Nov. 17
UGANDA:
123 soldiers on death row, Museveni tells delegates
About 123 soldiers of the Uganda Peoples Defence Forces are on death row,
President Yoweri Museveni announced yesterday.
Museveni was defending his government against claims that it has killed
civilians the same way other governments, like that of the late Dr. Milton
Obote did.
"Since we came into government [in 1986], the Military Court Martial has
executed 22 soldiers by firing squad for killing people. Another 123
soldiers have been sentenced to death but are waiting somewhere," Mr
Museveni told NRM delegates at the Mandela National stadium, Namboole
yesterday.
The 5-day conference is meant to elect the national leadership, including
members of the commissions and the presidential candidate.
Museveni is expected to remain the NRM chairman and its flag bearer in the
2006 polls.
But by press time, Museveni had not picked nomination forms from the NRM
Interim Electoral Commission.
Museveni's speech was punctuated by shouts of "NO Change" or "Akyali
Mboko" Luganda (he is still young) in reference to his push to stay in
office for a third term.
Museveni, who spoke for over 3 hours told delegates conference that
execution by firing squad is one way his government has stopped extra
judicial killings by the army.
He challenged the former chairman of the UPC Presidential Policy
Commission James Rwanyarare, Adoko Nekyon (late Obote's cousin), Cecilia
Ogwal and Hajji Badru Wegulo, the chairman of the newly constituted
Constitutional Steering Committee to cite one case under the UPC's
13-years in power in which a single soldier was executed for killing
civilians.
"When UPC says that we all democratic killers, I don't think I'm in that
league," he said.
Museveni's wife, Janet, the Vice-President Prof. Gilbert Bukenya, Speaker
of Parliament, Edward Ssekandi and the Prime minister, Prof. Apolo
Nsibambi attended the conference.
In attendance were party delegations from the ruling Rwanda Patriotic
Front, Burundi, Kenya, Eritrea, Egypt, China and Ethiopia.
Museveni amused the audience when he disclosed that he practiced
witchcraft during the NRM bush war on recommendation of the Baganda
peasants so that he could capture power.
"We cut a chicken and then I jumped over it," he said.
"They (Baganda) said that after that ceremony, I could even capture power
with one gun, but I told them that tell your jajjas (spirits) to bless me
and I do the rest," he said.
He said he would set up a police department to fight bribery in politics.
"The use of money is very dangerous because it discredits elections. The
use of money in elections must stop," the President said apparently out of
concerns by NRM officials that some candidates bribed voters to vote for
them.
(source: Daily Monitor)
SINGAPORE:
Singapore to Execute Australian: Lawyer
Singapore will hang 25-year-old Australian drug smuggler Nguyen Tuong Van
on December 2, despite numerous pleas by Canberra for clemency, his
Australian lawyer said on Thursday.
Lawyer Lex Lasry said the Singapore government confirmed the date of
execution in a letter sent to Nguyen's mother. Nguyen was convicted last
year of trying to smuggle 400 grams (0.9 lb) of heroin from Cambodia.
"The letter was received at 2 p.m. this afternoon,'' Lasry told Reuters,
adding Nguyen's mother would be allowed extra visits in the days leading
up to his execution. Nguyen, from the southern Australian city of
Melbourne, was arrested in December 2002 at Singapore's Changi airport
while in transit for Australia.
Australia had asked Singapore to reconsider clemency for Nguyen -- who
said he was carrying the drugs to help his brother pay off debts to loan
sharks -- because he had co-operated with authorities and could be a
witness in future drug cases.
Nguyen will be the 1st Australian executed for drugs charges since Michael
McAuliffe went to the gallows in Malaysia in 1993 for trafficking.
Two other Australians, Mai Cong Thanh, 46, and Nguyen Van Chinh, 45, are
on death row in Vietnam after being convicted of drug smuggling.
Amnesty International said in a 2004 report that about 400 people had been
hanged in Singapore since 1991, mostly for drug trafficking, giving the
city-state of 4.2 million people the highest execution rate in the world
relative to population.
(source: Reuters)
SUDAN:
2 Sudanese Soldiers Sentenced to Death
In Khartoum, a court set up by Sudan to try war crimes in its
violence-plagued Darfur region issued its first sentences Wednesday,
condemning to death 2 soldiers in the torture killing of a Sudanese
citizen.
The official Sudan News Agency said two corporals were convicted of
killing the victim, whom they had accused of carrying out anti-government
activities.
The defendants were members of the Sudanese military serving in Darfur,
the large western region where the government and allied militias have
been battling a rebel movement, SUNA said.
The news agency gave few other details of the case, saying only that the
defendants were found guilty of premeditated murder, based part on
testimony from witnesses.
The Sudanese government established the court in an attempt to hold off
international demands for it to hand over citizens suspected of Darfur war
crimes to the International Criminal Court in the Netherlands. The U.N.
Security Council has mandated the ICC to prosecute the Darfur suspects.
At least 180,000 people have died and 2 million been displaced during two
years of Darfur's crisis which erupted when rebels took up arms against
what they saw as years of state neglect and discrimination against
Sudanese of African origin. The government is accused of responding with a
counterinsurgency campaign in which the ethnic Arab militia, known as
Janjaweed, committed wide-scale abuses against ethnic Africans.
(source: Associated Press)
