Yong Vui Kong, a Malaysian youth sentenced to death in Singapore for drug trafficking, has filed a criminal motion in the court of appeal.

Yong, 23, is challeging the constitutionality of his prosecution under the mandatory death penalty while charges against his boss and alleged mastermind behind his criminal enterprise, Chia, had been withdrawn.

NONE Yong was 19 when the Singapore High Court sentenced him to death in November 2009.

According to Yong’s Singaporean lawyer, M Ravi (right) , he had filed the application last week, stating that the attorney-general has violated the youth’s fundamental right to equal protection of the law enshrined in Article 12(1) of the Singapore constitution.

The court has yet to set a date for the hearing.

Ravi said that “Yong’s boss had been arrested in connection with the trafficking syndicate that he was part of.”

“But his boss is kept under preventive detention to be released later, while he faces death,” Ravi told Malaysiakini.

He added that Yong had mentioned Chia’s name repeatedly to the police and to the court while accounting for his actions.

Death penalty for delivering 'gifts'

During Yong’s criminal trial in the High Court, Chia was identified as the person who initially contacted him, and provided him with the “gifts” to deliver, said Ravi.

The “gifts” that Yong was caught with was found to have contained 47.27g of diamorphine, for which he was sentenced to death for, he added.

“Chia however, remains uncharged and in executive detention under the Criminal Law (Temporary Provisions) Act,” said Ravi.

“The prosecution had informed the court that they had withdrawn charges against Chia due to a lack of evidence,” he added.

“But Yong, in his affidavit, states that he does not recall being asked by the prosecutor to assist in relation to any difficulty of evidence perceived in relation to Chia,” stressed Ravi.

NONE In April 4, last year, Yong lost his final appeal against the death sentence , which is mandatory for drug trafficking and will be executed unless he is granted clemency by Singapore’s president.

His case has attracted much public attention in Malaysia and Singapore, where a petition calling for his sentence to be commuted to life imprisonment has collected more than 100,000 signatures.

Yong claims unfair treatment

Meanwhile, Yong in his affidavit, claimed he was not accorded equal treatment as enshrined in Art 12 (1)  by the AG who had felt unable to prosecute his boss for lack of evidence.

“I do not understand how it can be possible for the AG to prosecute me in such circumstances given all the evidence before him, he is unable to prosecute Chia the mastermind,” said Yong in his affidavit.

Ravi said this was sufficient to question the AG’s decision to prosecute Yong for a capital offence while not prosecuting “a more culpable party at all”.

One such reason is the lack of any apparent reason for the AG’s decision other than a difficulty of evidence which is itself difficult to follow given the evidence against Chia, said Ravi.

“Another would be that it is contrary to any notion of justice that (all other things being equal) a less culpable offender should be charged with a more serious offence (and subjected to a more serious punishment) while a more culpable offender is not prosecuted at all when both are involved in the same criminal enterprise, especially when the punishment of a less culpable offender is death,” he added.

Ravi pointed out that the drug trafficking law is to target the masterminds behind the drug trafficking enterprises, not the low-level “peddlers” recruited, forced or misled to traffic the drugs.

Letters from death row