[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 1



KUWAIT/PHILIPPINES:

Kuwaiti high court affirms Filipina's death sentence


Kuwait's supreme court has upheld a death sentence against an overseas
Filipino worker for the killing of her 7-year-old ward in 2007, the
Department of Foreign Affairs said.

May Vecina, 28, was convicted of killing her employer's youngest son Salem
Sulaiman Al-Otaib on January 6 last year, as well as attempting to kill
his 13-year-old brother Abdulla by slitting his throat and stabbing his
17-year-old sister Hajer, Foreign Undersecretary for Migrant Workers
Affairs Esteban Conejos said Tuesday.

Vecina was convicted of murder and 2 counts of frustrated murder and was
sentenced to hang, said Conejos, who announced the Kuwait Court of
Cassation's decision in a press conference at the Department of Foreign
Affairs.

The court ruling is final and only needs to be signed by Kuwait's Emir
Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah to be implemented.

But Cabinet Secretary Ricardo Saludo said the Philippine government would
continue to work to save the maid's life.

"We are saddened by this decision in Kuwait but our government and the
embassy will not stop working to find a way to save our countrywoman,"
cabinet secretary Ricardo Saludo said.

Conejos said Manila would appeal the case to Kuwaiti authorities.

He said Vecina's family has been informed of this latest development in
the case and gave assurances Manila would continue to exert all legal
means to save her life.

He refused to divulge the details of these legal actions, although he did
not discount the possibility of paying "blood money" after getting the
victim's family's forgiveness.

"We will take diplomatic initiatives. But right now I don't want to be
specific...We will not give up. We will continue all possible legal
means," he said.

The Filipina, who was working in Kuwait for 6 months when the incident
happened, was reportedly in constant conflict with her employer.

She reportedly reacted violently to the insults heaped on her by her
employers family.

The incident happened while the children's parents were preparing for
Maghreb prayers on the ground floor of their house.

After the incident, Vecina leapt from the 2nd floor of her employer's
house in Mumbarak, Al-Kabeer district, resulting in serious back injuries.

Foreign Undersecretary Rafael Seguis earlier said the government would
provide Vecina with legal counsel and try to convince her employer to
accept "blood money" for the death of the boy.

He said the government would do all it could to save Vecina's life.

Leo Vecina, May's husband, also wrote President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
pleading for his wife's life and return to their hometown of Matalam in
North Cotabato.

Vecina's case and those similar to hers prompted the labor department to
impose stricter deployment rules for household workers, including $5,000
bonds for repatriation and other fees.

Vecina was sentenced to death by a lower court in July last year and the
appeals court confirmed the ruling in September.

Death sentences in the Gulf state are carried out by hanging.

In December, the Kuwaiti ruler agreed to commute the death sentence to
life in jail for another Filipina maid, Marilou Ranario, who was convicted
of killing her employer, after a visit by President Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo.

About 73,000 Filipinos, including 60,000 women employed mostly as
housemaids, work in oil-rich Kuwait and earn less than $200 a month on
average, labor groups say.

(sources: Philippine Daily Inquirer and Agence France-Presse)






KOREA:

Death Penalty Sought for Sex Crimes Against Kids


People who commit sexual assaults against children under 13 and kill them
will likely face the death penalty or life imprisonment.

At a Cabinet meeting Tuesday, the Ministry of Justice said it would
instruct the prosecution to stiffen punishment on sex offenders against
children or young students through revisions of the law.

The move comes after a man sexually abused and killed 10-year-old Lee
Hye-jin and 8-year-old Woo Ye-seul in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province, last
December, and another man violently attempted to kidnap a 10-year-old
schoolgirl in Ilsan, north of Seoul, Sunday.

Police requested an arrest warrant for the man in his 40s who attempted to
kidnap the schoolgirl.

"Such criminals who commit sexual assaults and murder after kidnapping
children should be subject to stiff penalties such as life imprisonment or
capital punishment,'' Prime Minister Han Seung-soo said after presiding
over the weekly Cabinet meeting.

"Crimes against children cannot be tolerated at all,'' Han said.
"Ministries related to public security should map out measures against
such inhumane crimes.''

The government also said the minimum penalty for sex offenses against
children will be adjusted upward to 7 years, in a bid to block suspended
sentences.

The Justice Ministry plans to create a DNA database as part of efforts to
monitor sex offenders.

It will push for legislation to collect and manage genetic information
from inmates or suspects to use for investigations or trials involving sex
crimes.

The government measure comes amid increasing sexual violence in the
country, particularly against children.

Despite the arrest of the suspected child kidnapper, citizens remain
extremely anxious about the safety of their offspring and have called for
stronger measures to prevent such crimes.

Before relying on police, parents are stepping up efforts to defend their
children on their own. State-of-the-art monitoring devices are selling
well, according to industry sources.

Kidnapping and sexual assaults on children are also on the rise. The
number of sexual assaults on children aged under 13 rose to 1,081 cases in
2007 from 980 the previous year, according to police.

A majority of netizens are criticizing human rights organizations, which
cautioned about the possibility of the contemplated DNA database violating
human rights.

"Human rights cannot be applied to beast-like human-beings,'' a netizen
said.

