Vui Kong clemency deadline extended
Malaysian Yong Vui Kong will not be hanged at the Changi prison any time soon. His lawyers have obtained an extension of his deadline to appeal for clemency from Singapore president SR Nathan.
Malaysian Yong Vui Kong will not be hanged at the Changi prison any time soon.
His lawyers have obtained an extension of his deadline to appeal for clemency from Singapore president SR Nathan.
Yong, 22, on death row in Changi prison, was sentenced to death for trafficking in 47.27g of diamorphine, an offence under Section 5(1Xa) of the Misuse of Drugs Act in Singapore.
His appeal against the sentence was dismissed by the Court of Appeal on May 14, and he is now due to submit a plea for clemency, a right under Article 22P of the republic's constitution.
Yong's case has attracted much public attention in Malaysia and Singapore, where a petition calling for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment collected more than 100,000 signatures.
His family submitted the petition yesterday at the Istana - the president's official residence - but failed to gain a face-to-face meeting.
Rule of law
Singapore has insisted that it has followed the rule of law and has acted in no prejudicial manner in rejecting the clemency petition.
However, before the clemency petition was filed, Singapore Law Minister K Shanmugam had made a public statement which was deemed "prejudicial", Yong's lawyer said.
Shanmugam had reportedly said, "Yong Vui Kong, he is young. But if we say we let you go what's the signal we're sending? We're sending a signal to all drug barons out there... just make sure you choose a victim who's young or a mother of a young child and use them as the people to carry drugs into Singapore."
With the sympathy generated after these people are caught, he added, there would be a "whole unstoppable stream of people coming through, as long as we won't enforce our laws".
