SINGAPORE - A Singapore human rights group, Think Centre,   made a rare appeal Friday to the government to ban the death penalty,   calling it a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. 

<Why should we be the last to abolish the death penalty?> asked the   group's president Sinapan Samydorai at a press conference in a downtown hotel. <Two-thirds of the world have stopped practicing it.>  In most countries, human rights activists would take to the streets, but not in Singapore where public protests are extremely rare and political activities and the media are strictly regulated.

The news conference, which took place in a rented hotel room, drew about 10 reporters, most from the foreign media, and a handful of activists.

Over the past four years, 88 people have been executed in the city-state, mostly for drug offenses. The government says the punishment effectively deters drug addiction.

Under Singapore's laws, anyone caught with more than 15 grams (0.5 ounces) of heroin or more than 500 grams (17.6 ounces) of marijuana is presumed to be trafficking and faces the death penalty.

London-based human rights group Amnesty International has slammed Singapore, a country of 4 million people, for having one of the world's highest per capita execution rates.

Samydorai said many local drug addicts are uneducated youths from poor and broken families and deserve a second chance to reform.

<It is time to review another alternative,> Samydorai said. <We must trust that human beings change. They are not hard-core murderers.>  The plea was supported by veteran opposition leader and former elected member of Parliament Joshua 'J.B' Jeyaratnam, who supported a rare legal appeal against the conviction of 23-year-old Malaysian drug trafficker Vignes Mourthy last month. Despite the high court appeal and a request for a new trial, Mourthy was hanged on Sept. 26.

Singapore leaders say their strict policies help maintain the social and political stability that have made Singapore one of Asia's safest and wealthiest countries.