Sept. 13
GLOBAL:
End child executions: Amnesty International:
7 countries, including the US, China and Pakistan, have been urged by
Amnesty International (AI) to end child executions.
These countries are among a handful that continue to execute "child
offenders", who committed their crime when they were below the age of 18,
AI said in an open letter to their leaders. The other countries are the
Philippines, Iran, Sudan and Congo.
The letter has been signed by some 20 "specialists in adolescent mental
and physical health and development" from the US, Canada and Europe.
"Although adolescents generally know the difference between right and
wrong, they can suffer from diminished capacities to reason logically, to
control their impulses, to think through the future consequences of their
actions, and to resist the negative influences and persuasion of others,"
the letter said.
While adolescents should face punishment for their actions, the punishment
should not be as stringent as that faced by adults, it added.
Evolving international standards prohibit the execution of child
offenders. These standards include the International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the American
Convention on Human Rights and the African Charter on the Rights and
Welfare of the Child.
Most of the 80 countries that continue to lay down the death penalty abide
by these standards and do not sentence child offenders to death, the
letter said.
Since January 1990, Amnesty International has recorded the execution of 38
child offenders, 1/2 of them in the US alone.
(source: Indo-Asian News Service)
UZBEKISTAN:
Uzbekistan Accused Of Ignoring UN Over Death Penalty
The UN special investigator on torture said today that Uzbek authorities
have executed at least 9 prisoners in the past year despite UN demands for
a moratorium on the death penalty in that country.
Special investigator Theo van Boven said in a statement that the
executions took place after the UN Committee on Human Rights called on
Uzbekistan to suspend executions while it looked into the cases of the
condemned prisoners.
Van Boven said the 2 latest prisoners to be executed argued at their
trials that they had been forced under torture to confess to crimes.
In a separate development today, the Independent Human Rights Organization
of Uzbekistan said a man convicted of terrorism last week might have been
tortured to death in prison. Authorities had said the prisoner died of
natural causes.
(sources: Associated Press & Reuters)
