[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Sept. 15


ASIA:

A proposal to curb Asia's over-active death row


George Orwell's famous account of a hanging in colonial Burma provides a
compelling critique of the death penalty. Walking behind the condemned man
on the way to the gallows, Orwell noticed him step slightly aside to avoid
a puddle on the path.

"It is curious, but till that moment I had never realised what it means to
destroy a healthy, conscious man," he wrote. "When I saw the prisoner step
aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness,
of cutting a life short when it is in full tide. This man was not dying,
he was alive just as we were alive ... his brain still remembered,
foresaw, reasoned -- reasoned even about puddles."

If you were to judge from the western press you might think this kind of
gruesome scene takes place most often in the American boondocks. But while
it is always good sport to criticise the US, in terms of lives lost it is
marginal.

Asia -- the region in which Orwell's essay was set -- is the world's best
practice when it comes to executing people, accounting for well over 80 %
of known executions worldwide: 15 Asian states retain the death penalty;
their execution methods include hanging, shooting and lethal injection.
Singapore scores the world's highest per capita execution rate, with more
than 400 hung since 1991, according to United Nations figures.

China, meanwhile, is the death-penalty superpower, executing at least
1,770 people last year, according to Amnesty International. The true total
is likely to be much higher but, like a number of Asian states (but unlike
the muchmaligned US), China refuses to provide official statistics on
death sentences passed and executions carried out.

However, the news is not all bad for those Asians who oppose capital
punishment. Five Asian states have abolished the death penalty in the past
decade: Cambodia, Nepal, Timor-Leste, Bhutan and the Philippines, where
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo signed a bill outlawing the death
penalty in June.

To build on this momentum, abolitionist states in the region should
establish a coalition against the death penalty. Support and counsel from
Europe would be welcome but in order to forestall any claims about
neocolonialism, the running should be made by Asian leaders.

The coalition should be guided by a single consideration: effectiveness.
Rather than issuing loud condemnations and raising indiscriminate trade
sanctions, which would be unlikely to save a single life, it should look
for creative ways to nudge regional countries toward abolition.

There are several ways to structure the coalition's work, none of which
would involve megaphones. It could be politic to start with de facto
abolitionist countries (such as Burma) and seek to move them up the
spectrum towards formal abolition. It could focus initially on liberal
democracies, which tend to be easier to influence than more closed
societies.

A particular opportunity exists in South Korea, which has not executed
anyone since 1998 but maintains a death row of 60-odd individuals. There
is a growing abolitionist movement in the country, supported by Kim
Daejung, former president. A similar debate is stirring in Malaysia.
Ultimately this issue will be decided in Seoul and Kuala Lumpur, but a
regional grouping may be able to influence the thinking in these and other
capitals. Rather than simply demanding immediate universal abolition, the
coalition should employ more nuanced strategies. It could, for example,
encourage retentionist countries to restrict the number and type of
offences for which capital punishment is imposed, abolish mandatory death
penalties, release comprehensive official statistics on regional
executions and institute safeguards to protect the basic rights of those
on death row.

The coalition could also consider appointing a high-level advisory body
composed of eminent people, in order to generate ideas and provide
political cover. A good model for such a body was Canada's International
Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which first identified
the collective international "responsibility to protect" civilians in the
case of genocide, ethnic cleansing and egregious human rights violations.

The task for abolitionists is extremely difficult but not hopeless. If
advocates in Asia put a shoulder to this wheel, they may be able to move
it a good distance. Certainly, wheels rarely shift without being pushed.

(source: Michael Fullilove--The Financial Express -- the writer directs
the global issues programme at the Lowy Institute for International Policy
in Sydney)




JAPAN:

Ex-cult guru to hang for Tokyo gas attack


A former cult leader who masterminded a poison gas attack on Tokyo subway
trains in 1995 had his appeal against the death penalty rejected by
Japan's Supreme Court on Friday.

Lawyers for Shoko Asahara, 51, had argued that the former leader of Aum
Shinri Kyo, or Supreme Truth Sect, was mentally incompetent and called for
the case be suspended.

Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was found responsible for
gassings on Tokyo rush-hour trains that killed 12 and sickened thousands,
and was sentenced to death by a Tokyo court in February 2004 for murder
and attempted murder.

The attack injured about 5,500 people, some permanently, when members of
the cult released sarin, a lethal nerve gas first developed but not used
by the Nazis in World War Two.

Japan does not announce dates of executions, which are by hanging, in
advance of them being carried out.

The gassing, with its images of bodies lying across platforms and soldiers
in gas masks sealing off Tokyo subway stations, stunned the Japanese
public and shattered the country's self-image as a haven of public safety.

