Jan. 7
PAPUA NEW GUINEA:
PNG considers draft report on death penalty Papua New Guinea
A draft report on the death penalty for criminals in Papua New Guinea has
been sent to the Ministers for Justice, Internal Security and Correctional
Service.
The report was prepared after a visit to Britain by a government
delegation to study capital punishment.
After input from the 3 respective ministers, the draft will be presented
to PNG's National Executive Council, before it is made public.
(source: Radio Australia News)
TANZANIA:
Tanzania death row hunger strike
Death row prisoners in Tanzania have entered the 5th day of a hunger
strike saying their human rights are being violated.
Prisons in East Africa are notorious for abuses and poor conditions More
than 15 inmates at Ukonga maximum security prison in Dar es Salaam
complain of a poor diet and severe beatings in overcrowded cells.
The prison authorities reject the prisoners' claims.
The Home Office recently announced that conditions in the country's
prisons had improved.
Prison official Augustine Nanyaro said the prisoners were lying and the
government had improved their diet.
"They get the diet that has been prescribed in the prison's dietary scale.
I think that those are just a few people who would like to smear some bad
things on us," he said.
Appeal delays
Ukonga prisons, on the outskirts of Tanzania's main commercial city, is
home to more than 3,000 inmates. Of these, 90 have been waiting for more
than 20 years to be hanged, after the courts found them guilty of murder.
They say their appeals have not been heard and that some of them do not
get any visits from their loved ones because their relatives think that
they have been executed.
The authorities admit they have a problem but say it is the attorney
general who makes the decisions.
"Death sentences for some time now have not been executed," said Mr
Nanyaro.
Reform
According to the Ministry of Home Affairs, efforts are being made to
improve conditions in the cells in line with human rights demands.
However, even Ukonga prisoners with shorter sentences allege severe
beatings. They also say that when searches for cigarettes and drugs are
made, they are given rectal examinations.
Next week the government will distribute new yellow uniforms to all
prisoners in the country, replacing their current white outfits.
A rehabilitation process is due to come on stream that includes vocational
training.
However, the human rights issue in Ukonga prison is so sensitive at the
moment that when I attempted to approach the building on Thursday, I was
arrested.
After 9 hours of interviews and a search of my bags it was established
that I had not taken any photographs and I was released and warned that it
was against the law to be within 100 yards of a prison without prior
permission.
The prison is along a busy public road.
(source: (Vicki Ntetema for) BBC News)
BULGARIA:
2004 in Review - Death sentences and diplomacy
ANNUALLY, May 6 is a great day in Bulgaria: St George's Day, and the Day
of the Bulgarian Army. But in 2004, it was anything but a great day, as
the country was left in shock and anger as 5 Bulgarian medics were
sentenced by a court in Libya to be put to death by firing squad.
It was the latest turn in a trial that followed the detection in 1998 that
several hundred children in a Libyan hospital were HIV-positive. The
Libyans questioned and detained scores of Libyans and foreigners. All the
Libyan detainees were released. 6 Bulgarian medics and a Palestinian
doctor were charged with deliberately infecting the children with HIV,
among other charges which included trying to overthrow the state,
illegally making liquor, illegal foreign currency dealing, and in some
cases, promiscuity.
The 6 Bulgarians are Kristiana Vulcheva, Snejana Dimitrova, Nassya Nenova,
Valentina Siropulo, Valya Chevenyashka, and Doctor Zdravko Georgiev. The
trial started in February 2000. It continued for more than 4 years,
through innumerable procedural twists and turns, relocation of hearings,
and culminated in the guilty verdict for 5 of the accused. The court
released Georgiev on the grounds that his time in detention was equivalent
to sentence served.
By the end of 2004, an appeal process was proceeding. In December, the
Libyans made an offer that "compensation" be paid in return for the
release of the medics.
The idea of compensation was unpalatable to Bulgaria on the grounds that
it would be an acknowledgement of the guilt of the medics, which no one in
Bulgaria and very few in international circles accepted.
Among key points of the defence was that the infection predated the
arrival of the Bulgarian medics at the hospital. There were further
infections after the medics were already in detention. Also raised in
defence were the unhygienic conditions and inadequate medical procedures
at the hospital. Few failed to note that no Libyans had been put on trial,
and that Muammar Gaddaffi's prosecutors had put the blame squarely at the
door of a group of foreigners. Seething public sentiment, and the anger of
the parents of the victims, made the Bulgarians hated figures in Libya,
the subject of a desire for revenge.
While some of the medics made confessions, they later retracted them,
telling the court that these confessions had been extracted through the
use of torture. The court decided not to believe that Libyan police would
use torture.
Throughout the trial and after the verdict, Bulgaria has rallied support
for the cause of the medics. Such support has been forthcoming in large
measure.
Among those that have taken up the issue on Bulgaria's behalf are the
United States, the European Union, as well as individual EU member states,
the United Nations in the person of its secretary-general Kofi Annan, the
Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, Russia, the International
Council of Nurses, and various human rights groups including New
York-based Human Rights Watch.
The "rehabilitation" of Gaddaffi, including the partial lifting of EU and
US sanctions against Libya, saw an increasing number of engagements
between him and various Western leaders, most of whom undertook to raise
the issue of the medics.
UK foreign secretary Jack Straw said that the lifting of sanctions had
increased, not diminished, prospects for negotiations to save the medics.
While Gaddaffi spoke of the courts as independent, this was a stance that
lost whatever credibility it may have had when the compensation trade-off
was offered by Tripoli.
Within Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Orthodox Church rallied support from
Patriarch Maxim's fellow heads of Orthodox churches.
Foreign Minister Solomon Passi and his staff consistently pursued the
issue, on a level of "quiet diplomacy" that some outside official circles
found frustrating. In an interview with The Sofia Echo in November, when
asked about misgivings about this policy, Passi responded: "All diplomacy
is quiet".
In an official response to the compensation offer, Gergana Gruncharova,
who doubles as Deputy Foreign Minister and as ministry spokesperson, said
that Bulgaria was "open to dialogue that will take into consideration the
human tragedy of the infected Libyan children and the categorical lack of
guilt of the Bulgarian medics".
President Georgi Purvanov said in early December that he was prepared to
have conversations about the Bulgarian medics' fate "but I will not hold
negotiations which might cast doubt on their innocence".
As the Christmas season approached, a civic initiative took hold to send
Christmas cards to the imprisoned medics, while Passi attempted to
persuade Libyan authorities to allow the medics a temporary release to see
their families for Christmas.
But for the medics, the New Year brought only further waiting and
continuing uncertainty about their fate, including the looming question of
whether, for a crime of which scant few outside Libya believe them to be
guilty, 2005 would see them ranged in front of a Libyan firing squad.
(source: The Sofia Echo)
