Aug. 23
ROMANIA:
Ceausescu execution spot to become tourist attraction
The grim barracks where Romania's brutal communist despot Nicolae Ceausescu and
his wife Elena were executed are to be opened to the public in the latest bid
to boost "dictator tourism".
The former military unit at Targoviste, 100 kilometres (60 miles) northwest of
Bucharest, is to be turned into a museum and is due to welcome its first
visitors in early September.
"Many Romanians and foreigners said they wanted to see the wall against which
Ceausescu and his wife Elena were shot on December 25, 1989," Ovidiu Carstina,
director of the museum, told AFP.
The death of the Ceausescus became one of the defining images of the
revolutions which convulsed eastern and central Europe in 1989.
On December 22, as angry crowds gathered in front of the Communist Party
headquarters, they fled the capital Bucharest in a helicopter. It was to be
their final journey. They were stopped by the army, detained in Targoviste, and
shot after a makeshift trial.
It brought to a grisly end more than 20 years of repressive rule aided by a
huge security apparatus, where any free speech was ruthlessly suppressed.
The population suffered from food and power shortages and on top of that,
Ceascescu's rule was marked by nepotism, paranoia and a deeply ingrained
personality cult. Wife Elena was seen as the regime's 'number 2'.
"Our aim is to present events as they unfolded, without making comments on the
trial, the Ceausescus' life or the cult of personality," said Carstina.
In the barracks, built in 1907, time seems to have stood still since the
execution.
The walls are painted a greyish yellow and the iron beds complete with dirty
mattresses where the Ceausescus slept have remained there ever since.
The makeshift dock where Nicolae and Elena, dressed in their winter coats, sat
listening to the charges against them will be put back in the very place where
the couple were tried and sentenced to death.
Outside, the wall against which they were shot just a few minutes later still
carries bullet holes.
Footage of the trial and the execution, broadcast all over the world in
December 1989 and drawing criticism over the summary judicial proceedings, will
run on a black and white TV set.
"We do not wish to stir a controversy but only to speak of a landmark in
Romania's history," Carstina stressed.
Sociologist Vasile Dancu said "every nation must acknowledge its history,
without trying to hide certain events".
"No matter what we do, we cannot erase the image of that sham trial which only
speaks of the collapse of a system," he told AFP.
A group of Swedish tourists has already booked tickets for the museum, Carstina
said.
Also on their must-see list is the grandiose Palace of Parliament in the heart
of Bucharest.
To erect the building, initially called "House of the People", Ceausescu
ordered the razing of much of the city's historic district, forcing the
relocation of some 40,000 people who lost their homes.
State coffers, meanwhile, foot the bill for the 350,000 square-metre (3.7
million square-foot) structure that was fitted out with enough marble to fill
400 Olympic swimming pools -- at a time when Romanians suffered from severe
food shortages and regular power cuts.
The palace is now one of Romania's top attractions. More than 144,000 tourists
visited it in 2012, 110,000 of them foreigners.
But Lucia Morariu, head of the local tour operators' association, felt turning
Ceausescu into a tourist brand was not a good idea.
"Why encourage those who mourn him? Romania boasts other highlights," she said,
citing the Danube delta, part of UNESCO's heritage, or the picturesque natural
reserve of the Retezat mountains, home to Europe's biggest bear and wolves
populations.
However, in the southern town of Scornicesti, the small, traditional house
where Ceausescu was born in 1918 is a major draw for tourists.
The perfectly preserved abode, dating from around 1900, with no running water
or electricity, is sporadically opened to visitors by Ceausescu's nephew Emil
Barbulescu, who lives next door.
The 55-year-old former head of the local communist militia does not hide his
nostalgia for the "good old days" and says steps have been taken recently to
"restore the truth" about his uncle.
"History will put him back where he belongs," he told AFP.
2 smartly-dressed women in their 50s, who declined to give their names, stepped
down from their SUV, pleased that they could enter Ceausescu's house.
"We are here out of respect, because we wanted to be closer" to the late
"Conducator", they said.
A man and his wife also stopped their car in front of the house.
"There were a lot of restrictions at the time," Ioan Donga, 58, said, adding
however that his family "lacked nothing" under the communist regime.
But he insisted that the execution remained an open wound in Romania.
"Of course he deserved to be shot but this is not the way they (the
authorities) should have acted."
(source: France24.com)
GAMBIA:
A year on from the Gambia's return to executions; Last August President Yahya
Jammeh announced his intention to execute "all those on death row"----By Lisa
Sherman-Nikolaus, West Africa researcher at Amnesty International
*This blog has been adapted from a speech given at an event on 23 August 2013
with 12 other organizations in Dakar, Senegal to remember last year's
executions in the Gambia and to raise awareness of the human rights situation
in the country.