"I really have long wanted this death penalty verdict. I really feel it's
been a long time," said Shizue Takahashi, 59, a representative of the
Subway Sarin Incident Victims Association, who lost her husband in the
attack.

The nearly blind Asahara was also found guilty of other charges including
a series of crimes that killed 15 people.

The son of a poor maker of "tatami" straw mats, Asahara graduated from a
school for the blind before working as an acupuncturist and amassing
wealth with sales of Chinese medicine in the early 1980s.

He later studied yoga and started a school to teach it, going on to set up
the cult in 1987, mixing Buddhist and Hindu meditation with apocalyptic
teachings.

Under Asahara, who had predicted that the United States would attack Japan
and turn it into a nuclear wasteland, followers submitted to an ascetic
communal life and performed rites such as swallowing water and then
vomiting it up to "purify" them.

At its peak, the cult boasted at least 10,000 members in Japan and
overseas, including some who had studied science at the nation's elite
universities.

Raids on the cult's sprawling complexes at the foot of Mount Fuji after
the subway attack uncovered stockpiles of high-tech equipment and
dangerous chemicals.

Aum Shinri Kyo, which admitted involvement in the subway gassing, later
changed its name to Aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Its
leaders insist the cult is now benign, but Japanese authorities still keep
its membership of more than 1,000 under surveillance.

In 2004, a Tokyo university revoked its acceptance of a 20-year-old woman
after discovering she was Asahara's daughter, saying her presence could be
disruptive.

(source: ChinaPost, Taiwan)

***************************

Colleagues of lawyer murdered by AUM express anger at leader Asahara's
silence


Colleagues of anti-AUM Shinrikyo lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, who, along with
his family, was murdered by cultists, have expressed anger and displeasure
at cult founder Shoko Asahara for refusing to talk about the incident
during his trial.

"We are deeply disappointed and angry at him for refusing to say anything
about the incident during his trial and withdrawing into his own world,"
the colleagues said in a statement they released at a news conference.

Lawyers belonging to Yokohama legal firm of which Sakamoto was a member
held the news conference Friday night, after the Supreme Court dismissed
an appeal filed by Asahara against the death sentence he was given for
masterminding crimes including the murder of Sakamoto and his family.

"I think he deserves the death penalty," said lawyer Shuichi Kojima, who
launched a campaign to rescue the Sakamotos immediately after they went
missing in 1989. "I feel like taking him to the murder scene and
interrogating him over the incident myself, but it's impossible. There's
nothing I can expect from him."

He also quoted Sakamoto's mother, Sachiyo, as telling him that she wants
to quietly remember the victims.

On the order of Asahara, AUM members murdered Sakamoto, 33, who was
supporting the families of cult followers, his wife, Satoko, 29, and their
1-year-old son Tatsuhiko in November 1989.

(source: Mainichi Daily News, Japan)

******************************

Japan court sets cult guru death penalty


Japan's Supreme Court rejected an appeal against the death sentence for
the former leader of a doomsday cult on Friday, clearing the way for him
to be hanged for masterminding a 1995 subway gas attack, Japanese media
said.

Lawyers for Shoko Asahara, 51, had argued that the former leader of Aum
Shinri Kyo was mentally incompetent.

Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, was found guilty in the
gassing on Tokyo rush-hour trains that killed 12 and sickened thousands,
and was sentenced to death by a Tokyo court in February 2004.

(source: Reuters)






JAMAICA:

Death penalty up for debate


Parliament will have to decide whether it will retain or remove the death
penalty from the new Charter of Rights Bill.

Dr. Peter Phillips, Leader of Government Business in the House of
Representatives, told Parliament on Tuesday that the joint select
committee which considered the legislation had not made any recommendation
in relation to the death penalty.

The committee's report was also tabled in the House on Tuesday. Dr.
Phillips said there were two matters on which it made no recommendation in
relation to the death penalty.

Right to life

"These 2 matters were the questions (as to) whether the provisions
creating the death sentence exceptions to the right to life and to
protection from torture or inhuman or degrading punishment or other
treatment, should be retained or deleted from the charter," said Dr.
Phillips.

He said the provisions will be retained for the time being, pending a
determination of that question by Parliament. That determination, the
report suggests, could be made on a free-conscience vote.

Dr. Phillips said another matter to be determined by Parliament is the
question of whether there should be a constitutional guarantee of the
right to trial by jury and how that right should be formulated.

The committee has also left it to Parliament to decide on the precise
formulation of new provisions for the right to vote.

