With an inexperienced executioner, who doesn't know what he is doing, they will struggle like chickens, like fish out of the water'. It was the horror reports that emerged when things went wrong that so shocked and dismayed the public and shamed the then ultra-conservative establishment of the 1950s that finally put an end to the death penalty in Britain. Today, the Singapore authorities are just as fearful of this kind of pornography being exposed to the public galvanising them also to demand the end of capital punishment in their pristine clean country.
Darshan Singh, the father of three adopted children, grown up now and some with youngsters of their own, told me he would always support the death penalty in his country. 'It has helped keep Singapore one of the safest places on earth', he often told me. 'These drug traffickers know what will happen to them if they get caught. People who sympathise with them have nothing to say about the thousands who suffer because of drugs. They destroy their lives as well as their families - and society as a whole suffers'. Under Singapore's tough laws, anyone aged 18 or over who is convicted of carrying more than 15 grams of heroin receives a mandatory death sentence. He believes it was a big mistake for Britain and Australia to abolish the death penalty. 'I have read that some people in England - and also in Australia - would like capital punishment to be brought back. If they do and they ever need a hangman again, I would offer my services'. In fact he revealed that he once travelled secretly to Calcutta, India, to carry out the hanging of a rapist. 'I don't often get these requests', he told me. 'I am always at the service of any government anywhere to carry out an execution by hanging. If the person has been properly tried in court I would do it without hesitation'.
Darshan Singh also revealed to me that the authorities once considered switching to other means of execution such as lethal injection a method used in some American states. This idea was quickly shelved when it was pointed out that many of the condemned often wish to donate their organs for desperately sick people who might have only weeks or months to live. 'If they are executed by lethal injection, their organs will be destroyed and could not be used for transplantation'. A Sikh who converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim woman, Darshan Singh said the most difficult part of his job was when he had to hang prisoners whom he had befriended. Getting to know some prisoners languishing on death row, Darshan Singh said he developed close relationships with them while still eventually having to carry out the execution. 'In a way, they became my friends and wanted me to hang them when they finally accepted their fate. One of the fellows even asked me to give him his final haircut the day before'. Murderers and drug traffickers deserve to die, he said, and their punishment is a means of 'complete rehabilitation'. He told me he also believes in reincarnation, that the men and women he hanged - if they repented - would return better men or women when 'they are reborn'.
5
The Isle of Ease Uprising
If Darshan Singh still felt a bit of a novice when it came to getting the calculations just right for a perfect hanging, all that changed at dawn one Friday morning in 1964 when he began executing 18 men three at a time. He knew he was going to have a major job on his hands when he began reading the trial of 58 convicts who had been charged with the murder of the British superintendent and two deputies of an experimental penal colony on Pulau Senang - or Isle of Ease - just ten miles south of Singapore. But he had no idea just how many would actually be sentenced to death. The bets were on that that only six would hang and the rest receive varying prison sentences or be acquitted. He had been chief executioner for four years and six would have been a record and a major task for him then, the gallows being equipped to hang
Darshan Singh, the father of three adopted children, grown up now and some with youngsters of their own, told me he would always support the death penalty in his country. 'It has helped keep Singapore one of the safest places on earth', he often told me. 'These drug traffickers know what will happen to them if they get caught. People who sympathise with them have nothing to say about the thousands who suffer because of drugs. They destroy their lives as well as their families - and society as a whole suffers'. Under Singapore's tough laws, anyone aged 18 or over who is convicted of carrying more than 15 grams of heroin receives a mandatory death sentence. He believes it was a big mistake for Britain and Australia to abolish the death penalty. 'I have read that some people in England - and also in Australia - would like capital punishment to be brought back. If they do and they ever need a hangman again, I would offer my services'. In fact he revealed that he once travelled secretly to Calcutta, India, to carry out the hanging of a rapist. 'I don't often get these requests', he told me. 'I am always at the service of any government anywhere to carry out an execution by hanging. If the person has been properly tried in court I would do it without hesitation'.
Darshan Singh also revealed to me that the authorities once considered switching to other means of execution such as lethal injection a method used in some American states. This idea was quickly shelved when it was pointed out that many of the condemned often wish to donate their organs for desperately sick people who might have only weeks or months to live. 'If they are executed by lethal injection, their organs will be destroyed and could not be used for transplantation'. A Sikh who converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim woman, Darshan Singh said the most difficult part of his job was when he had to hang prisoners whom he had befriended. Getting to know some prisoners languishing on death row, Darshan Singh said he developed close relationships with them while still eventually having to carry out the execution. 'In a way, they became my friends and wanted me to hang them when they finally accepted their fate. One of the fellows even asked me to give him his final haircut the day before'. Murderers and drug traffickers deserve to die, he said, and their punishment is a means of 'complete rehabilitation'. He told me he also believes in reincarnation, that the men and women he hanged - if they repented - would return better men or women when 'they are reborn'.
5
The Isle of Ease Uprising
If Darshan Singh still felt a bit of a novice when it came to getting the calculations just right for a perfect hanging, all that changed at dawn one Friday morning in 1964 when he began executing 18 men three at a time. He knew he was going to have a major job on his hands when he began reading the trial of 58 convicts who had been charged with the murder of the British superintendent and two deputies of an experimental penal colony on Pulau Senang - or Isle of Ease - just ten miles south of Singapore. But he had no idea just how many would actually be sentenced to death. The bets were on that that only six would hang and the rest receive varying prison sentences or be acquitted. He had been chief executioner for four years and six would have been a record and a major task for him then, the gallows being equipped to hang
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