A year ago today, I walked into my office in London as any other day. Little
did I know that it would be the most intense day in my human rights career so
far, when suddenly calls started coming in from families and others who were
telling us that nine death row inmates had been executed in the Gambia the
night before.
We had been given some warning, as Gambian President Yahya Jammeh had announced
his intention to execute "all those on death row" in a speech earlier that
month. But even though few things in the Gambia surprise me anymore, I was
still in disbelief when I started getting reports that the executions had
actually started. I remember not sleeping that weekend as I verified the
information over and over again - hoping that I had got it wrong.
The government fell silent for several days. I cannot imagine what the
prisoners and their families were going through. The secrecy behind the
executions was distressing and appalling. Neither families nor lawyers were
notified. The Senegalese government was not notified that two of its nationals
were among those put to death.
To this day, the burial site has not been made known despite a UN Human Rights
Council resolution on March 2012 calling on states that execute to either
return the body or disclose the burial site. When states execute in secrete it
compounds the cruelty of the death penalty. The Human Rights Committee and the
Committee against Torture have in the past criticized secretive practices
surrounding executions in Belarus, Japan, Mongolia and Uzbekistan.
The UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Executions called the Gambian
executions "arbitrary", while the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture said that
"secret executions violate the rights of the convict and family members to
prepare for death", and that "...secrecy and the refusal to hand over remains
to families are especially cruel features of capital punishment..."
It is time to recognize that people sentenced to death may have a family and
that the human rights of children and other family members are also violated.
The death penalty permanently punishes all family members.
Of course we also have other concerns about the lack of respect for due process
safeguards around the use of the death penalty. For example, we know that none
of those killed had exhausted their appeals despite the Gambian Constitution
mandating "automatic appeals". This means the responsibility is on the
government to ensure that appeals reach the Supreme Court. If the detainee
cannot afford the services of a legal representative, the government must
provide one. We know that there are other irregularities in the individual
cases such as the reports that some of the case files are missing from the
court rooms, questions around the mental health of Buba Yarboe, one of the
executed, and the commutation and reinstatement of Lamin Darboe's death
sentence.
Now there are dozens of other inmates on death row who have had similar
irregularities in their cases. In particular Amnesty International is concerned
about the case of General Lang Tambang and company, where seven men have been
sentenced to death for treason. Their conviction and sentence was upheld by the
Supreme Court last year, but questions remain about the evidence produced,
reports they were tortured, violations of due process safeguards, and the use
of the death penalty in treason cases.
The amount of regional and international pressure following the executions was
unprecedented. Amnesty International joined with activists from around West
Africa and the world to pressure the Gambian government to admit to the
killings and to prevent further deaths. We achieved our initial goals to end
the secrecy and stop further executions for the time being when the government
finally made a public announcement naming those who were executed and later
establishing a conditional moratorium.
Now we call on the Gambian government to:
1) establish a permanent moratorium
2) conduct the overdue review of the death penalty in accordance with the
Constitution, with a view to abolition
3) commute all death sentences to terms of imprisonment
4) Disclose the site of burial and return the bodies of those executed, in line
with their families' wishes.
We are very concerned about the example the Gambia's executions set for the
whole of West Africa. However, these incidences are an anomaly and they go
against the global and even regional trend towards abolition. Since 2000, for
example, C???te d???Ivoire, Senegal, Togo, Burundi, Gabon and Rwanda have all
abolished the death penalty.
We need West African and other leaders to stand up against a return to the
death penalty. One positive example is that of Abdou Diouf who, as the
Secretary General of La Francophonie has put himself squarely behind abolition
and specifically called on African countries to ratify the 2nd Optional
Protocol to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)
aimed at abolition of the death penalty.
We have seen what we can achieve when we work together, and we must continue to
speak out against the systemic human rights violations in the Gambia.
(source: Amnesty International)
PAKISTAN:
Pakistan PM halts executions till new President takes over
Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Friday directed the Interior Ministry
to halt all executions till September 9 when the new President will take over,
a media report said.
Sharif met President Asif Ali Zardari at the presidency last night, when the
head of state told the premier that the previous government led by his Pakistan
People's Party had stopped the execution of death sentences of several
terrorists and criminals for five years in line with its policies.
Zardari expressed a wish that the moratorium should continue till September 9,
after which the current PML-N government can review the decision with new
President Mamnoon Hussain, Express News reported.
Since the authority to decide whether capital punishment should be implemented
rests with the President, Sharif directed the Interior Ministry to hold the
execution of death sentences.
Hussain is set to take over on September 9, a day after Zardari steps down
following a 5-year term. Hussain is a close aide of Sharif, whose PML-N party
routed the PPP in the May 11 polls.
