May 26
CHINA:
China has launched a people's war on drug abuse, offering rewards for
information on traffickers, a top official said on Thursday, tackling a
problem that was wiped out after the Communist Party came to power in
1949.
China, which borders the "Golden Triangle" opium-producing region where
the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos meet, has about a million
registered addicts and many more who are not registered.
The target of the people's war, which began last month, included drug
manufacturers and trade and the launch of a huge registration and
rehabilitation campaign for addicts, Yang Fengrui, deputy director of
China's National Narcotics Control Commission, told a news conference.
"Despite the many achievements of our work, China's drug situation is
still on a trend of developing and spreading," he said. "It is still
grave." The government would also mobilize ordinary people to report any
drug trafficking and drug-related crimes, offering cash rewards as high as
300,000 yuan ($36,250), he said.
Last year, police arrested 67,000 people nationwide and solved 98,000
drug-related cases and involving 10.8 tons of heroin and 2.7 tons of
"ice," he said.
Yang blamed active cross-border smuggling and a new, more open Chinese
society for the increasing drugs trade.
Convicted drug dealers receive harsh punishments, including the death
penalty in some cases, and users caught by police are sent to
rehabilitation centers where they can serve up to 4 years.
Yang said China was experimenting with home rehabilitation scheme for
addicts, but he emphasized that compulsory rehabilitation and re-education
through labor remained the "main channels."
Traffic of narcotics from neighboring Afghanistan and the Golden Triangle
was rising, while synthetic drugs like ecstasy and "ice" were being
produced in large quantities within China's borders, state media said last
month.
Seizures of the party drug ecstasy jumped 800 percent in 2004 to 3 million
pills, and 11 tons of heroin, 13.6 percent more than in 2003, were
confiscated last year, it said.
European traders introduced opium to China at the beginning of the 18th
century, but it was the British who turned China into a nation of addicts
and triggered the first Opium War, which in turn led to the British
possession of Hong Kong.
(source: Reuters)
AUSTRALIA/INDONESIA:
Drug case tests improved Indonesia-Australia ties -- Australian Schapelle
Corby was arrested by Indonesia police last October on marijuana smuggling
charges.
Australians' eyes will be on an Indonesian courtroom, where their fellow
compatriot Schapelle Corby is expected to receive a verdict on charges of
drug smuggling, a crime that can carry the death penalty.
Last October, officials at Bali airport found 4.1 kilograms of marijuana
zipped inside Ms. Corby's boogie board bag next to her flippers. Since
then, her case has captivated Australia, where the wide-eyed 27-year-old
from Brisbane who claims innocence has been shown constantly on the
nightly news being hustled in and out of a tumultuous courtroom packed
with media.
Indonesians may be treating Corby's predicament as just another drug case,
but outrage on the young woman's behalf has spilled from all quarters of
Australian media, with pointed questions being aired about the integrity
of Indonesia's legal system. Legal experts, and even movie stars like
Russell Crowe, have weighed into the debate on Corby's side. A few cynics
have suggested that the outpouring of sympathy in this case while there
are two Australians on death row in Singapore and Vietnam and 11 others in
custody in Indonesia, may be driven somewhat by Corby's good looks.
While passions are running high among ordinary Australians over the case -
and a guilty verdict would inflame them further - political analysts here
suggest that the blossoming relationship between Jakarta and Canberra has
proven too important for both governments to jeopardize by politicizing
the case.
In the last 2 years, the two countries have established a ministerial
forum where key ministers meet to discuss issues ranging from mining to
immigration. And this has opened up more possibilities for resolving
conflicts - like the Corby case - at least at the government level.
"Where you have such closeness, you get a totally different relationship,
a deeper one, and although there may be domestic pressure on [Prime
Minister John] Howard after the verdict, the diplomatic relationship will
most likely be managed well where staffers are so close to each other,"
says Virginia Hooker, professor of Indonesian and Malaya at the Australian
National University.
