[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 14


RWANDA:

Rejecting 'an eye for an eye'


Rwanda last week abolished the death penalty, a significant step toward
healing in a nation that badly needs it. The move makes it possible for an
international court and nations opposed to the death penalty to transfer
prisoners responsible for Rwanda's 1994 genocide back to the African
nation to face trial. More important, with this policy shift, the
government also aims to break a cycle of revenge.

(source: Editorial, Dallas Morning News)






IRAN:

Iran blasted for public executions


Iran has publicly hanged 3 men and a woman convicted of murder in the
northwest city of Tabriz and the southern city of Shiraz, media reports
said on Saturday.

The woman, identified as Hurieh, 29, was hanged along with Farhad, 23, and
Reza, 24, for murdering her husband and 3 of her in-laws in Tabriz, East
Azarbaijan province, in April, the website of Iran's state television
said.

The report added that the convicts were also lashed for "illegitimate
relationship and robbery" before being executed.

Another man, Navid Parham, 22, has been publicly hanged in Shiraz, Fars
province, for murder and robbery, the Kayhan newspaper said.

The hangings bring to at least 114 the number of executions carried out in
the republic so far this year, most of them by hanging and often in
public.

At least 177 people were executed in 2006, according to Amnesty
International.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy,
blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery or
prostitution, treason and espionage.

Iran's judiciary has also announced that 20 people convicted of repeated
rape and violent assaults would be sent to the gallows in Tehran in the
coming days. It appears the latest executions were in different cases.

Meanwhile, Iran drew international condemnation this week when it
confirmed that a man convicted of adultery had been stoned to death, the
1st time it has confirmed such an execution in 5 years.

However the judiciary, which had imposed a suspension of stoning
sentences, has launched a probe into the judge who ordered the execution.

(source: IOL)

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

Iran probes judge behind stoning execution


Iran's judiciary has launched a probe into the judge who ordered the
stoning to death of a man convicted of adultery despite a suspension of
such executions, the ISNA news agency reportedy.

"The judges' disciplinary court will investigate the action carried out by
the judge that was contrary to the order of judiciary chief (Ayatollah
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahrudi)," ISNA quoted an unnamed judicial official as
saying.

Iran on Tuesday said that Jafar Kiani had been stoned to death in a
village in the northwestern province of Qazvin, the first confirmation of
such a punishment in 5 years which triggered international condemnation.

The punishment -- which involves the public hurling stones at the convict
buried up to his waist -- was meted out despite a 2002 directive from
Shahrudi suspending the practice although it still exists in law.

"The execution of the verdict shocked us...so the head of the judiciary
took up the case and halted the sentence against a woman who was also
condemned to stoning," Tehran's appeal courts head Mohammad Ali
Ebrahimkhani told ISNA.

The supreme court must uphold all executions in Iran.

In June, the Fars news agency reported that Qazvin's justice chief had
halted the stoning of a man and a woman in the province, believed to be
the same man who has now been executed, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.

Rights activists seeking to stop the practice said Kiani had been arrested
11 years ago while living with Mokarrameh Ebrahimi, the woman who has also
been sentenced to stoning. Both were reportedly married to others at the
time.

"The verdict on the woman has not been carried out. It is still halted,"
Iran's judiciary spokesman Ali Reza Jamshidi said of Ebrahimi who is being
held in prison in Qazvin city with her 2 children.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour condemned the stoning and urged
Tehran to spare the woman the same fate while Norway summoned Iranian
ambassador Abdol Reza Faraji Rad to protest against the "barbaric"
punishment.

The judiciary had up until Tuesday vehemently denied any stonings since
2002, although rights activists and press reports have on occasion claimed
that such punishments have been carried out.

"The judiciary's policy about stoning has not changed. It exists in our
law. The judiciary head can order to stop it, sometimes it is carried out
and the judge is independent," Jamshidi insisted.

The stoning brought to at least 110 the number of executions carried out
in the Islamic republic so far this year, most of them by hanging and
often in public. At least 177 people were executed in 2006, according to
Amnesty International.

