death penalty news
November 26, 2004
UZBEKISTAN:
Uzbekistan: Sodik Kodirov / death penalty
Published: 26.11.2004
AI, London, 25.11.2004 -- Sodik Kodirov is believed to be in imminent
danger of execution. His allegations that he was tortured and raped in
pre-trial detention were reportedly ignored in court.
Sodik Kodirov was sentenced to death on charges including "premeditated,
aggravated murder" by Tashkent city court on 7 December 2003.
Sodik Kodirov's mother told Amnesty International (AI): "During the
investigation my son wasn't only tortured, he was also raped. When I saw my
son in detention on 10 June 2003, he didn't even recognize me. He was so
badly beaten that he couldn't walk unaided". She alleges that investigators
used a sharp object to injure her son: "When I saw him he had cuts all over
his body as a result of the torture." She added: "My son spoke about the
torture in court but the judge simply ignored his words and said he was
trying to escape responsibility."
His mother also reported that the judge told her not to attend the trial:
"If I attend the trial, he said, the relatives of the victims would kill me
and my son right there in court. He told me to think of my other four
children as Sodik would die anyway."
On 12 May 2004 the United Nations (UN) Human Rights Committee urged the
Uzbek authorities to stay Sodik Kodirov's execution while the Committee
considered allegations that he had been tortured, and suffered other
serious human rights violations. The Uzbek authorities have ignored similar
interventions in at least 14 cases, in violation of the country's
obligations as a party to the first Optional Protocol to the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
When his mother visited Sodik Kodirov in prison on 14 October he told her
that prison officials had threatened him: "You will not live longer than 12
November. The stay of your execution requested by the United Nations runs
out that day." There was no way of knowing whether the execution was indeed
scheduled for that day as in Uzbekistan neither death row prisoners nor
their relatives or lawyers are officially informed of the date of the
execution in advance. The (UN) Human Rights Committee is still considering
Sodik Kodirov's case.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
In September 2001, President Islam Karimov stated publicly that around 100
people were executed in Uzbekistan each year. As vital information on the
application of the death penalty is treated as a secret, the true figures
are not known, but several local human rights groups there are over 200
executions annually.
Amnesty International regularly receives credible allegations of unfair
trials, and the use of torture and ill-treatment, often to extract
"confessions", from Uzbekistan. Following his visit to Uzbekistan in
November - December 2002, Theo van Boven, the UN Special Rapporteur on
torture, concluded that "torture or similar ill-treatment is systematic" in
Uzbekistan. In his February 2003 report, he noted that "the abolition of
the death penalty would be a positive step towards respect for the
prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment."
Theo van Boven also stated that the "complete secrecy surrounding the date
of execution, the absence of any formal notification prior to and after the
execution and the refusal to hand over the body for burial are believed to
be intentional acts, fully mindful of causing family members turmoil, fear
and anguish over the fate of their loved one(s)." He described the
treatment of family members as "malicious and amounting to cruel and
inhuman treatment".
TAKE ACTION NOW!
Please send appeals to the Uzbek authorities and to diplomatic
representatives of Uzbekistan accredited to your country to arrive as
quickly as possible, in English, Russian, Uzbek or your own language:
urging the President to grant clemency to Sodik Kodirov and all other death
row prisoners;
calling on the authorities to investigate thoroughly and impartially
allegations that Sodik Kodirov was tortured and ill-treated in pre-trial
detention and bring to justice anyone found responsible;
stating that you know of 14 cases in which death row prisoners were
executed even though the (UN) Human Rights Committee had asked the Uzbek
authorities to stay their executions while it considered their cases;
urging the authorities to give you guarantees that nobody will be executed
whose case is under consideration by the (UN) Human Rights Committee;
urging the authorities to promptly introduce a moratorium on death
sentences and executions.
