death penalty news January 29, 2005
UGANDA: Ugandan Attorney General Kiddu Makubuya has defended death penalty, saying that Uganda is not ready for the abolition of the death penalty. A team of four state attorneys headed by Principal State Attorney Michael Chibita was quoted on Saturday by The New Vision newspaper as saying that the attorney general is against a petition to abolish the death penalty in the east African country. Representing the attorney general, the team told the Constitutional Court that abolition demanded a long process and serious sensitization before it could be abolished. The team said even in countries where the punishment was abolished, it was not done overnight, that it was after public debates had been held on this issue. Over 400 condemned prisoners recently petitioned the court seeking to abolish the death penalty, arguing that the punishment was cruel, inhuman and degrading. They said it was unconditional because it deprived them of the right to life. The government team submitted that the death penalty was incorporated justifiably in the constitution through the Constitutional Assembly, which was the voice of the 26 million Ugandans who approved it as a legitimate and appropriate punishment. "We have our own unique culture, values, norms and aspirations,which we must follow under our criminal justice system," the team said, adding that "Uganda, as a sovereign state, should not work under pressure because some other countries have abolished the death penalty." Enditem (source: Xinhua) CHINA: China mulls revision to death penalty system: China is planning a drastic revision to its death penalty system and may introduce 20 to 30 year-long prison sentences to reduce the frequent use of capital punishments, the official media reported today. "The key issue in China regarding the death penalty is to reform the punishment system", Deputy Minister of Justice, Zhang Jun said at a conference on death penalty. "The goal of the reform of the punishment system is not to abolish the death penalty but to set up more long-term prison sentences, for example, 20 or 30 year sentences in order to reduce the use of the death penalty", Zhang was quoted as saying by the 'People's Daily'. China uses the death penalty for a wide range of crimes ranging from murder to economic crimes like corruption. In 2001, Amnesty International recorded more than 4,000 death sentences and nearly 2,500 executions in China. Legal experts at the conference argued that China would need to limit the use of capital punishment when it ratifies the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and that abolition was the mark of a "civilised society." Professor Qiu Xinglong, the dean of the law faculty in Xiangtan University, Hunan Province and a leading advocate for reforming the current death penalty system in China, claimed that "as long as the law recognised that criminals were humans, criminals were entitled to live and the state and the law could not deprive them of their right to life". A survey by the Ministry of Justice last year found that most criminals who were sentenced to life imprisonment actually stayed in prison only for 15 or 16 years before being released. (source: PTI / New Kerala)