Capital offences in Iran include murder, rape, armed robbery, apostasy,
blasphemy, serious drug trafficking, repeated sodomy, adultery or
prostitution, treason and espionage, Agence France-Presse (AFP) added.

(source: IranMania.com)

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

Amnesty: Human rights violations continue "unabated" in Iran


The international human rights organisation Amnesty International
announced on Friday that human rights violations were continuing
"unabated" in Iran.

In an announcement posted on its website, Amnesty said it was "greatly
concerned" by "continuing human rights violations in Iran, including new
arrests of human rights defenders and the high rate of executions."

16 people were arrested on 9 July -- 18 Tir in the Iranian calendar -- the
8th anniversary of student demonstrations in 1999 which were violently
suppressed by security forces, Amnesty said.

It added that trade unionists were also being targeted.

"Women's rights activists also continue to face reprisals for their
activities demanding an end to laws which discriminate against women. At
least 3 more women have recently been sentenced for participating in a
June 2006 demonstration calling for reform of Iran's discriminatory
legislation."

"Iran continues to have one of the highest rates of executions in the
world. Amnesty International has recorded at least 120 executions since
the beginning of 2007, suggesting that by the end of this year the total
number of executions could exceed the total of 177 executions that Amnesty
International recorded in 2006.

"2 recent victims of the Iranian authorities' use of the death penalty
were child offenders, whose alleged crimes were committed before the age
of 18, and a 3rd was a man who was stoned to death. The 2 child offenders
-- Mohammad Mousavi and Sa'id Qanbar Zahi -- were executed in April and
May respectively, in direct contravention of international law, which
requires that no-one should be executed for crimes committed while under
the age of 18," it added.


(source: Amnesty International)






SAUDI ARABIA----execution

Saudi Arabia beheads a Pakistani man convicted of fatally stabbing a man


Saudi Arabian authorities on Saturday beheaded a Pakistani man who was
convicted of murder, the state-run news agency said.

Abdel Karim al-Rahman was convicted of stabbing to death a Bangladeshi
national after a fight erupted between the two, the Saudi Press Agency
reported.

The execution took place in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, the report
said.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which those
convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery are executed
in public with a sword.

Saturday's executions brought to 97 the number of people beheaded in the
kingdom this year, according to an Associated Press count.

Before Saturday's beheading, Amnesty International reported that 102
people had been beheaded in Saudi Arabia this year.

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

Sri Lankan housemaid on death row highlights a surge in Saudi beheadings


Rizana Nafeek, a 19-year housemaid from Sri Lanka, is on death row because
the baby in her care died while she was bottle-feeding him. If her appeal
is turned down, she will taken to a town square to be publicly beheaded.

The Sri Lankan government says it is working for a reprieve, and has until
Monday to file the plea. A last-minute pardon by the infant's parents
could also spare her. But if her execution goes ahead, it will be the
latest in a surge of beheadings that could surpass the kingdom's record of
191 in 2005.

After dropping to 38 last year, the figure for 2007 is already at least
102, including three women, according to Amnesty International. On
Saturday, Saudi authorities beheaded a Pakistani man who was convicted of
murder.

Beheading has always been the punishment meted out to murderers, rapists,
drug traffickers and armed robbers in Saudi Arabia. Whether what Nafeek
did amounts to murder has never been spelled out by courts or other
officials, but Saudi authorities, facing sustained criticism from foreign
human rights groups, insist they are simply enforcing God's law.

In February, four Sri Lankan workers were executed for armed robbery and
their headless bodies left on public display in Riyadh, triggering harsh
criticism from international rights groups.

Amnesty International says some defendants are convicted solely on the
basis of confessions obtained under duress, torture or deception.

Speaking of the housemaid's sentence, Kate Allen of Amnesty International
called it "an absolute scandal that Saudi Arabia is preparing to behead a
teenage girl who didn't even have a lawyer at her trial."

"The Saudi authorities are flouting an international prohibition on the
execution of child offenders by even imposing a death sentence on a
defendant who was reportedly 17 at the time of the alleged crime," she
said.

Nafeek arrived in the kingdom on May 4, 2005, to work as a housemaid. She
was given the additional duty of looking after the baby boy, a job the Sri
Lankan Embassy says she was not trained to do. The embassy says the infant
died on May 22 while she was bottle-feeding him.