The PML-N government was set to end the moratorium on executions with the
hanging of four convicts later this month. The move was put on hold after
Zardari said he wanted to discuss the issue with Sharif.
Sharif earlier said he would not be pressured due to any threat related to the
policy on the death penalty. The Taliban have said they will consider the
execution of any militants as a declaration of war.
Official figures state Pakistan has over 7,000 prisoners on death row, one of
the world's largest populations of prisoners facing execution.
Human Rights Watch and the International Committee of Jurists have sent an open
letter to the government, asking it to renew the moratorium on executions.
Since Zardari imposed the moratorium in June 2008, only a soldier convicted by
a military court was hanged in November 2012.
(source: Zee News)
*****************
Death row
This refers to your editorial, 'Death row' (August 21). The Quran says that a
murderer should get the death penalty with the exception that a relative of the
victim pardons him. The lacunas pointed out by the editorial - in our laws;
their wrong enforcement; corruption by the police in prosecution of the cases
and people ready to give false evidence - are all very valid. The way the
system works, there is every chance of an innocent person being put to death.
But this does not mean that we should abolish the death penalty.
There is a need to establish a commission of reputed ulema and jurists to
deliberate upon this serious matter to make some solid recommendations in this
regard.
Air Cdre (r) Mohammad Yaqoob Khan
Rawalpindi
(source: Letter to the Editor, The News)
INDIA:
India should abolish 'capital punishment'
The Indian government should stop impending executions and renew its moratorium
on capital punishment, Human Rights Watch said Thursday. On August 14, the
Supreme Court of India rejected the appeal for clemency of Devinderpal Singh
Bhullar, who was sentenced to death in 2001 for a 1993 bomb attack that killed
9 people.
"In the past year, India has made a full-scale retreat from its previous
principled rejection of the death penalty," Human Rights Watch said. "The
government should instead declare an official moratorium, commute all existing
death sentences to life in prison, and then work towards abolishing the death
penalty once and for all."
Human Rights Watch urged the Indian government to demonstrate its commitment to
international human rights obligations by halting all executions starting with
Bhullar. It also told New Delhi to immediately adopt a moratorium on death
penalty and abolish the death penalty permanently in domestic law.
Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an
inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment. An eight year unofficial
moratorium on executions in India ended with the hanging on November 21, 2012
of Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, a Pakistani convicted of multiple murders in the 2008
terror attack in Mumbai.
On February 9, 2013, Mohammad Afzal Guru, convicted for the 2001 attack on the
Indian parliament, was executed. Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has rejected
11 clemency pleas since he took office, confirming the death penalty for 17
people.
(source: Morung Express)
*************
India urged not to hang bombing mastermind Devinder Pal Bhullar
India must not go ahead with the imminent execution of a professor convicted of
charges related to bombing the All Indian Youth Congress in 1993, the
International Commission of Jurists said on Thursday.
Devinder Pal Bhullar, a German-based Sikh, was sentenced to death in 2001 for
masterminding the bombing, which killed nine people. The bomb targeted
Maninderjit Singh Bitta, a leader of the Congress and a critic of militant
separatists in Punjab.
The Supreme Court rejected a plea to commute the sentence to life imprisonment
in April this year and upheld its decision on August 14, the ICJ, an
international group of 60 lawyers and judges, said in a statement.
The ICJ's South Asia Director Ben Schonveld said there were serious questions
about Bhullar's trial.
"His conviction and death sentence are based solely upon an alleged confession
he made in police custody, which he later retracted, claiming it was extracted
under torture," Schonveld said in the statement.
In a separate statement, Amnesty International said one of the three judges at
Bhullar's trial had found him not guilty, saying there was no evidence to
convict him.
It also said international standards prohibited the use of the death penalty
against people with mental disability, and Bhullar had reportedly been
suffering from psychosis and severe depression and had suicidal tendencies.
India ended an 8-year moratorium on the death penalty in November 2012 with the
hanging of Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the gang of Pakistan-based
militants who killed 166 people in a rampage through Mumbai.
India also hanged Mohammad Afzal Guru in February this year for an attack on
its parliament in 2001. The execution sparked clashes between protesters and
police in Kashmir in which dozens were injured.
(source: IBN LIve)
*****************
Delhi gang-rape 1st verdict set for August 31
The trials of 5 suspects for the fatal gang-rape of an Indian student on a bus
last December moved towards their conclusions on Thursday, with the 1st verdict
set for August 31.
The Supreme Court cleared a juvenile court to hand down its verdict at the end
of the month on a teenager charged over the brutal assault, which shocked India
and sparked weeks of protests.
The juvenile court has four times delayed ruling on the under-age suspect
because of a legal challenge, but the Supreme Court ruled that this should not
hold up proceedings any longer.
