Chapter 3: Perpetrators and/or Victims? The Case of Women Facing the Death Penalty in Malaysia

To reduce the number of women being sentenced to death, this chapter explores and critically reflects on the calls being made by women’s rights activists in Southeast Asia for cross-border drug trafficking to be reconstituted as human trafficking. Drawing on interviews with a range of stakeholders, alongside information on 146 cases of women sentenced to death for drug trafficking in Malaysia, this chapter shows that the gendered dynamics of drug trafficking can indeed be understood as a form of human trafficking. However, there are concerns from a feminist activist perspective in representing it in these terms because the discourse of human trafficking, has been used by the patriarchal state to legitimize racialized and gendered oppression of women at borders. This has ramifications in terms of human rights, particularly with regards to women’s right to freedom of movement as well as the right to livelihood.