Nafeek allegedly confessed, according to the statement, but then recanted,
saying her admission was obtained under duress.

The Asian Human Rights Commission, an independent Hong Kong-based body of
jurists and human rights activists, said it was an accident. The child was
choking, it said, and Nafeek "was desperately trying to help by way of
soothing and stroking the chest, face and neck of the baby." However, it
said, "due to misunderstandings this case was presented as the murder of a
baby by strangulation."

An estimated 5.6 million foreign workers, many of them Asian, serve a
Saudi population of 22 million. Of the 102 executed this year, half were
foreigners, including 21 Pakistanis, according to Amnesty International.

"The workers commit big crimes against Saudis," said Suhaila Hammad of
Saudi Arabia's National Society for Human Rights. She said the number of
executions has risen because crime has increased.

She said prisoners are treated humanely and that beheadings deter crime.

"Allah, our creator, knows best what's good for his people," Hammad told
The Associated Press. "Should we just think of and preserve the rights of
the murderer and not think of the rights of others?"

Beheadings are carried out with a sword, with police holding back
spectators and making sure no one takes photos. Prisoners, usually
sedated, are made to kneel, flanked by clerics and law enforcement
officials and facing the victim's family.

"The prisoner now recites verses from the Quran while a government
official reads the charges and the verdict," according to an account in
Arab News, a Saudi daily. "Halfway through the reading the executioner
suddenly nicks the back of the prisoner's neck with his sword, causing him
to tense and raise his head involuntarily."

Then, in one swift move, the prisoner is decapitated.

Beheadings take place all over Saudi Arabia, usually in a square next to a
mosque.

In a recent interview with Al-Yaum daily, Fahd al-Abdullah, an executioner
in the Eastern Province, called his job "a very ordinary profession, just
like any other profession."

Al-Abdallah, 27, comes from a long line of executioners. As a child he
would watch his grandfather wield the sword, and later was trained for a
year by his uncle.

He said that before a beheading, he urges the victim's family to pardon
the prisoner.

Some families do, just minutes before the blade falls. Others do it before
an execution date is set in exchange for money or in response to appeals
from members of the royal family.

A famous case was that of Samira Murait. In 2000 she shot dead a male
acquaintance who stalked her after she married. After vigorous mediation
efforts and pleas from the public as well as from a Saudi prince, the
family agreed to forgive her. She had spent 7 years in prison.

But Nafeek's Saudi employers refused to pardon her, and a court in Ad
Dawadimi, 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Riyadh, sentenced her to
death on June 16.

(source for both: Associated Press)






LIBYA:

Libya's Hostages


We find it hard to imagine that anyone on the Libyan Supreme Court really
believes that five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor chose to
infect more than 400 Libyan children with the virus that causes AIDS.
Instead of sense and justice, from the outset this case has reeked of
scapegoating, showboating and blackmail.

Scapegoating, because the real culprits were the unsanitary conditions and
shoddy medical practices at the children's hospital in Benghazi where the
foreigners came to work. Showboating, because the Libyan strongman, Col.
Muammar el-Qaddafi, first needed something to deflect attention from his
agreement to compensate victims of the Lockerbie bombing and his more
recent cozying up to London and Washington.

And blackmail, because Libya has openly linked the resolution of the phony
case to huge payments to parents of the infected children. The Supreme
Court's decision this week to uphold the death sentence against the 5
nurses and the doctor is only the latest act in that charade.

In a perverse way, the courts decision also clears the way to set the
prisoners free, and there are strong signs that the fix is in. The High
Judicial Council of Libya is to convene on Monday and has the power to
free the 6. It should. The unfortunate medical workers have already spent
almost a decade in jail, and the European Union has already paid huge
amounts of ransom, disguised as aid.

Colonel Qaddafi has worked hard in recent years to shed his image as a
dictatorial sponsor of terrorism. He must understand that it is in his own
interest not to continue this travesty. It would be good if he also
understood that the scourge of AIDS is far too terrible to be used for a
shakedown.