Separately, the prosecution began its final arguments at a fast-track court in
southern New Delhi where the trial of 4 adult defendants is underway.
Special public prosecutor Dayan Krishnan started his arguments by stating that
the suspects had "pre-planned the conspiracy to loot, rape and murder their
prey".
"What is so significant about this case is the extreme brutality of the injury.
The extreme torture and the nature of the injury is such that it is clear they
intended to murder their victims," he said.
"The brutality is grotesque to say the least," he stated in his submission
before the judge.
Police allege the men repeatedly raped the 23-year-old woman, who was also
sexually assaulted with an iron rod. They then dumped her and a male friend
along a highway naked and bleeding.
Her injuries were so severe that she died two weeks after the attack. The
woman's friend -- who was with her on the bus -- was also severely beaten,
police say.
Additional Sessions Judge Yogesh Khanna, who was been hearing the case since
the trial began in February, will deliver his verdict once the arguments
conclude. A defence lawyer said this could take "another few hearings".
"The prosecution will require at least another 5 days to present his final
case. I will require at least 15 more sittings," defence counsel A. P. Singh
told AFP outside the court.
Public outrage and protests over the attack pushed parliament to pass a new law
toughening sentences for rapists, while a round of public soul-searching sought
to explain the rising tide of violence against women.
The judgement on the juvenile was held up after politician Subramanian Swamy,
an opposition leader, filed a petition in the Supreme Court arguing that
suspects aged over 16 who are accused of serious offences should be tried in
adult courts.
"The juvenile board can go ahead with its proceedings and pass orders
accordingly," Chief Justice P. Sathasivam said.
Swamy said he was "completely satisfied" with the judgement of the Supreme
Court. It agreed to hear his petition into a review of the juvenile law in
general, but not specifically on the juvenile's case.
The juvenile, a runaway who reportedly left home aged 11, can be sent to a
correctional facility for a maximum three-year term if found guilty. The term
will take into account the time he has already spent in custody.
He was 17 at the time of the crime but is now 18.
One of the suspects originally arrested for the crime -- the driver of the bus
on which the victim was brutally assaulted -- died while in jail from a
suspected suicide in March.
The 4 adults could face the death penalty if convicted. All the accused have
pleaded not guilty.
(source: Channel NewsAsia)
GAZA:
HRW: Hamas must end death penalty for youth
Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Aug. 20 called on Hamas authorities in the Gaza
Strip to halt all executions, especially those of child offenders. HRW is
especially concerned with the specific case of Hani Abu Aliyan, an adult
prisoner sentenced to death for the murder of a peer while he was a minor.
Aliyan was convicted using a confession he alleges was produced under torture.
Joe Stork, acting Middle East director at HRW, reflected on the precedent that
such an execution would establish. "Imposing the death penalty for a crime
committed by a child makes the executions under Gaza's abusive justice system
especially atrocious," he said. "If the authorities want to deter criminals,
they should make sure people are convicted for what they did, not what they are
tortured to confess." Israel Jaber, the prosecutor general for Hamas in the
Gaza Strip, has defended the court system, insisting that torture does not
occur and that all convictions are the result of due process.
These anticipated executions have been the source of international concern
since their announcement last week. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi
Pillay urged Hamas not to go through with the executions. The UN Special
Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories in June again called on
Israel to end its seven-year blockade of the Gaza Strip.
(source: World War 4 Report)
IRAN:
Over 100 executed including women and minors since election
The inhumane mullahs' regime on Tuesday, August 20, executed an 18-year old
youth after he had already endured 6 years in Diesel Abad Prison in the city of
Kermanshah, western Iran.
Identified as Arman Mohammadi, he was first arrested and jailed at the age of
12 charged with premeditated murder. This is while according to the regime's
own medieval laws the legal age for boys is stated as 15.
On August 20 and 21 2 prisoners were hanged in public in the cities of Tabriz
and Jahrom (state-run Mehr and Fars news agencies).
Mahmoud Hashemi, head of judiciary in the city of Hendijan, annonced the
execution of an inmate in public in the city on August 22.
On the morning of Sunday, August 18, in yet another vicious and unprecedented
measure, three inmates were hanged in public in three different locations in
the city of Karaj, west of Tehran. In order to create a climate of fear,
state-run media outlets have published scenes of these vicious crimes on a
widespread scale.
Therefore, the number of those executed following the regime's sham
presidential election has reached at least 107 counts, of which many were under
the age of 18 at the time of their alleged crime, and a number of others were
women.
On August 19 Mohseni Ejei, spokesman of the regime's judiciary, made threats in
his remarks and said, "There will be a firm approach towards those creating
insecurity in the society."
(source: Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran)
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