The Howard government has been trying to build on democratic developments
in Indonesia, among them judicial reform. This has forced Australia to
emphasize dialogue over vitriol in the Corby case.
"Australia has argued for a very long time that Indonesia should have an
independent judiciary," said Foreign Minister Alexander Downer. "Of course
the downside of that is that you can't ring up the president any more and
say 'Release this person, tell the court to do this, tell the court to do
that.'"
Malcolm Cook, program director for Asia and the Pacific at the Lowy
Institute, an independent think-tank in Sydney says he does not believe
there has been any pressure from the Australian government on Indonesia.
But, he says, if a guilty verdict is handed down, then Mr. Howard would
face domestic pressure over his close relationship with Indonesian
President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.
"The defense has been successful in whipping up support for the young
woman in the media here, and the ambivalence about Indonesia domestically
would only get exacerbated," says Mr. Cook.
A poll conducted by the Lowy Institute earlier this year shows that when
asked how Australians felt about a long list of friends and neighboring
countries, it rated Indonesia just above the Middle East, Iran, and Iraq,
with a marginal 52 % saying they felt positive about the place, and 42
saying they felt negative.
The Howard government has made a few moves to help Corby's defense,
including the temporary release of a prisoner who went to testify at the
trial.
Corby's defense has claimed all along that baggage handlers in Australia
planted the drugs in Corby's luggage as part of a bungled domestic
smuggling operation - and that the drugs were never meant to arrive in
Indonesia at all.
Sources at the Indonesian Embassy say that although the Australian
government appears to have supported the defense during the trial, there
had been no attempt to interfere with the case.
However, there are lingering doubts here about the sanctity of the current
legal system in Indonesia, which is still evolving from the days of the
Suharto regime, when one's legal argument often had no bearing on the
outcome of a case.
Questions are being asked as to why there were no fingerprints taken from
the bag that contained 9 pounds of marijuana the moment it was discovered
in the student's boogie bag in Denpasar airport.
There are other issues as well. "Unlike Australia and America, which have
a jury system, a panel of three judges will decide on the fate of the
girl, and these judges have a very strong history of conviction on drugs
cases," Cook explains.
What makes the matter even more difficult for the Australian government is
the fact that AUSAID has been funding the training of judges and the legal
establishment in a more democratic system.
"Although I am not sure whether these 3 judges have had the training, it
really makes things much more sticky for Australia because here is
Australia putting a huge effort into changing the old system," says
Virginia Hooker.
The case present pitfalls for Indonesia as well - not the least of which
are threats of a travel boycott by Australians in the event of a guilty
verdict. Travelers to Bali already have a heightened concern about their
luggage on arrival at the airport. Kathryn Robinson is an anthropologist
who transits through Bali at least eight times a year on her way to and
from Sulowesi.
"The last time I got there my lock was missing and I immediately reported
it to Qantas staff before I got to customs - something I would not usually
do," Ms. Robinson says. However, she has no plans to cancel trips to
Indonesia no matter what the outcome of the Corby case.
But not all may be as forgiving: Traveltrade, a trade magazine, reports
that Bali bookings have slowed by 20 percent in recent weeks.
However, a verdict of "not guilty" could go down badly in Indonesia as
well, where the judiciary might be accused of succumbing to pressure from
Australia.
In the end, Australia's improved ties with Jakarta could ease Corby's
future, even if she is found guilty. "There is talk of a one-off special
prisoner transfer deal if Schapelle must go to jail," says Cook. "Such
discussions could only be possible if the two countries had an extremely
good understanding."
(source: The Christian Science Monitor)
IRAQ:
Capital Punishment Returns to Iraq
3 men convicted of murder, rape and kidnapping sat before the judge,
awaiting their fates. But first they had to face their victims' seething
families.