(source: Jamaica Gleaner)






PHILLIPPINES:

34 Years Since Martial Law, Despotism Still Haunts Filipinos


4 years ago, Dee Batnag-Ayroso, a 37-year-old mother of two, lost her
husband Honorio when gunmen abducted him. Honorio was never found. And
much as Dee still wants to cling to the hope that he's still alive
somewhere, the continuing killings and abductions of Honorio's fellow
activists heightens her desperation.

Dee was in her home last month when she heard on the radio that Ernesto
Ladica, a member of the leftist political party Bayan Muna, was shot dead
while having coffee with his three sons outside their home in Misamis
Oriental. Dee's husband was also a member of Bayan Muna; many of the
victims of these murders and forced disappearances were members and
leaders of this group.

In the past few weeks, more activists and peasant and tribal leaders were
shot dead in separate incidents. These murders brought to more than 750
the number of activists killed since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
took power in 2001.

Nearly 200 activists have gone missing since 2001. 2 of the latest
desaparecidos were young student activists from the University of the
Philippines who were abducted in the dead of night in July just north of
Manila by men believed to be soldiers.

To many, the killings and abductions are a grim reminder that the age of
despotism has not really died with Ferdinand Marcos, the dictator who,
exactly 34 years ago next week, on Sept. 21, 1972, declared martial law
and plunged the country into one of its darkest and most violent periods.

Indeed, the similarities of the atrocities then and now are chilling.
Hooded men knocking down doors in the dead of night. Assassins on
motorcycles. Killers shooting victims in cold blood, often in close range.
Anguished relatives looking for answers and, most important of all,
justice.

"The latest killings and abductions still make me feel cold inside, like
how I felt 4 years ago," Dee said. "I am saddened but mostly enraged at
what keeps happening, at the injustice everywhere."

The murder of Ernesto Ladica and hundreds of others, and the continued
disappearance of Honorio Ayroso and dozens more, has become a grim reality
that is increasingly consuming a country that, for decades under Ferdinand
Marcos, suffered these same atrocities and thought that the nightmare
would end with the ouster of the dictator in 1986.

Dee, as well as critics and relatives of victims, believe the military to
be behind the murders and abductions. They have also denounced Arroyo for
allegedly officially sanctioning these.

In her State of the Nation Address before Congress in July, Arroyo
condemned the killings but, in the same breath, praised army general
Jovito Palparan, who has been accused of being behind many of these
murders and abductions, for his campaign against the Left. Palparan,
Arroyo said, has "come to grips with the enemy."

International human-rights groups urged Arroyo to do more. "She must now
show she means business by implementing concrete measures to prevent the
deaths of more activists," said Tim Parritt, deputy director of Amnesty
International in a statement last month.

The Hongkong-based Asian Human Rights Commission, which completed a
fact-finding mission in the Philippines last month, expressed alarm over
the wave of violence and the government's allegedly ineffective and
inconsistent responses.

In July, the new papal nuncio to the Philippines, Archbishop Fernando
Filoni, weighed in with these words: "I am surprised to see that in the
Philippines there is still an activity of high incidence of a moral and
political violence against those who profess different political
ideologies."

He implied that the government was behind the killings. "It will truly be
a contradiction, if on the one hand, we practically abolished the death
penalty and yet on the other hand we are not respecting or implementing
the rights of the human race," referring to Arroyo's abolition of the
death-penalty law, which she had said was here "gift" to the Vatican
during an audience with the Pope in June.

The Commission on Human Rights, an independent constitutional body, said
the killings are the responsibility of government. "We couldn't care less
what colors the killers are. Is the government so helpless?" said the
commission's chairman, Purificacion Quisumbing, in May.

The commission said the Philippines was in danger of being blacklisted by
the United Nations for failing to submit reports on human-rights abuses
over the past decade. This failure has been roundly criticized by human
rights advocates as proof of the government's alleged disregard of, if
cavalier attitude toward, human rights.

The Philippines is a signatory to several human-rights treaties and was
recently elected as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, an election
that the Arroyo administration trumpeted as a testament to its respect for
human rights.

Oscar Calderon, the head of a police task force investigating the
killings, had earlier cleared Palparan. The general, Calderon said, "was
never implicated in any of our investigations."

The government has repeatedly said that it was not behind the killings,
that there was no state policy against activists, and that, it said, the
murders were perpetrated by the communists themselves and pin the blame on
the government.

In June, Arroyo created a team to investigate the murders. "Those who
perpetrated these senseless killings will not go far," said Ignacio Bunye,
Arroyo's spokesman. "The law enforcement authorities are on their tracks
and we need the cooperation and support of all concerned sectors to get
them."

Arroyo, in a trip to Europe this week, trumpeted her administration's
efforts to solve these killings and uphold human rights.

