This morning, I received a Correction Direction from the POFMA Office, issued by Minister for Home Affairs K Shanmugam. I have until 8:00AM on 23 January to comply with the direction. In the correction direction, the government says that the Singapore Prison Service doesn't use any of the steps alleged by Lawyers for Liberty in their statement. You can find their response here: https://www.gov.sg/article/factually-clarifications-on-falsehoods-posted-by-lawyers-for-liberty After reading LFL's statement, I sent a follow-up to the Singapore Prison Service on 16 January asking for their response, as well as other questions about executions in prison and their standard protocol. Such information is usually very hard to come by, but in the light of such disturbing claims, I thought it was important for there to be more information about what actually happens in the execution chamber. As someone who has been invested in the issue of the death penalty for a long time, I was extremely interested in doing a story taking into account both LFL and the prison's statements. When I received no response, I followed up with the prison on 17 January. Still no response. Instead of responding to media queries, a POFMA order was made instead. During the Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations in 2011, the government of Singapore had supported recommendations to "make available statistics and other factual information on the use of the death penalty". They considered such a recommendation to be either already implemented, or in the process of implementation (see: https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G11/145/27/PDF/G1114527.pdf), but in my opinion, this has never been implemented in any meaningful way and details related to the use of capital punishment are as opaque as ever. I'll be using the rest of the time given under the Correction Direction to decide how I should proceed.

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