[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

Oct. 12



AUSTRALIA:

No Bali executions will be a real 'let-down'


AUSTRALIANS will feel let down if the Bali bombers are not executed, Prime
Minister John Howard says.

Indonesia's Constitutional Court will hand down its decision on a
challenge to the nation's death penalty laws on October 30.

The challenge was launched earlier this year by members of the Bali Nine
heroin-smuggling ring on death row.

Their lawyers have argued the death penalty in Indonesia's narcotics law
is unconstitutional because the nation's constitution affords life as a
basic human right.

If the court rules the death penalty is unconstitutional, it could
potentially stall the impending executions of 2002 Bali bombers Imam
Samudra, Ali Ghufron (alias Mukhlas) and the so-called smiling assassin
Amrozi bin Nurhasyim.

"I think there would be a sense of let-down if that was the sentence
delivered, but not carried out," Mr Howard said on Southern Cross radio
today.

"I cannot bring myself to argue for the suspension of the death penalty
when you're dealing with people who have murdered 88 Australians."

Today is the 5th anniversary of the night club bombings which killed 202
people including 88 Australians.

Mr Howard said a move away from capital punishment had "been festering
inside" the Indonesian system "for some time".

(source: News.com)

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

Rudd fails the test on human rights


Labor's leader will not stick to principles in his bid for election, write
Ben Saul and Anish Bhasin.

THE memory of the victims of the Bali bombings does not demand Australian
complicity in the execution of fellow human beings. Nothing is gained by
responding to the cult of death, which animated the Bali terrorists with a
culture of death of our own.

It also does a disservice to those who died at Bali to support killing in
their name.

This week Kevin Rudd has dispelled the romantic view of the Labor Party as
the party committed to human rights in Australia. The Labor leader
overruled the nuanced approach of his foreign affairs spokesman with the
crude assertion that "terrorists should rot in jail for the term of their
natural lives and then one day be removed in a pine box".

Rudd would not intervene in support of a terrorist's life, although his
government would still look after Australian citizens facing the death
penalty overseas. It is not clear whether that policy would also protect
an Australian terrorist on death row, where Rudd may be torn between his
desire to see terrorists executed and the need to take care of our own (as
in the case of David Hicks).

Australians should be abundantly clear about what a Rudd government would
now stand for. It would be OK to execute Asians, Africans, Americans or
Europeans  but not Australians. It would be all right to execute
terrorists, but not war criminals, genocidaires, murderers, rapists or
drug traffickers.

While there is bipartisan opposition to the death penalty within
Australia, the Rudd policy is premised on the arbitrary and xenophobic
idea that Australian lives are worth more than the lives of foreigners. As
a policy it is breathtakingly vengeful, crude, counterproductive and
hypocritical.

It also entirely contradicts Rudd's previous position on the death
penalty. In December 2005, he said in a doorstop interview that "Australia
must work through the United Nations to abolish the death penalty
universally" and that "whether we are talking about individuals in Iraq or
Indonesia or elsewhere, our policy has to be consistent". In January this
year, Rudd properly opposed the execution of Saddam Hussein.

The about-face in policy shows that Rudd is a fair-weather friend of human
rights  which is no friend at all. Human dignity is not something that can
be surrendered for bad behaviour, traded away in a vengeful political
climate obsessed by polling numbers, or eclipsed by a public sentiment of
toxic retribution.

Human rights law is based on the fundamental idea that every human life is
equally precious and entitled at all times to dignified treatment.
Politicians are not entitled to pick and choose who they will bestow with
rights and dignity, and from whom rights and dignity will be withdrawn.

A selective commitment to human rights, to the dignity of some but not
others, is fatally at odds with the very idea of human rights, which
values all human life equally. The bedrock of equal dignity explains why
we do not shoot the disabled, or murder Jews, or beat up monks or imprison
those with different political views. It also provides a sufficient moral
reason not to execute terrorists, even though they appear to have taken
themselves outside the bounds of all civilised behaviour.

Along with 60 other countries, Australia has signed an international
treaty that requires it to abolish the death penalty in Australia, in a
step towards protecting the human right to life. While there is no strict
legal obligation to oppose the death penalty overseas, it is within the
spirit of that treaty to do what we can to eliminate the death penalty
everywhere.

In the Asian region, the death penalty is actively retained by at least 14
countries, including Australia's good friends Indonesia, Japan, India,
Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and China. There is much scope for
Australian governments to play a quiet and constructive diplomatic role in
encouraging more countries in our region to abolish the death penalty,
without preaching.

Using our diplomats in this way may not increase our exports and create
investment or gain access to new markets. But being Australian is about
more than a commitment to economic growth and must surely include a
non-negotiable belief in protecting the value of human life, and
preventing governments from capriciously taking it away.

The failures of the death penalty are well known. As Rudd said in his 2005
interview, there is no "credible evidence" that it deters crime. It all
too often kills the innocent. It frequently discriminates against minority
races, juveniles, and those with a low IQ who may give false confessions.

It also deprives criminals of any chance of rehabilitation. Experience
overseas shows that some rehabilitated terrorists have been extremely
useful in re-educating other disaffected, vulnerable or radical young
people to shun terrorist recruiters and turn away from any involvement in
terrorist organisations.

Australians should be wary of a Labor leader willing to backslide on human
rights. Already Labor has conspicuously failed to oppose drastic
anti-terrorism laws, and continues to support the policy of mandatory
immigration detention introduced by a previous Labor government and which
has caused untold human suffering. It might be hoped that Rudd would offer
a leadership of principle, not a leadership of death.

(source: The Age--Ben Saul is director of the Sydney Centre for
International Law at Sydney University. Anish Bhasin is an intern at the
centre and worked on death penalty cases in Texas)






KENYA:

Death Row Inmates Suffer Over Lawyers' Strike


Murder suspects continue to languish in prison over the ongoing boycott of
pauper briefs by lawyers.

In Nakuru, 7 murder appeal cases, failed to take off on Thursday after
lawyers refused to appear in court.

High Court Judge, Ms Martha Koome, had to give the appellants new dates.

The lawyers have been boycotting briefs to protest at a decision by the
Chief Justice to have all judicial review matters heard in Nairobi.

Pauper briefs are cases where advocates are paid by the State to defend
those charged with murder, but who are too poor to hire their own counsel.

Early this month, appellate judges were also forced to adjourn some of the
hearings following the boycott.

Their cases will now be heard next year as the Court of Appeal only sits
in Nakuru twice a year.

(source: East African Standard)