Palparan, meanwhile, dismissed the allegations against him. The killings
"are being attributed to me, but I did not kill them," he told the
Philippine Daily Inquirer last month. "We are not admitting responsibility
here," he said, adding: "What I'm saying is that these are necessary
incidents." He said he "just inspired" the killers.

This month, the administration, in a gesture widely believed by many to be
an endorsement of Palparan's allegedly murderous methods against the Left,
floated the idea of naming Palparan deputy National Security Adviser. He
would be tasked mainly with counter-insurgency matters.

Satur Ocampo, a congressman who leads Bayan Muna, blamed Arroyo for the
wave of extrajudicial killings and for sanctioning the allegedly
extrajudicial methods of Palparan.

"Mrs. Arroyo's public display of admiration for General Palparan is a
shameful endorsement of his terrorist mindset and terrorist acts against
all activists and its role in her total war," Ocampo said.

Karapatan, meanwhile, said it noticed an increase of the killings and
disappearances of civilians since Arroyo declared, on June 17, an "all-out
war" campaign against the communist insurgency, which she vowed to crush
between 2 to 5 years.

Most of the recent murders, it said, occurred in the provinces the
government had earlier identified as its priority areas for a
counter-insurgency program that seeks to "neutralize and destroy the
political infrastructure" of the Communists.

But Jessica Soto, the executive director of Amnesty International in the
Philippines, believes that there's more to this campaign than
anti-communism. The killings, she said, are meant to discourage dissent.

"This is an assault against dissent in general," she said in an interview.
The government, Soto said, is using McCarthyism once again to legitimize
its campaign against those who wish to undermine it.

Soto argued that the killings, in a way, are much worse today than during
Marcos's time. "The killings during the Marcos years took place under
martial law. There was a clear dictatorship. Activists during that time
were sitting ducks but they knew what they were up against," Soto said.
"But we've since won back democracy, and in a democracy, you're not
supposed to kill a person just because you did not agree with his
beliefs."

Soto and other critics of the government argue that the campaign against
the Left intensified after allegations that Arroyo cheated in the
elections surfaced and damaged her administration's credibility and
stability. The government has often accused the Left of conspiring with
rightist elements in the military in attempts to overthrow it.

"Arroyo's desperate pursuit for political survival has virtually turned
her into a new dictator and the nation in a state of undeclared martial
law," said Marie Hilao-Enriquez, the secretary-general of Karapatan.

Leaders of the Left were among those who filed the impeachment complaint
against Arroyo last year. They have always been the noisiest, most
vociferous critics of the government, and are able to mass thousands in
the streets. Bayan Muna has been spearheading most of these
anti-government demonstrations.

After surviving impeachment and alleged coups d'etat, Arroyo cracked down
on the Left by outlawing demonstrations and arresting Leftist leaders,
even as the killings continued particularly in the provinces.

Prior to this, officials demonized the open and legal groups such as Bayan
Muna, accusing them of being communist fronts and of allegedly funneling
money from Congress to the insurgency. Leaders of the Left vehemently
denied this charge and challenged the government to prove its case in
court.

Leftists also see a confluence of interests at play between the Arroyo
administration and the military. Arroyo came to power and survived several
coup attempts because of the support of the military. Also, one of the
nagging and most damning accusations against her is her alleged use of
some members of the military to cheat in the 2004 elections. In return for
these favors, Leftists have said, Arroyo had given the military a free
hand in dealing with the three-decade-old communist insurgency.

The problem now, however, is that, due to the extrajudicial nature of the
campaign against the Left, "no one is actually in control," Soto of
Amnesty International said. "And if the government is not in control of a
situation like this, it's dangerous for all of us."

Malu Cadelia-Manar, a hard-hitting radio commentator and newspaper
correspondent in the violent south, knows this danger only too well. In
May, the military accused her of being a member of the New People's Army,
the armed wing of the communist party, after she contradicted, through her
reports, the army's propaganda against the communists.

Aside from actually being called a communist by a military officer, Manar
received a package in May that contained a manila paper scribbled with
these words: "Death to supporters of the NPA."

The experience unnerved Manar who, a few months earlier, had to move out
of her city after receiving death threats. "It would seem to me that these
accusations would be a justification for harming me," the 35-year-old
journalist said in an interview. She subsequently filed a complaint
against the army.

To victims like Dee Batnag-Ayroso, one of the ways to end the nightmare is
to remove the president. It would be part, she said, of the healing
process. "There's still hope for justice when Arroyo is ousted," she said.

Tragic as it may seem, that' is exactly what many victims of Marcos's
abuses thought at the height of the dictatorship's atrocities.

(source: Davao Today)