Please note that it may be difficult to send faxes. If a voice answers
during office hours, repeat 'fax' until connected; fax machines may be
switched off outside office hours (GMT+5)
1) Uzbek President
Islam A. KARIMOV;
Prezident Respubliki Uzbekistan;
Prezidentskaya rezidentsiya;
Ulitsa Uzbekistanskaia 43;
Tashkent; 700163
UZBEKISTAN
Salutation: Dear President Karimov
2) Uzbek Foreign Affairs Minister
Sodik S. SAFOYEV,
Ministr inostrannykh del;
Ministerstvo inostrannyh del;
Ploshchad Mustakillik 5;
Tashkent; 700029
UZBEKISTAN
Fax: (+998 71) 139 15 17
Salutation: Dear Minister
COPIES TO:
Uzbek General Procurator
Rashidjon Kh. KODIROV;
Generalny Prokuror Respubliki Uzbekistan;
Ulitsa Gulyamova 66;
Tashkent; 700047
UZBEKISTAN
Fax: (+998 71) 133 39 17
Salutation: Dear Procurator General
PLEASE SEND ANY REPLIES FROM THE UZBEK AUTHORITIES AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO
THE INTERNATIONAL SECRETARIAT OF AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL. (South Caucasus and
Central Asia Research and Campaign Team; Amnesty International; 1 Easton
Street; London WC1 X ODW; United Kingdom)
===========
SRI LANKA:
Sri Lankan president moves to reinstate the death penalty
Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga has seized on the murder of a
high court judge last Friday as the pretext to reactivate the death penalty
for the crimes of murder, rape and drug dealing. Judge Sarath Ambepitiya
and his body guard were gunned down with automatic weapons shortly after
returning to his home at the end of a day at the courts. The unknown
assailants escaped in a van and to date police investigators have few leads.
Even though Sri Lanka has a history of war and political violence, the
brazen killing of Ambepitiya is the first time that a judge has been
murdered. Sections of the Colombo media immediately speculated that it was
the work of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE). Particular note
was taken of Ambepitiya?s sentencing of LTTE leader Velupillai Prabhakaran
in 2002 to a jail term of 200 years for his role in the bombing of the
Central Bank in 1996.
However, without any substantive evidence of LTTE involvement, the press
focussed most attention on the country?s drug barons, rising levels of
organised crime and Ambepitiya?s reputation as a defender of
?law-and-order?: he was prepared to impose harsh sentences. Just prior to
his murder, the judge had sentenced a woman convicted of drug dealing to
life imprisonment and, according to Chief Justice Sarath Silva, was hearing
another high profile drug case, in which a verdict was due to be delivered.
Kumaratunga immediately exploited public shock over the killing to proceed
with her longstanding ambition of reinstituting the death penalty, which,
while still on the country?s law books, has not been carried out since
1976. The day after the murder she called an emergency meeting with her
Public Security, Law and Order Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake and other
top officials and issued an edict reinstating capital punishment and
stepping up security for judges.
Kumaratunga?s decision is a cynical move aimed at using appeals to
reactionary ?law-and-order? measures to divert public attention from the
real causes of mounting social tensions and political crisis. The real
causes of growing crime rates and rise of drug addition lie in the policies
pursued by successive governments that have resulted in deepening social
inequality, growing unemployment particularly among young people, and the
systematic dismantlement of the country?s limited social services.
All of these factors have been compounded by the country?s protracted civil
war. Many of the unemployed youth who were recruited into the army as
cannon fodder in its vicious war against the country?s Tamil minority have
deserted. There are an estimated 30,000 deserters, all of them with
military training and in some cases with access to modern weapons, who
provide a large pool of desperate guns-for-hire.
It is an open secret that the major political parties hire many of these
thugs to act as bodyguards or to terrorise and intimidate their political
opponents. This has led to close connections between politicians, criminal
gangsters and the state apparatus itself, including the police and army. So
blatant is the process that it is a matter for comment in the press.
The Island, for instance, declared in its editorial: ?Our leading
politicians?and this is no secret?have precipitated this near anarchic
state.... If the executive president tolerates ministers and deputy
ministers associating with criminals and acting as their patron saints,
then a process beginnings that is virtually unstoppable. It results in high
ministry officials, heads of departments, heads of services, middle ranking
officials right down to the peons being associated with corruption and
criminal activity.?
The Daily Mirror scathingly commented that Ambepitiya?s murder was not
unexpected. ?The signs were clear. Political interference in the judiciary
in a big way; military deserters roaming at will as private guards of
politicians doing their bidding, including bashing up patrons in dance
halls; police top brass hand-in-hand with the underworld; and
politicians?even cabinet ministers?hand-in-glove with the underworld. It
was a deadly cocktail for the body politic of a small country to absorb.?
In this context it is worth noting that there are a number of unanswered
questions surrounding Ambepitiya?s murder. Three days prior to the killing,
his additional police security escort was withdrawn. According to police
officials there had been a manpower shortage, but the judge?s widow has
angrily criticised the decision. She has also threatened not to cooperate
with any investigation unless the police produce the record book related to
the security escort.
