TWO men and a woman from Hong Kong were executed by the Singapore authorities at 6 am yesterday after being convicted of drug trafficking.
The hangings bring to six the number of people from the territory hanged there this year and to eight the number sent to the gallows since last July.
One of the men, 22-year-old Fung Yuk-shing, was executed despite a last-minute international appeal for clemency.
The executions of Nathan Tse Po-chung, a 32-year-old waiter, and 29-year-old saleswoman Cheuk Mei-mei, were only made public after the hanging. Cheuk was the first woman convicted of a drug offence in Singapore to be hanged.
Fung's case had been taken up by the human rights group, Amnesty International, which on Thursday urged its supporters to send faxes to Singapore President Ong Teng Cheong, asking for the sentence to be commuted. The group was unaware that Tse and Cheuk were also due to hang, along with a Thai sailor.
Fung had been on death row in Changi prison since December 1992 after being found guilty of smuggling 2.78 kilograms of heroin into the country in November 1990, two weeks after his 18th birthday.