March 8
IRAQ:
Americans: Death penalty for Saddam
Most people in the United States want Saddam Hussein to hang if he is
convicted at his trial, a view not shared by some of the country's
long-time allies. A poll found that residents of 8 other countries - most
of whom have abolished the death penalty - prefer that the former Iraqi
leader spend life in prison.
Similar, but less dramatic, disparities were found when US attitudes were
compared to those in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Mexico,
South Korea and Spain on whether Saddam is getting a fair trial and
whether Iraqis are better off since he was driven from office.
Saddam, who was captured nine months after US-led forces invaded Iraq, and
seven co-defendants are being tried on charges of carrying out torture and
illegal arrests and executions. They face death by hanging if convicted.
Almost 6 in 10 in the US, 57%, said Saddam should be executed if he is
convicted in the trial now in its 5th month in Baghdad.
"If he truly destroyed as many lives as they say he did, then he doesn't
deserve to live," said Craig Larson, a retired military man who lives in
Chesapeake, Virginia.
The survey found most people in Britain, France, Germany, Italy, South
Korea and Spain willing to send Saddam to prison for the rest of his life.
In Canada and Mexico, people were more inclined to favour a life sentence
than execution.
The death penalty has been abolished in seven of the nine countries
polled. South Korea has talked about abolishing it. In the United States,
where 1,012 have been executed over the past 28 years and at least 3,300
more are on death row, public support remains strong for state-sanctioned
executions.
A study by Amnesty International found that more than nine of the 10
executions worldwide in 2004 were carried out in the United States, China,
Iran and Vietnam.
Public support for sending Saddam to prison for life was strongest in
Spain and Italy - where 7 in 10 favoured a life sentence over death. A
similar sentiment was expressed in Germany. In the United States, the
survey found more than 1/3 favouring life in prison for Saddam if he is
convicted.
(source: The Scotsman)
THE NETHERLANDS:
Threat to Return Gay and Lesbian Iranians ----(LGBT) asylum-seekers could
be sent back to Iran rests on serious misunderstandings of Iranian law,
Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Verdonk. Deporting LGBT
people to Iran would violate the Netherlands' obligation to protect people
from torture, ill-treatment, and possible execution.
Dutch Immigration Minister Rita Verdonk's threat to end a 6-month
moratorium on deporting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT)
asylum-seekers back to Iran rests on serious misunderstandings of Iranian
law, Human Rights Watch said today in a letter to Verdonk. Deporting LGBT
people to Iran would violate the Netherlands' obligation to protect people
from torture, ill-treatment, and possible execution. The ban on
deportations was imposed in September 2005, after reports of executions in
Iran for homosexual conduct. In a February 28 letter to the Tweede Kamer
(Second Chamber), the main house of parliament, Minister Verdonk declared
her intention to end the moratorium. She stated that, "It appears that
there are no cases of an execution on the basis of the sole fact that
someone is homosexual... For homosexual men and women it is not totally
impossible to function in society, although they should be wary of coming
out of the closet too openly."
"Men and women suspected of homosexual conduct in Iran face the threat of
execution," said Scott Long, director of Human Rights Watch's Lesbian,
Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights Program. "We have documented brutal
floggings imposed by courts as punishment, and torture and ill-treatment,
including sexual abuse, in police custody."
Article 111 of the Code of Islamic Punishments, Iran's criminal code,
states that lavat - sexual intercourse between men - "is punishable by
death." Under Articles 121-122 of the Penal Code, Tafkhiz -
non-penetrative "foreplay" between men - is punishable by 100 lashes for
each partner and by death on the 4th conviction. Article 123 of the Penal
Code further provides that, "If two men who are not related by blood lie
naked under the same cover without any necessity," each one will receive
99 lashes. Articles 127 to 134 stipulate that the punishment for sexual
intercourse between women is 100 lashes; if the offence is repeated 3
times, the punishment is execution.
"The legal machinery of persecution is oiled, ready, and operating in
Iran, and the Netherlands has a binding and absolute legal obligation not
to send people back to face it," said Long.
Human Rights Watch said that the European Convention on Human Rights
prohibits the Netherlands from deporting a person who may be at risk of
torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. The European Court
last year ruled that the Netherlands could not proceed with a deportation
to Eritrea due to such a real risk. The European Court has also held that
diplomatic assurances cannot justify returns to countries where torture is
"endemic," or a "recalcitrant and enduring problem." The United Nations
Convention against Torture specifically states, in Article 3, that "No
State shall expel, return ("refouler") or extradite a person to another
State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be
in danger of being subjected to torture." It also requires that "for the
purpose of determining whether there are such grounds, the competent
authorities shall take into account all relevant considerations, including
where applicable, the existence in the State concerned of a consistent
pattern of gross, flagrant, or mass violations of human rights."
Minister Verdonk's statement has sparked an uproar in the Netherlands,
with the opposition calling for a full debate in parliament. In her
letter, Minister Verdonk also indicated that religious minorities could
avoid persecution in Iran by remaining undercover. "Only when Christians
and converted Muslims [in Iran] present themselves with their faith too
actively," the letter said, "can they come to the negative attention of
the authorities."
