SINGAPORE, October 9 — Singapore carried out 19 executions in 2026 for drug-related offences, according to Amnesty International’s latest briefing released ahead of World Day Against the Death Penalty. This number exceeds the 17 executions recorded in 2025 and is more than double the nine carried out in 2024, based on the organization’s documentation of state actions. All executions in Singapore this year followed mandatory death sentences for drug trafficking, which Amnesty International says are based on unfair proceedings and therefore unlawful under international human rights law.
The group also reported that Singaporean authorities have intensified efforts to target and silence activists and human rights defenders involved in anti-death penalty campaigning. Across ASEAN, reforms have led to fewer executions over the past two decades, bringing the region closer to the abolitionist stance of Cambodia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste.
Indonesia marked ten years without executions earlier in 2026, while Malaysia and Thailand are expected to reach that milestone in 2027 and 2028, respectively. Brunei Darussalam and Laos have also maintained execution hiatuses, with death sentences imposed only sparingly in recent decades. In contrast, Myanmar, Singapore, and Viet Nam remain the only ASEAN countries to have carried out executions in the past five years.
In Myanmar, military authorities resumed judicial executions in 2022 after more than three decades without any, following grossly unfair proceedings, and later expanded the scope of the death penalty in 2025 and 2026. In Viet Nam, although official execution numbers are a state secret, authorities have driven reforms expected to reduce the number of capital offences from 18 to four within just over a year.
Several ASEAN countries have narrowed the scope of capital offences, removed mandatory death sentences, and introduced resentencing processes and policy commitments to review or reduce the use of the death penalty. Amnesty International’s Joshua Ericsson, Executive Director of Amnesty International Malaysia, said the number of executing countries in ASEAN has steadily decreased, leaving only Myanmar, Singapore, and Viet Nam recording executions in the past five years.
He emphasized that reforms across ASEAN prove that retaining the death penalty for public safety is not a tenable position, and urged states to move from execution hiatuses toward formal moratoriums and full abolition in law. Singapore remains the only ASEAN member state known to carry out executions regularly and to openly oppose substantive reform, placing it at odds with broader regional and global trends toward restriction and abolition of the death penalty.
Looking ahead, advocates will watch whether Singapore faces increasing diplomatic pressure to align with its neighbours or continues its current path despite regional shifts.