Based on Ambepitiya?s judicial record, the media have suggested that the
LTTE or drug lords might have had reason to kill him. But little has been
said about several verdicts that no doubt provoked an angry reaction among
layers of the police and security forces and suggest possible motives for
their involvement in Ambepitiya?s assassination.
This week Ambepitiya was due to preside over the case of five soldiers
indicted for their involvement in the murder of eight Tamil civilians on
December 19, 2000 at Mirusuvil in the north of the island. The trial at bar
inquiry into the Mirusuvil case was to be heard by Ambepitiya in January
last year but was delayed for nearly two years after a supreme court appeal
by one of the accused.
Ambepitiya was also president of a three-judge high court panel that last
year sentenced several policemen and soldiers to death for their role in
the massacre of 27 Tamil detainees at the Bindunuwewa detention camp in 2000.
Capital punishment in Sri Lanka
The death penalty, and popular opposition to it, has a long history in Sri
Lanka. The British colonial authorities, after taking control of the whole
island in 1815, abolished the arbitrary legal procedures of the decaying
feudal kingdom of Sinhala rulers. The new judicial system included the
death penalty for murder, as well as for ?waging war against the [British]
King?.
The imposition of the death penalty for political crimes provoked
widespread opposition. In the 1940s and 1950s, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party
(LSSP), then based on the principles of Trotskyism, was in the forefront of
the struggle for basic democratic rights, including the abolition of the
death penalty. Kumaratunga?s Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), which was
founded by her father S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, sought to undermine the LSSP?s
support by combining Sinhala chauvinism with ?democratic? and even
?socialist? rhetoric.
Bandaranaike won power in 1956 on the basis of the communalist demand for
?Sinhala only? as the national language, but also sought to give his
government a progressive veneer. He suspended the death penalty but it was
rapidly reintroduced after Bandaranaike was assassinated in 1959 by a
clique within his own party and a layer of the Buddhist hierarchy, incensed
that he had not implemented their chauvinist demands.
In a speech delivered during the 1956 parliamentary debate on the
suspension of the death penalty, LSSP leader Colvin R de Silva eloquently
made the point that crime was the product of an unjust society and that
capital punishment stood in the way of fundamental social reform.
?If we will not face up to the responsibility that the society must take
over every single member of that society, are not ready to face up to the
fact that, in every murder, we are also participants in the murder inasmuch
as we have tolerated the existence of such a social background and context,
upbringing, education, economic and psychological situation which produce
such men: unless we understand that, we will never face up to this question
of the death penalty squarely,? he said.
By 1964, the LSSP completely capitulated to the SLFP, betrayed its
international socialist principles and joined the bourgeois government led
by Bandaranaike?s widow. But the political struggle that the LSSP waged
nevertheless created ongoing resistance among working people to attacks on
democratic rights, including to the death penalty. Even the right-wing
United National Party government of J.R.Jayawardene felt compelled to
modify the use of capital punishment in its autocratic constitution of 1978.
Under the new legal arrangement, state executions could only be carried out
with the unanimous approval of the trial judge, the attorney general and
the minister of justice. When there was no agreement, the sentence was to
be commuted to life imprisonment. Before being carried out, the death
sentence also had to be finally authorised by the president?a clause that
effectively ended executions. The last hanging took place in 1976.
Over the last decade, however, President Kumaratunga has made several
attempts to reintroduce the death penalty. Confronting mounting opposition
over the failure to end the war and the continuing deterioration of living
standards, she and her coalition government turned to the right-wing
nostrums of ?law and order? to divert attention from their broken promises
and lies. The LSSP, which is widely discredited and little more than a
hollow shell, has been no obstacle.
In March 1999, as she neared the end of her first term of office,
Kumaratunga demagogically declared at a provincial council election rally:
?The crime rate is rising and it?s no time to pour compassion on criminals
who have no respect for human life. My government therefore, decided to
re-introduce the death penalty.? She was compelled to back down in the face
of widespread protests. Since then, the issue has hung in the balance: no
death sentence has been commuted to life imprisonment, but neither has it
been carried out.
The UNP-led coalition government, which held office from 2001 to April
2004, also made moves to revive state executions in 2003. But confronting
widespread opposition over the impact of its economic restructuring
policies, it proved incapable of implementing its plan. After her United
Peoples Freedom Front (UPFA) coalition won the April election, Kumaratunga
is now attempting to do the same.
(source: World Socialist Website)