(source: Editorial, New York Times)

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

'Hope' for death row medics


THE French government said yesterday it believes that foreign medics on
death row in Libya can be saved following a visit by French President
Nicolas Sarkozy's wife, Cecilia, to Tripoli. "We can be reasonably
optimistic," said a senior aide to the president Claude Gueant.

Cecilia Sarkozy returned to Paris early yesterday after paying a visit to
Bulgarian medics who are facing the death sentence in Libya after being
convicted of infecting children with the Aids virus.

She had 2 meetings with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, and also met with
Gaddafis daughter, Aicha, who is in charge of women's rights in Libya.

Cecilia Sarkozy also visited families of children infected by the virus in
the Mediterranean city of Benghazi, situated about 1000km east of Tripoli.

(sources: Sapa-AFP)






ETHIOPIA:

Not the time to threaten the death Penalty!


"I hope they will say that I did a good job of leading America into a new
century, a new millennium, and a whole new way working and living and
relating to the rest of the world, that I lifted the American people up,
and brought them together." Bill Clinton, Former US President during the
Western Millennium

'But I dont want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"oh, you cant help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad.
You're mad."

How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be", said the Cat, or you wouldn't have come here." Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll **

The millennium is a time to bring the people, nation and country into one!

Bill Clinton captures the moment of the millennium on January 1, 2000 to
start the 3rd Millennium with optimism and hope for America and its
relations with the rest of humanity. He hoped and believed that he lifted
the spirit of the American people and brought them together, and not the
opposite. Whether what he claimed happened or not his own hope and wish
has been to spread inspiration and not depression, healing and not
division, to mend society and not break it.

In Ethiopia the millennium should be a time to bring the nation, the
people and the country together by lifting their spirit and creating
good-feel, and bringing wisdom, celebration, joy, excellence and quality
in the communication amongst the people to increase and consolidate their
solidarity and lessen their divisions and quarrels. The millennium is for
lifting up and not to bring down the Ethiopian spirit. It is a time to
strengthen deeply the unity of the people; it is a time to heal the wounds
and sores that have been festering in the country creating the static
society and the brutal state. This millennium should be a time to make a
canon and vow to lift and bring together citizen and state in order that
they together create a more beautiful civilisation and world for all
Ethiopians irrespective of colour, belief, language, nationality, ethnic
origin, religion, age and sex the citizens share both as individuals or
communities.

But on the eve of the millennium what we hear leaves us hurt and
anguished. We hear the threat of death penalty hanging on those the people
elected. Any person who respects the people who voted for these prisoners
of conscience can only feel like the conversation of the Adventures of the
Wonderland by Alice and the Cat. What else can the threat to kill these
democrats mouthed with such wild exaggeration by the state persecutor
conjure up except sheer madness emanating from an arrogance of power?

2. The wonderland of extreme injustice

An adventure in the wonderland of extreme injustice, where the death
penalty is casually threatened to citizens who have not committed any
crime, who stand for putting the rule of power under the rule of law, and
who stand against the madness of audacity, arrogance and hubris in favour
of humility, must be felt indeed as an experience that is not to be taken
as sane and safe. It must be this type of inexplicable behaviour displayed
by the state persecutor with such cruel vindictiveness and wicked malice
against the prisoners of conscience that makes one to understand why Alice
and the Cat declared both the place and themselves to be mad. What kind of
good feel comes out of a state persecutor on the eve of the millennium
where he declares he demands the death penalty for the innocent prisoners
of conscience not on the grounds of proving any case against them but
because they refused to defend themselves against crimes they do not
recognise ever committing? Under what law and book of justice can such a
stance by them elicit a death penalty unless the persecutor lives in a mad
world and is also mad himself, if not also the government he so slavishly
serves?

3. So it looks all along all talk of prisoners release was a gimmick!

Instead of an inspiring momentum to a millennium, the nation is treated to
an emotional blackmail and cynical manipulation by the careless and cruel
misuse and abuse of the prisoners of conscience whom the Ethiopian people
voted for. There is no doubt that the ruling party in power lost the
argument during the election. As to the votes, it should have been able to
count it properly. We do not know the true result because it took nearly a
year to count it by an election board that was favouring the ruling party.

