Twins petition to free death row Dad
From correspondents in Singapore
April 12, 2005
Reuters
TWO 14-year-old Singapore brothers have begun a rare campaign in
the city state to free their jailed father from death row, where he
faces execution for trafficking about one kilogram of
marijuana.
Twins Gopalan and Krishnan Murugesu, on the advice of their
father's lawyer, handed out about 500 flyers in a busy shopping
district seeking support for a petition against the execution,
saying their father's death would make them orphans.
"My parents are divorced and my father has been looking after us.
My mother remarried, lives somewhere else and doesn't see us
anymore. If he is hanged ... we will become orphans," Krishnan was
quoted by local Today newspaper as saying.
The twins, under care of their unemployed grandmother since their
father was arrested in August 2003, rely on handouts from a welfare
agency for daily expenses, said his lawyer, M Ravi.
Shanmugam Murugesu, 38, arrested at the Malaysian border, lost an
appeal against a conviction of trafficking about one kilogram of
cannabis. His lawyer is seeking clemency from Singapore President S
R Nathan.
Singapore enforces some of the world's toughest drug laws.
Anyone aged 18 or over convicted of carrying more than 500 grams of
cannabis faces mandatory execution by hanging.
In its 2004 report, rights group Amnesty International said about
400 people had been hanged in Singapore since 1991.
They were hanged mostly for drug trafficking, giving the wealthy
city-state of 4.2 million people possibly the highest execution
rate in the world relative to its population.
Amnesty said only six people sentenced to death in Singapore has
been spared execution.
Singapore has staunchly defended its use of the death penalty and
maintains that capital punishment has deterred major drug
syndicates from establishing themselves in Singapore.
