JOHOR BARU: Perhaps 2024 will mark a different chapter for death row prisoners.
In fact, some of them have been moved out from their solitary cells (Bilik Akhir) and put in cells with other inmates, following the enforcement of the Abolition of the Mandatory Death Penalty Act since July 2023.
“In the past, death row prisoners were isolated and put in a separate block and mostly in solitary confinement,” said Geha Bodhi Care Centre chairman Lam Kai Cheong.
The non-governmental organisation deals with inmates at almost all prisons in Peninsula Malaysia.
“Even their food is different with boneless meat and fish. The bones are removed to prevent the prisoners from using them to commit suicide as it’s stressful counting your days to be hung,” he said in an interview.
These days, such prisoners could mingle with other inmates, besides getting to eat food that comes with bones.
The move came about following the government’s decision to abolish the mandatory death penalty.
He said that so far only a handful of these prisoners have had their sentences commuted to 30 years in prison under the Abolition of the Mandatory Death Penalty Act.
These prisoners are grateful that their lives had been spared, though they felt that the 30 years in prison is too long, he said.
“Many, especially the foreigners, in our prisons are hoping that the government will review their cases within 10 or 15 years and deport them back instead,” he said, adding that they were also be willing to be banned from entering the country again.
Lam, who gets letters and calls regularly from death row prisoners, said that he would comfort them, besides encouraging them to continue their good behaviour and be hopeful that they would be pardoned one day.
He hopes that more cases of death row prisoners would be reviewed in the coming months as it is stressful for an inmate to live in solitary confinement for a long period of time.
Lam, whose NGO runs a private drug rehabilitation centre in Kuantan, shared about a case he was handling in which a man was sent to prison when he was 19 years old for murder and kidnapping.
Now 35 years old, the man, surname Yong, has spent the past 16 years in Tapah Prison.
“We came to know the family through his relative and have been in touch with his elderly mother who is 75 years old.
“She suffers from many illnesses including depression. She says that her son who was 19 years old at that time was naive and was used by his employer to abduct someone who died while in confinement.”
Lam, who met Yong several years ago, said that the man was still on death row as his case has yet to come up for review under the new law.
He said that Yong’s mother was hopeful that her son would be pardoned or released earlier so that he could be with her in her twilight years.
Since the mother did not have the means to hire a lawyer, Lam said the NGO engaged a lawyer who was willing to handle the case for free.
He said that Yong had committed the offence together with his “employer” who was also on death row but died while in prison.
Lam also cited another case in Melaka in which a man had been on death row for the past 15 years for a murder case.
He said that it was commendable that the government had since abolished the death penalty, but efforts should now be made to review the duration of their imprisonment as many of the foreigners, especially women, could have been used as drug mules.
On the NGO’s recent activities, Lam said that his organisation has now started informing all death row prisoners to get permission from their prison officers for them to have lunch gatherings so that the prisoners can celebrate the upcoming Chinese New Year.
Earlier this year, the Dewan Rakyat passed the Abolition of the Mandatory Death Penalty Act, which aims to abolish the mandatory death penalty, to vary the sentence relating to imprisonment for natural life and whipping.
Under the Act, the court now has the discretion to impose the death penalty or imprisonment for a period of not less than 30 years, but not exceeding 40 years, and if not sentenced to death, shall also be punished with whipping of not less than 12 strokes.
In November, the Prisons Department completed the filing of all 1,020 review applications under the Revision of Sentence of Death and Imprisonment for Natural Life (Temporary Jurisdiction of the Federal Court) Act.