The Government is acting in such a way that today those who voted for the
prisoners are driven to curse their vote or deed. They can only feel sad
and angry for electing them only to see them suffer in prison for so long.
Lo and be hold the time when these frustrations, sadness and anger turn
into the courage for resistance, that is when this regime would get its
comeuppance. The people can rise and say enough is enough. The time is
getting closer when the sheer arrogance of power would compel the people
to say they would use any means necessary to restore the dignity of
justice and the people, the electorate and the country. This millennium is
a test case whether the country moves into broad era of reconciliation or
confrontation. The odds are stacked against reconciliation, but the people
must patiently exhaust all avenues for the larger good of the country and
the future generations.

The regime may see it perhaps as a joke or to taste public attitudes to
put on the possibility of the release of the prisoners and to put it off
willy-nilly. One moment the nation was treated to a gigantic rumour mill
that spilled all over the world that the prisoners would be released.
Expectations were whipped high; in fact far too high nearly everyone
talked that it is a matter of days before they would be released. We even
heard that the prisoners families had begun to transport the prisoners
meagre belongings from prison. How can one make sense of this up and down,
on and off, emotional zigzags deliberately leaked and spread by the
politicians involved in it?

Then came the tragic disappointment. Meles flatly denied he has been
engaged in any mediation efforts despite so many reports such mediations
have taken place with Government officials, though the actual persons
involved were not revealed except for some of the outside mediators that
included a Diaspora professor and a lawyer, and foreign powers backing
such efforts either discreetly.

Then Bereket with the usual disdainful arrogance said everything with the
prisoners of conscience is going through the courts. He claimed that there
cannot be any other route to get the prisoners released except for what
they can expect from the constituition, the courts and the law. Then came
the final act in this saga. The state persecutor declared that the
prisoners be punished with a death penalty, not because they have been
found guilty but because they did not show remorse or respect to him, the
judges and so on.

By such mad act of the not so clearly thinking men that play Byzantine
political games on the future of this nation, like this hapless
persecutor, this regime also broadcast to the world that it neither
understands justice nor law, nor also respect the evidence that must be
proved beyond reasonable doubt for people to be sent to the gallows. They
showed the world that the country that has perhaps one of the oldest legal
systems and justice systems in the world is still run by people who do not
understand elementary norms of legality, legal discourse and justice, not
to mention morality, wisdom and humanity.

4. Is it with threats to kill that we wish to enter the millennium?

The threat of death penalty against the prisoners of conscience is not
easy to fathom for any sane person who has both elementary humanity, sense
of justice, and moral and intellectual sense. This is time for Ethiopians
where ever they are to spread a 'good feel spirit' across Ethiopia. The
millennium will take place in less than two months! What would be
interesting about the millennium celebration is not the expected costly
razzmatazz or the party jamboree by the Government in a country that can
hardly afford such a spectacle. No, the party jamboree is the least
interesting aspect of the millennium episode. What would make the
millennium monumental is indeed when state and society, leader and citizen
and everyone come to gather and rally behind leading up to the millennium,
the millennium day itself, and well beyond it, all as united and
purposeful Ethiopians learning and willing to sharing a vision
irrespective of what politics, religion, ethnic origin and language
difference we have or share at the moment. The most precious outcome would
be to be able to come together with a lifted up spirit without any fear
and with full national confidence to confront many of the countrys
internal and external challenges, threats and problems and create the
opportunities for sustainable peace, rule of law, human rights, democracy,
justice and democratic governance, stability, prosperity and legitimacy in
the rules of the game for orderly and lawful transition for Government for
all the people from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. The spirit of the
millennium should be to hope to undo what pulls as apart; and foster and
grow and prepare to unite all as one nation, to emerge also as one people,
one country, with one destiny and one vision to be free, independent,
democratic, just, with a law-governed system of rule, developing a rule of
the game for democratic transition and governance without any need to
resort to violent methods, being always self-reliant, non dependent on
donors, prosperous and renascent. It means that the millennium spirit is
fulfilled when the Government and those who should be having the
responsibility to serve, not as they do now to rule by injustice the
country, the people and the nation, are able to take wise steps to give
leadership to bring the nation together, heal society from its many sores
and wounds. The call for extreme application of death penalty suffers not
only from its lack of substance but its sheer lack of timing. It leads to
disunity rather than help to heal the many fractures and wounds of
society. It fosters the breaking up and the spread of anomie amongst
society, people, and nation even deeper and elongates further the distance
between state and citizen for years to come. Extreme penalty is extreme
injustice. It is power gone mad and crazy. It must be condemned by all
people of good will who wish well Ethiopia and the Ethiopian people to
have a peaceful, gentle, kind and harmonious Millennium.

