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influence in matters of national and international interest.
Margaret Nduta Macharia in Vietnam court after she was found in possession of two kilogrammes of cocaine. [Courtesy]
I held my breath for Margaret Nduta Macharia (37) on Monday morning. Some 8,000km away from her home in Murang’a County, Ms Nduta faces death by lethal injection following her conviction for drug trafficking in Vietnam.
In a rare stand for her life and against the death penalty, citizens, human rights organisations and the national administration rallied to stay her execution.
The outline of her experience is clear even if details remain sketchy. Attracted by prospects of a domestic worker job in the middle east, she boarded a bus to Addis Ababa in July 2023.
An agent offered her a flight ticket and a bag to replace the one she had. She flew to Vietnam and was arrested on arrival in possession of two kilos of cocaine. Prosecuted without legal representation, she was convicted to death earlier this month.
For days before her date with death, Kenyans intensely debated whether she should be executed or not.
Those of the first opinion spoke to dangers of drug trafficking and Kenyans needing to respect other country’s laws. Fortunately for her, public opinion coalesced around calls for clemency and against the death penalty.
In a rare moment, Kenyans online, opposition parliamentarians, human rights organisations and the foreign affairs ministry found themselves on the same side for a change.
This unity of purpose and a last-minute intervention by the Kenyan Embassy in Thailand seems to have stopped Monday’s execution.
The drug trade is globally pervasive and highly destructive. Over 7 million people across the world came into conflict with the law for using, possessing or trading in narcotics in 2022.
While Margaret Nduta may appear the face of this transnational crime today, 90 per cent of drug traffickers are men. Further, Europe and the Americas, not Africa or Asia, dominate these global statistics.
Threatened by decades of organised criminal cartels, devastated communities and fragile states, Asia and the Americas have some of the most punitive laws in the world.
The Socialist Republic of Vietnam is among several Asian countries who retain the death penalty for drug-related crimes.
Successive Vietnamese administrations have struggled to stop drugs from proliferating through their population.
Of the 230,000 drug users in Vietnam, a staggering 44.6 per cent of them are between 12-30 years old.
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The Vietnamese penal code allows for punishment by death for 22 serious crimes. These include treason, espionage, crimes against humanity, corruption, murder, death by rape, robbery with violence and trafficking more than 100 grams of drugs.
Nduta was found guilty of carrying more than 20 times this amount.
Like Kenyan law now, Vietnamese law also provides for alternative penalties to death eligible crimes.
This, and the suggestion that Nduta was unrepresented, will be important for the diplomatic attempts to commute her sentence.
Unlike Kenya however, death penalty statistics have been a state secret in Vietnam for the last 20 years. Analysts, however, estimate there maybe as many as 1,200 death row prisoners facing death by lethal injection.
As the world’s slowly moves towards abolishing the death penalty, many countries face pressure to lift capital punishment charges for drug-related offences, economic and political crimes.
The 49-year-old International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights for instance, states that “anyone sentenced to death shall have the right to seek pardon or commutation of the sentence.”
While a fair trial in a court of law is best placed to pronounce guilt or innocence, it is clear that the death penalty remains cruel and inhumane punishment for all crimes.
Margaret Nduta’s cruel death will not stop the trade. By all accounts, she was not a mastermind but a mule in a trade that will immediately find another mule to transport the drugs of addiction and death.
Kenya, Ethiopia and Vietnam must increase public awareness campaigns, strengthen customs controls and transnational cooperation to stop trafficking networks from preying on economically vulnerable men and women.
Efforts must focus on tracking and jailing the manufacturers, financiers and corrupt state officials who coordinate this deadly trade.
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The Standard Group Plc is a
multi-media organization with investments in media platforms spanning newspaper
print operations, television, radio broadcasting, digital and online services. The
Standard Group is recognized as a leading multi-media house in Kenya with a key
influence in matters of national and international interest.
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