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DPRU Blog submissions
International Women’s Day 2021: Women, Drug Trafficking & The
Death Penalty in Southeast Asia
Author(s)
Posted
Jocelyn Hutton
ESRC Research
OfJcer
8 March 2021
Time to read
4 Minutes
Lucy Harry
DPhil Criminolog y
In honour of International Women’s Day 2021, we wish to take the opportunity to highlight some of the scholarship that the Death Penalty
Research Unit (DPRU) is conducting on the plight of women sentenced to death for drug trafJcking in Southeast Asia (with a particular focus on
the jurisdictions of Indonesia and Malaysia). This issue is transnational in scope – with a high proportion of foreign national women subject to
the ultimate punishment in this part of the world – and highlights and exacerbates existing intersectional discrimination and disadvantage.
Death Penalty Incidence
According to data collected by the Institute for Criminal Justice Reform (ICJR) from the Directorate General of Corrections (Ditjen PAS) of
Indonesia, there were 355 people on death row in September 2020, 97% men and 3% women. 25% of all death row cases were foreign
nationals, 100% of whom were drugs cases.
The last executions in Indonesia were carried out in 2016, which were all men (Merri Utami and Mary Jane Veloso were due to be executed but
their executions were postponed at the last minute). The last executions of women took place in 2015; Rani Andriani, who was Indonesian and
Tran Thi Bich Hanh, a Vietnamese woman. Both had been sentenced to death as drug mules. One of the DPRU’s key partners, LBH Masyarakat
(LBHM), is greatly involved in the legal representation of women facing the death penalty for drug couriering in Indonesia.
However, despite the de facto moratorium, and the fact that drug-related deaths have been decreasing in Indonesia, the issuance of death
sentences has been steadily increasing. This is leading to an exponential increase in the death row population where most prisoners remain
interminably, given the lack of commutation mechanisms and great hesitancy in passing clemency applications. In fact, in December 2014
President Joko Widodo declared that he would refuse all clemency applications for drug offenders on death row, closing the door to that Jnal
route out of death row. This is particularly alarming given that several of the women on death row in Indonesia have exhausted all legal
appeals.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Malaysia, latest statistics from Amnesty International suggest that there are 1281 people under sentence of death
in the country; 1140 men and 141 women. Of the women on death row, the vast majority – 134 – have been sentenced to death for drug
trafJcking. Whilst some limited reforms were made to the mandatory death penalty for drug trafJcking in 2017, most of the women currently
on death row will have been sentenced under the mandatory regime. There has been a moratorium on executions since 2017. And whilst
Jgures on execution rates are hard to come by, it is notable that Malaysia executed the Jrst foreign national woman for drug trafJcking over
three decades ago, with the execution of Han Tsui Ling, a member of the then notorious ‘Hong Kong Eight’ in 1990.
Women at Disproportionate Risk
Indonesia has one of the highest rates of imprisoned women in the world; rising 144% between 2011 and 2018. There are currently ten women
on death row in Indonesia. Five of them are murder cases and Jve are drugs cases. Over the last Jve years there have been three foreign
national women on death row, all of which were drugs cases. In fact, female drug offenders represent the fastest growing prison
population globally and are incarcerated in much higher proportions than men for non-violent drug offences. Most women and 100% of foreign
national women in Indonesia have been sentenced to death for non-violent crimes, despite international legal norms stipulating that the death
penalty should be reserved for only the ‘most serious crimes’, i.e. homicide.
Moreover, in Malaysia we Jnd that there is a higher proportion of women (95%) on death row for drug trafJcking as compared to the proportion
of men on death row for the same offence (70%). Additionally, a far higher percentage of the female death row are foreign nationals (86%) as
compared to the percentage of foreign nationals on the male death row (39%). DPRU research suggests that drug syndicates may be taking
advantage of the transnational jow of female labour in the region (particularly migrant domestic workers) and using members of this mobile
female workforce as unwitting couriers.
Need for Gender-Sensitive Sentencing
Female drug couriers on death row have often been exposed to
coercion, exploitation, violence and socio-economic
pressures. Research from the DPRU has shown that many
women have engaged in drug trafJcking due to gendered
economic precarity. Some experience sexual harassment while
in prison. The number of prisons and facilities speciJcally for
women is insufJcient and in all female death row cases, there
have been violations of the right to a fair trial. Research by LBHM
and the International Drug Policy Consortium in 2019 found that
in Indonesia, 25% of women had experienced torture by the
police and 42% had no access to a lawyer at any stage, rising to
69% in the investigation stage. And a recent report on the
Malaysian death penalty, from Monash Law School, found that
despite the high incidence of women raising an ‘innocent
courier’ defence, the courts are reluctant to accept this
argument.
However, despite the particular difJculties that women face,
gender-based challenges or mitigating factors are rarely taken
into consideration in their cases. Women who are also foreign
nationals, ethnic minorities or have disabilities, face further
stigma, misunderstanding and barriers to justice and support.
As Carolyn Hoyle’s research shows, cases involving foreign
nationals raise signiJcant due process challenges, due to their
particular vulnerabilities, including a lack of understanding of
the legal system in an unfamiliar jurisdiction, and lack of access
to consular assistance, legal representation and interpreters,
despite the Vienna Convention requiring states to provide such
access. Plenty of research has shown that women and especially
foreign national women prisoners face unique challenges, which
can only increase with the added burden of the ultimate
sentence. We urge governments and lawmakers to take these
challenges into consideration when preparing sentences and to
provide adequate support for these women to achieve full
access to justice.
Photo credit: Unsplash, taken by Amir EsraJli.
Jocelyn Hutton is an ESRC Research OfJcer in the Death Penalty Research Unit at the University of Oxford, working on research regarding
Foreign Nationals sentenced to death in Asia and the Middle East with Professor Carolyn Hoyle.
Lucy Harry is a DPhil Candidate at the University of Oxford Centre for Criminology and Death Penalty Research Unit whose research focuses on
the experiences of women sentenced to death for drug trafJcking in Malaysia. Twitter: @lucyharry_
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