(source: Korea Times)






IRAN:

THE ISSUE IS TORTURE


Anyone who has spent, as I have, long hours over two years listening to
Iranian tales of torture would know just how the controversy over Mehdi
Kazemi's asylum claim misses the point.

George Galloway says gays are not executed in Iran, just rapists. Peter
Tatchell says Galloway spouts "Iranian propaganda". Neither gets at the
gist of Mehdi's case, or of Britain's broken obligations with regard to
torture under international law.

Let's start with the facts.

Homosexual conduct in Iran can get you the death penalty. Penetrative sex
acts between men can bring death on the 1st conviction; non-penetrative
activity, up to 100 lashes. Women earn floggings on the first 3
convictions; 4 strikes and you die. Iran's penal code requires four
reiterated confessions, or the eyewitness testimony of four "righteous
men", to prove lavat, or sodomy. Yet judges are allowed to guess and
infer. Moreover, police helpfully provide the witnesses: raiding a party
in Isfahan in May 2007, they brought along four men, presumably righteous,
to watch.

Torturing and killing gays is legal in Iran: you don't need to view the
bodies to prove it. International law bars Britain from returning people
to the risk of torture. Britain must give gay Iranians asylum.

Yet despite this clarity, confusion hangs over the situation in Iran. Some
activists, trying sincerely to help Mehdi, are helping the British
government off the hook.

Peter Tatchell is wrong to assert, without real evidence, that gay men are
routinely hanged in public; that mass "pogroms" have led to mass
executions in recent years; or that fake rape charges are regularly tacked
on to charges of consensual homosexual acts. Nor should anyone's asylum
case hinge on such claims. The last documented death sentences for
consensual homosexual conduct in Iran were handed down in March 2005. It
is not known whether they were carried out. Ramping up the allegations
means accepting the government's exaggerated standards of proof. And it
can backfire - against people in Iran.

Europe and the US have seen a public campaign in recent years to identify
executions - often random ones - in Iran as killings of gay men. Pictures
of the horrific public hanging in Mashhad in 2005 of Ayaz Marhoni and
Mahmoud Asgari - convicted, in all likelihood, of the rape of a
13-year-old boy while both were minors - spread virally round the world
like a postmodern Pieta. Monstrous, yes: but there is no conclusive
evidence that they were gay or that consensual homosexual acts had
anything to do with their judicial killing.

In the months after that, campaigners in the US and Europe repeatedly
claimed, without evidence, that hangings for rape in Iran were actually a
"pogrom" against gay men. One US paper claimed four men were hanged for
"being gay". They turned out to have been convicted of the rape of a woman
and 3 girls - 10, 7, and 8 years old.

Such mistakes can have dire consequences. In November 2007 in Kermanshah,
Makwan Mouloudzadeh, 20, faced the death penalty on false charges of
raping several boys seven years before. His accusers retracted their
claims. No evidence suggested he had committed any crime under Iranian
law.

However, European activists wildly seized on him as another "gay" victim.
They organised a mass petition to Ahmadinejad for mercy for "the young
Iranian gay". Their pleas sent an inadvertent message: Makwan was innocent
of one capital crime, but Europe believed him guilty of another. On
December 5, Makwan Mouloudzadeh, probably neither gay nor a rapist, went
to the gallows.

Why so much confusion? Why the need to find "gay" victims, even when it
endangers a man already on death row?

Emotion makes discussion difficult. People asking what the evidence really
is are likely to be called "apologists for Iran". Britain's slammed asylum
door indeed breeds desperation. It's crucial to remember, though, that the
reason asylum authorities seek pretexts to reject gay Muslims isn't
"Iranian propaganda": it's home-grown propaganda stoking fears of Muslim
immigration. Activists must combat racism in Britain, not just repression
in Iran.

The most cogent answer, though, shows the failure at the heart of
Britain's policies on asylum - and torture. Home Office minister Lord West
said of Mehdi: "We are not aware of any individual who has been executed
in Iran in recent years solely on the grounds of homosexuality. And we
don't consider there was systematic persecution of gay men in Iran."

In other words: no execution, no persecution. If you aren't dead, you're
OK. This is a disastrous evasion of the UK's responsibilities under
international law.

Human Rights Watch has shown how Britain tries to redefine its obligations
on torture, so it can send people back to states where they face grave
risk. Usually it happens in the context of counterterrorism. But with gay
Iranians, too, the government aims to change the rules, denying that legal
torture is "persecution".

The UK should recognise - as the Netherlands has done - that with a law
prescribing death or torture for gay Iranians, they need not demonstrate
the details of past persecution. Lift the burden of proof from Mehdi and
his gay compatriots. End the threat of deportation.

Activists, though, must avoid playing the government's torturous game.
Don't let the Home Office define torture down till a corpse on a gallows
is the only proof that counts. Hold Britain to its real obligations.
Otherwise, it will remain complicit in persecution.

More of Human Rights Watch's work on LGBT Rights:
http://www.hrw.org/doc/?t=lgbt

More of Human Rights Watch's work on Iran:
http://www.hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=iran

(source: Human Rights Watch----By Scott Long, Director, Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual and Transgender Rights Program)