48 Filipinos on death row in Malaysia

MANILA, Philippines — Forty-eight people, mostly overseas Filipino workers, are facing the death penalty for violating 11 offenses under Malaysian laws, a lawmaker said yesterday. 

Rep. Lito Atienza of party-list Buhay urged the Malaysian government to downgrade to prison terms the death sentences that a Kuala Lumpur court meted on dozens of Filipinos, mostly migrant workers.

Malaysia usually carries out its death penalty by hanging. 

“In light of Malaysia’s decision to scrap the mandatory death sentence for several offenses, we are appealing for the lives of Filipinos on death row to be spared,” Atienza said. 

“The commutation of death sentence does not mean that the convicts are not getting punished. They are still getting penalized with harsh prison terms. The death penalty is cruel and inhuman punishment that flouts the right to life,” he added.

The Department of Foreign Affairs has reported that at least 48 Filipino citizens are on death row in Malaysia. 

Malaysia’s Pakatan Harapan (Alliance of Hope coalition government) imposed a moratorium on all judicial executions in October 2018, pending the passage of new legislation that will remove the mandatory death sentence for 11 offenses.

Instead, the new legislation will give Malaysian judges leeway to inflict either death by hanging or long-term imprisonment.

At present, Malaysian judges have no choice but to send to the gallows those convicted of offenses that carry the mandatory death penalty, such as terrorism, murder, rape resulting in murder, gang-robbery with murder, drug trafficking, kidnapping in order to murder and hostage-taking resulting in death.

The Pakatan Harapan government has campaigned for a review of the death penalty and other “unsuitable” laws during the 2018 general election.

The coalition government announced in October that it would be endorsing a bill to abolish the death penalty in Malaysia.

It has since retreated, moving instead to just give judges the discretion to impose either the supreme or lesser punishment, due to pressure from anti-abolitionist groups in Malaysia. 

Malaysia carried out 13 executions from 2016 to 2017 before it froze executions in October 2018.

In the Philippines, Congress revived the death penalty for 13 heinous crimes in 1993, only to abolish it in 2006.