Richard Branson declines invitation from Singapore to debate death penalty

Sir Richard Branson has rejected an invitation to look successful a unrecorded tv statement connected the decease punishment successful Singapore.

Branson said the treatment "cannot bash the complexity of the decease punishment immoderate service" and called connected Singapore to clasp a "constructive, lasting dialog involving aggregate stakeholders".

The 72-year-old - a vocal campaigner against superior punishment - was invited by Singapore's Home Affairs Ministry for a statement which would besides screen the nation's attack to drugs.

The British entrepreneur said helium has "enormous respect" for the state and it was due to the fact that of this that helium feels "compelled to talk out" erstwhile helium sees things "go horribly incorrect arsenic Singapore's usage of the decease penalty".

He was 1 of galore planetary critics to talk retired implicit the controversial lawsuit of a Malaysian man with learning difficulties who was executed for cause trafficking.

In a blog station astir his determination to crook down the TV debate, Branson said: "I person decided to diminution this invitation. Here is why: a tv statement - constricted successful clip and scope, ever astatine hazard of prioritising personalities implicit issues - cannot bash the complexity of the decease punishment immoderate service.

"It reduces nuanced sermon to soundbites, turns superior statement into spectacle. I can't ideate that is what you are looking for.

"What Singapore truly needs is simply a constructive, lasting dialog involving aggregate stakeholders, and a existent committedness to transparency and evidence."

He said the "conversation needs section voices" and helium was a "global advocator for abolition of the decease penalty" and would "continue to rise the contented wherever I can, arsenic I person for galore years".

In his post, helium shared a idiosyncratic communicative astir his gramps who was a barrister and past a High Court justice whose "greatest regret successful beingness was donning the achromatic headdress and sentencing radical to death".

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"And helium told my begetter helium not lone disagreed with the rule of the authorities sidesplitting people," helium wrote, "he was besides genuinely acrophobic that successful the process, guiltless radical had been and would beryllium executed. History has proven him right, clip and again."

Branson added that imposing the decease punishment for drugs offences was a "disproportionate and ineffective effect to the world's cause problems".