"They broke his arms. They broke his legs. They took out his eyeballs,"
one woman said at the hearing Sunday in the city of Kut southeast of
Baghdad, describing what the men had done to her son. "Death penalty. I
want the death penalty."
A man in the back of the crowded courtroom held a sign that said: "We do
not accept any sentence less than death."
Moments later, the spectators got their wish. The 3 alleged members of the
insurgent group known as the Ansar al-Sunna Army were condemned to be
hanged "in the next 10 days," according to the sentence imposed by the
special criminal court.
In a show of force the government hopes will help quell the insurgency,
Iraq will soon carry out its first judicial executions since the fall of
President Saddam Hussein. And despite objections raised by some other
countries and international human rights groups, the Iraqi public, by most
accounts, is welcoming their return.
"Before, the criminals thought that they would go to jail, and a few
months later they would be released," said Abu Muhammad, owner of Kuwait
Money Exchange Co. "But now, this will stop them."
In Hussein's Iraq, executions were commonly used to suppress political
dissent, and 114 different crimes carried the death penalty as a possible
sentence. After the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the U.S. administrator, L.
Paul Bremer, suspended capital punishment, declaring that "the former
regime used certain provisions of the penal code as a means of oppression,
in violation of internationally acknowledged human rights."
Iraq's interim government revived the death penalty last August for a
smaller set of violent crimes, as well as drug trafficking. The decision
is believed to have been motivated by the desire to execute Hussein, who
is expected to be tried by a special tribunal this summer.
"I am waiting for the day to see Saddam hanged on TV," said Salam Naji,
52, owner of a Baghdad furniture shop. "He is behind all this violence and
killings."
Now, the government has pledged to make broader use of the death penalty,
as it struggles to put down an insurgency that has taken more than 600
lives in the past month.
"We will carry out the death penalty against those who kill scores of
Iraqi people," Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said at a news conference last
week. "We will hold the criminals accountable."
But human rights organizations have raised concerns about the Shiite
Muslim-led government's use of capital punishment to deter insurgent
attacks. In addition, Iraqi security forces, and particularly Interior
Ministry commandos, have been accused in recent weeks of summarily
executing Sunni Muslim religious leaders.
"We object to the death penalty on principle, and certainly in a country
where you have large numbers of people arrested and a high degree of
violence," said Joe Stork, deputy director of the Middle East division of
Human Rights Watch, which is based in New York. In light of Iraq's history
of using execution as a political tool, eliminating capital punishment
"would certainly be a good way for the Iraqi government to step out from
under that particular shadow and distinguish itself," he said
Britain, which maintains several thousand troops in Iraq, outlawed capital
punishment decades ago. Peter Goldsmith, Britain's attorney general,
registered his country's objection to Iraq's new policy as recently as
Monday morning in a conversation with Iraqi Justice Minister Abdul Hussein
Shandal, according to a British official here.
"The U.K. opposes the death penalty in all circumstances and calls upon
Iraq to abolish it," said Doug Wilson, legal adviser to the British
Embassy in Baghdad.
The U.S. Embassy said in a statement that as a sovereign nation, Iraq
could determine its own criminal penalties. "The death penalty is a
decision for democratically elected and legally chosen Iraqi authorities,"
the statement said.
Several Iraqis said they favored the death penalty because it would allow
for the execution of Hussein, who has spent the past 17 months at a
detention facility believed to be near Baghdad's airport.
The Shiite bloc leading Iraq's new government said last month that if
Hussein were convicted, it would oppose any attempt to spare his life.
Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari would "fully support" executing Hussein in
the event of a conviction, according to his spokesman, Laith Kubba.
The only member of Iraq's government to publicly oppose executing Hussein
is President Jalal Talabani, a longtime opponent of capital punishment. He
told the BBC in April that he would "go on a holiday" rather than sign an
order authorizing Hussein's execution. Because the signatures of his 2
deputies would suffice, his opposition would not prevent the order from
being carried out.
(source: Washington Post)
