A couple of notable new international death penalty stories

A couple of new headlines and Associated Press stories concerning the application of the death penalty worldwide caught my attention this morning.  Here are links and the essential:

“Singapore hangs 2nd citizen in 3 weeks for trafficking cannabis despite calls to halt executions“:

Singapore on Wednesday hanged another citizen for trafficking cannabis, the second in three weeks, as it clung firmly to the death penalty despite growing calls for the city-state to halt drug-related executions….  Under Singapore laws, trafficking more than 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of cannabis may result in the death penalty….

Singapore executed 11 people last year for drug offenses after a two-year hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic.  The hanging of one particular Malaysian believed to be mentally disabled sparked an international outcry and brought the country’s capital punishment under scrutiny for flouting human rights norms.

“Executions worldwide rose dramatically in 2022, Amnesty International reports“:

Executions worldwide increased by 53% in 2022 from a year earlier, with a significant rise in Iran and Saudi Arabia, Amnesty International said in an annual report Tuesday that also criticized Indonesia as having one of the highest numbers of new death sentences in Asia.

Amnesty said 70% of the executions in the Middle East and North Africa were carried out in Iran, where their numbers rose by 83% from 314 in 2021 to 576 in 2022.  The number of executions in Saudi Arabia tripled from 65 in 2021 to 196 in 2022.