5. The death penalty threat cannot be seen lightly

After so much talk the prisoners would be released comes the death penalty
threat. Even now commentator after commentator from the Western media says
that what the regime intends is to make a point with the death penalty
against the prisoners of conscience, and after that provide them amnesty.
Action speaks louder, not words, not secret negotiations, not rumours. No
one can be sure what the action of characters in the state of the Cat and
Alice who live in an imaginary mad world of power and privilege, opulence
and wealth in a sea of popular misery would be. It could be anything. Lest
we are not surprised if the worst outcome ensues, we must prepare for the
worst. We must try to begin the biggest, deepest and most resolute
mobilisation this ancient nation ever had in its history to get the
prisoners released. Not just the prisoners of conscience, but also all
political prisoners before the millennium must be immediately released. We
must enter into citizens covenanting to act like a sea of people who will
not stop until justice prevails and sanity overcomes this officially
orchestrated madness. If the regime carries out its threats and disabuses
the Ethiopian nation by promising blood , chains, imprisonment and death
rather than hope, togetherness, unity, wisdom, light and possibility, we
must have the courage to say no, defy and prepare for the most resolute
united resistance this nation ever have seen and will ever see.

6. State persecutor is not acting alone

This death threat is not simply the work of the state persecutor. He did
not pull the trick out of his hat. No one can believe that in a country
where the judicial system has always been interfered by those who are in
the executive that the state persecutor did bring these grave indictments
against the prisoners of conscience without a green light from the central
Government. Those in Government cannot wash their hands from such wicked
mischief. What good does this Government get by unleashing such threats
whilst at the same time getting its friends in the donor community to
spread the rumour of imminent release of the prisoners of conscience? Why
unleash such huge expectation that they democrats in jail would be
released in the population and clamp back and send equally the
de-inspiring talk that the executive has no role, and that all is up to
the courts. Why make the expectation to rise high and equally bring down
people to disappointment and depression. Why all that talk of mediators
when the regime denies that it has not engaged in such mediations, that it
knew all along this is a criminal affair only fit for its courts?

7. Concluding Remark: the options are only to release the prisoners now or
face deeper and sustained resistance!

This is time for all sections of Ethiopians to spread good feel amongst
themselves first and then across Africa and the world. We are heading
towards the millennium and beyond. This is such a precious and special
time we must vow to leave behind us any residual feelings and deeds of
injustice. This is indeed a time when enemies can turn into friends. The
millennium is a special moment. It must be captured with all its
possibilities and hope. The millennium is the time to enter the era of
justice, democracy, human rights, rule of law and mount a democratic
governance revolution and civilisation. This is no time to engage in
wicked mischief and play cat and mouse with the feelings and social
psychology of the Ethiopian people by an unwarranted and cruel misuse and
abuse of the prisoners of conscience!!!

It is simply wicked to threaten prisoners of conscience who have committed
no crime for standing firm in their position of having either never
intended or done nothing to warrant even putting them one second in prison
or another second in court with a death penalty. The threat to execute
them is made not because they have committed crime or the state persecutor
has proved anything against them in law, rather it is related to his anger
that they have towered morally and intellectually over his team's shabby
failure to prove anything to incriminate these worthy citizens of
Ethiopia.

This is no time for the rule of power to undermine the rule of law. It is
not the time for arrogance and public deceit to be unleashed with the
hubris of officials abusing the jailed and misusing them to manipulate the
public sentiment at the wrong time for the wrong reasons of spreading
injustice, cruelty public abuse and enmity.

