Activists outraged by the impending hanging of a 21-year-old Nigerian man for drug trafficking planned a hunger strike in protest against the execution, they said on Wednesday.
Chee Siok Chin and lawyer M Ravi, both Singaporeans, said their demonstration will start at 7am on Thursday at the city-state’s Speakers’ Corner, move to the grounds outside Changi Prison 12 hours later and continue until the execution of Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi at Changi Prison before dawn on Friday.
Maintaining Toichi is ”an innocent man”, the two issued a statement urging others to join them in bringing attention to ”this barbaric cold-blooded murder”.
Tochi was arrested at Singapore’s Changi Airport in November 2004 carrying 727 grams of heroin. The death penalty is mandatory in the city-state for anyone caught with more than 15 grams of the drug, and Tochi’s appeal for clemency to President SR Nathan failed last year.
The heroin was estimated to be worth 1,5-million Singapore dollars ($970 000).
The hunger strike was announced after Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo urged Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to stop the hanging.
In Obasanjo’s letter to Lee on Tuesday, he mentioned the excellent relations between the two countries.
”It is for the reason of obtaining your kind pardon and clemency for the convicted Nigerian that I … earnestly urge you to reconsider the conviction … and to commute the death sentence to imprisonment,” Obasanjo said.
Human rights group Amnesty International noted in its appeal for clemency that the High Court judge who convicted Tochi said the Nigerian may not have realised the substance he was carrying was heroin.
”If we remain silent, are we not accomplices of this horrible execution?” Chee said. ”Some of us are moved to act when we see injustice at its gravest.”
Outside demonstrations of any kind in Singapore are prohibited without a police permit. However, people are allowed to talk without amplification equipment at Singapore’s version of London’s famed Speakers’ Corner.
The city-state does not announce the date of executions. A letter from the Prisons Department informed Tochi’s family of the date and said they would be allowed extra visits in the three days before the hanging.
Appeals from governments and human rights groups have failed to evoke pardons.
Australian Nguyen Tuong Van (25) was hanged on December 2 2005 for carrying nearly 400 grammes of heroin despite pleas by Prime Minister John Howard, New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Pope Benedict XVI.
The execution ignited an uproar in Australia.
Amnesty claims Singapore has the highest rate of executions per capita in the world.
The city-state maintains it cannot grant clemency to foreigners when Singaporeans are executed for the same crimes. – Sapa-DPA