Despite her request for leniency, a 55-year-old single mother of nine children was sentenced to death.
Hairun Jalmanl was convicted on drug possession and distribution charges in Malaysia.
After being arrested with 113.9 grams of amphetamine in 2018, the Tawau High Court in Sabah condemned her to death last week.
A video of her crying and begging for forgiveness as she was led from the courtroom by a police went viral on social media, eliciting numerous responses from around the world.
Amnesty International Malaysia has criticized how women are treated in the Southeast Asian country following the release of the emotional video.
Women accused of drug-related offenses are exposed to violence, abuse, and exploitation, according to the humanitarian organization, but courts neglect to account the extrajudicial attacks they have previously experienced when punishing them.
It was also revealed that 95% of the women sentenced to death in 2019 were convicted of drug-related offenses.
“Hairun’s life chances were stacked against her. She was a single mother in Malaysia’s poorest state trying to support 9 children. Her case is an example of how Malaysia’s death penalty punishes the poor with particular discriminations against women,” Amnesty International said.
It went further to entreat the Malaysian government to abolish the death penalty just as about 108 other countries have done.
“Why is the right to life so easily denied by the govt? Who is kept safe when a single mother of nine is sentenced to death and removed from her children? What justice is served when the structural inequalities and oppressions that created the conditions for her charge remain?”
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