It is either following Bill Clintons notion of lifting up the people to
bring them together so that they can also relate and communicate better
with the rest of humanity or follow the route of madness of the Adventures
of Alice's and the Cat's Wonderland. The regime must choose either
creating good-feel everywhere in Ethiopia from the family to the country,
lifting up spirit and helping responsibly to bring the people together
RIGHT NOW or follow the mad threats of death penalties on the eve of the
millennium. It is up to the regime to choose. NES hopes commonsense would
prevail over cruelty and injustice.

If the Meles regime chooses to join the camp of lifting the spirit of the
people, then it must immediately and unconditionally release the prisoners
of conscience and all the political prisoners it put into jail since it
came to power by violent armed struggle on May 28, 1991.

If it continues to choose the Adventures of Alice in the Wonderland, NES
asks for a global Ethiopian resistance observatory to be formed where we
all together enter the Millennium with courage, spirit of resistance and
defiance until justice and the dignity of our people are fully restored.
No time calls for the united opposition to ignore all the petty
differences and come together and show robust united strength now. Time to
prepare to come together for all the people and their organic
intellectuals from the red Sea to the Indian Ocean! Time to mobilise,
organise and confront those who show no concern for justice or engage in
depleting the spirit of national moments that must be seized to spread
good-feel, unity, togetherness and lifting-up all the people the country
and the nation.

* Mammo Muchie, Chair, on Behalf of o Network of Ethiopian Scholars (NES).

(source: Sudan Tribune)






ZIMBABWE:

Death penalty not the solution


Zimbabwe has been very reluctant since independence to use the death
penalty, and the majority of those sentenced to death have had their
sentences commuted to life in prison, with the apparent proviso that this
does mean the rest of their lives behind bars.

There is a growing group who feel the time has come to formally abolish
the death penalty, and this week the supporters of abolition received
support from a very influential quarter  the Council of Chiefs.

The chiefs in favour of abolition used traditional arguments, as is their
function, but these arguments are frequently reflected in the views of
modern proponents of abolition.

Both traditional and modern proponents of the abolition of the death
penalty argue that those who kill, even when this is permitted by law, are
tainted by the same horror they are trying to deter, that of killing
another human.

By hanging those who wilfully take the life of another in order to remove
an obstacle, society accepts the argument that killing can indeed solve a
problem.

We lower ourselves to the same level as those we hang.

Of course, there are crimes that are so terrible that the perpetrators
have removed themselves totally, and forever, from the society of their
fellows.

Wilful murder is one such crime and, in certain circumstances, so is
treason.

Zimbabwean law acknowledges this by making these 2 crimes, along with
mutiny, the only possible capital crimes. The Zanu-PF Government removed
all other crimes from the old colonial list that attracted a death
penalty.

The system of safeguards to ensure that murder was indeed the crime
committed was also strengthened after independence.

Not only is it impossible to plead guilty to a capital crime, ensuring
that the prosecution must prove its case, but appeal is automatic.

Where death sentences are passed and confirmed, judges have to submit
detailed reports to the Cabinet and the final decision to execute the
sentence or commute the sentence is one for the Cabinet as a whole, not
just one person as is common in the rest of the world.

Zimbabwe has probably reached the stage now where the only argument in
favour of retaining hanging is that of deterrence. There is a feeling that
abolishing the death sentence might encourage those committing robbery or
other serious crimes to kill possible witnesses.

But experience in other jurisdictions suggests that so long as
non-murderers receive fixed sentences and killers get "life without
parole" there is a sufficient gap to deter killing.

What is also important  and Zimbabwe follows this rule  is that the chance
of arrest and conviction for a murderer must be high. There are very few
unsolved murders in Zimbabwe.

The police pour vast amounts of man-hours by talented detectives into
solving murder cases.

That near certainty of arrest, followed by a life sentence, is likely to
retain the deterrent. After all, a killer will know he will die in jail.

Whether this is next year on the gallows or in decades to come after a
miserable life behind bars is not that important.

What is critical is that we, as individuals and as a society, will
relinquish the right to decide who lives and who dies.

We will preserve life and let God dispose. We will rise above the morality
of those who believe that killing can solve anything.

(source: The Herald)