but through persistence.”― Ovid

(Pictured above: Nagen's older sister, Sarmila, holding up a photograph of Nagaenthran and her as children.)