A 2009 CNN article lists penalties for drug-related
crime in Asia by country.[3] Since
then President Thein
Sein of Myanmar commuted
all of the country’s death sentences to life imprisonment in January 2014.[4] South
Korea has the death penalty for drugs.[5] But South
Korea has a de facto moratorium on the death penalty since it has not
executed anybody since 1997, even though there are still people on death row,
and even though new death sentences have been handed down in the last few years.[6]
A 2015 article by The
Economist says 32 countries have the death penalty for drug
smuggling, but only 6 really carry it out.[7]
Thirty-two, mainly in Asia and the Middle East—but only half a dozen really
carry it out
IN THE early hours of April
29th, Indonesia executed eight convicted drug traffickers. Seven of the
eight were foreigners: two Australians, a Brazilian and four Nigerians.
The sentences have provoked outrage from the prisoners’ home countries,
none of which hands down the death penalty to drug offenders. Brazil and
the Netherlands had already withdrawn their ambassadors, following an
earlier round of executions in January. Indonesia is rare in executing
drug smugglers; in most of the world they are condemned to long
stretches in prison instead. Where else does trafficking earn a death
sentence?
Thirty-two countries, plus Gaza, impose the death penalty for drug
smuggling, according to Harm Reduction International (HRI), a
drug-focused NGO. All but four (America, Cuba, Sudan and South Sudan)
are in Asia or the Middle East. But in most of these countries
executions are extremely rare. Fourteen, including America and Cuba,
have the death penalty on the books for drug traffickers but do not
apply it in practice. Only in
six countries—China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Malaysia and
Singapore—are drug offenders known to be routinely executed, according
to HRI’s most recent analysis. (Indonesia will soon join this list,
following its recent executions.) In Iraq, Libya, North Korea, Sudan,
South Sudan and Syria the data are murky.
Executions of drug smugglers are becoming more common. Between
1999 and 2014 Indonesia carried out only seven executions of
drug traffickers, according to a tally by Australian media. Since
taking office six months ago, President Joko Widodo has overseen 14, as
part of a fight against drug addiction at home. (Never mind that some
of the recently killed prisoners were smuggling drugs out of
Indonesia, rather than into it.) An even greater escalation has taken
place in Iran, which executed fewer than 100 drug smugglers in 2008 but
has put to death 241 in the first four months of this year alone,
according to Amnesty International. Possession of just 30g of some
synthetic drugs can mean hanging in Iran. China is thought to execute
more drug offenders than any other country. It does not publish
statistics on its use of the death penalty, but in the first five months
of 2014 drug convictions were 27% higher than in the same period a year
earlier. Human rights advocates now worry about Pakistan, which earlier
this year ended a moratorium on the death penalty. It has 8,000 people
on death row, including an unknown number of drug traffickers.
Asia’s toughening approach
contrasts with a slackening off in the West. Trading cannabis, which
earns beheading in Saudi Arabia, has been legalised for recreational use
in four states of America, as well as in Uruguay, and decriminalised in
much of Europe and Latin America. Heroin addiction is increasingly
treated as an illness rather than a crime: clean needles are available
in many rich countries, and a few, including Britain and Switzerland,
even prescribe heroin to a small number of addicts. In most areas of
social policy, such different regional policies would not matter much.
But in the case of drugs, a relentlessly globalising business, the
sharply diverging approaches will lead to more uncomfortable stand-offs
between East and West.