"Sexual orientation and religious belief are deeply felt parts of the
human personality," said Long. "Silencing oneself is not an acceptable
price for staying alive."
(source: Reuters)
GLOBAL:
INT'L WOMEN'S DAY:----Death Penalty Rare for Women, But On the Rise in
Iran and China
A 17-year-old Iranian girl known only as Nazanin fought off 2 men trying
to rape her, and is said to have fatally stabbed one of them. In January,
almost 2 years after the incident, a Tehran court sentenced her to death.
A 17-year-old Iranian girl known only as Nazanin fought off two men trying
to rape her, and is said to have fatally stabbed one of them. In January,
almost 2 years after the incident, a Tehran court sentenced her to death.
Nazanin is one of at least 19 women believed to be on the death row in
Iran, says Elisabetta Zamparutti, head of Hands Off Cain, a Rome-based
organisation working to abolish the death penalty around the world.
While the number of women facing the death sentence appears to be on the
rise in some countries, like Iran and China, worldwide, women are less
likely than men to be condemned to death.
Women commit fewer heinous crimes like murder, for which death can be the
ultimate sentence, and there is a cultural repugnance to killing a woman
that does not hold for men.
"Legally there is no discrimination" between men and women in Egypt, Amr
Abdel Motaal, senior partner at a Cairo law firm, told IPS. "Males and
females are equal before the law, although judges, who are typically men,
tend to be more lenient towards female defendants. The number of women who
receive the death penalty is very small."
Only China, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Singapore and Vietnam regularly
execute women without any apparent gender bias, according to the Capital
Punishment U.K. website. The penal codes of most countries prohibit the
execution of pregnant women, who are either reprieved at once or, in
theory, liable to be executed after they have given birth.
While overall the number of executions around the world is seeing a
downward trend, according to Amnesty International, they appear to be
increasing in a few countries, notably China and Iran, where Nazanin
lives.
Following the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last year,
the number of executions in Iran has increased sharply. According to news
articles in the Iranian media compiled by Hands Off Cain and Human Rights
Watch, between Jan. 20 and Feb. 20 alone the judicial authorities executed
10 prisoners and condemned another 21 to death. Last year at least two
Iranian women were executed and another 13 were given death sentences,
Zamparutti said. Of those, two, Delara Darabi and a young woman known only
as Fakhteh, were minors like Nazanin, Zamparutti said.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights prohibit the imposition of the death penalty
for crimes committed before the age of 18. These treaties also prohibit
the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishments. Iran is a
party to both treaties, Zamparutti said, but appears to ignore them.
The death penalty continues to be used extensively and arbitrarily in
China, says Amnesty International. People were executed for non-violent
crimes such as tax fraud and embezzlement, as well as for drug offences
and violent crimes. Because authorities keep national statistics on death
sentences and executions secret, AI researchers said it is difficult to
come by accurate figures. Based on the available public reports, the human
rights watchdog estimates that at least 3,400 people had been executed and
at least 6,000 sentenced to death in 2005. There is no breakdown in the
number of women killed by the Chinese state.
The reasons women are sentenced to death and the way they are killed
sometimes differ from men. Of the 13 women in Iran sentenced to death,
three face stoning as punishment for alleged adultery. Stoning is a
particularly painful way to die. "Only women are sentenced to death by
stoning for adultery," Zamparutti said. Men, on the other hand, are
hanged, if they are sentenced to death for that crime at all.
Ma Weihua, a woman facing capital punishment on drugs charges in China,
was reportedly forced to undergo an abortion in police custody in February
2005, apparently so that she could be put to death "legally," according to
Human Rights Watch. Chinese law prevents the execution of pregnant women.
In the wake of public protests, Ma's trial eventually was suspended after
her lawyer provided details of the forced abortion, HRW said, and she was
eventually sentenced to life imprisonment.
There are 55 women currently on death row in the United States. Frances
Newton was killed by the southern state of Texas on Sep. 14, 2005. Since
capital punishment was reinstated in the United States in 1976 after a
3-year suspension, 11 female offenders have been put to death. Still,
death sentences and actual executions for female offenders are rare in
comparison to male offenders in the United States. In fact, women are more
likely to be dropped out of the system the further the capital punishment
system progresses. While women account for 1 in 10 murder arrests, only
one in 97 are actually executed.
In a 1983 ruling, India's Supreme Court said the death sentence should be
awarded only in "the rarest of rare cases" but the country has yet to
abolish the death penalty altogether. Capital punishment is carried out by
hanging, without exception, and this method is considered to be devoid of
suffering and humiliation -- it is never done publicly. The last woman to
be executed in India was in the 1920s.
In Latin America, the death penalty is rare for men and women alike. Only
Cuba and Guatemala still have the death penalty on the books for criminal
offences, beyond crimes in the military arena or in times of war. The last
time Cuba implemented capital punishment was in 2003: 3 men were condemned
to death for stealing a boat in an attempt to escape the island. And
Guatemala is debating the abolition of capital punishment altogether.
(source: IPS)
