June 19
NIGERIA:
Is Death Penalty The Best Way To Fight Corruption?
The current level of corruption in Nigeria is so high that it calls for drastic
solution. Some people believe that death penalty is a very suitable option for
combating corruption, which negatively affects the public and private facets of
life in the country.
Recently, a wave of protests against corruption scandals has reached even the
National Assembly. A group of dissatisfied people stormed the building,
demanding the death penalty as punishment for dishonest officials. Protesters
stressed that Nigeria would not make progress if corruption in public office is
not brought under control.
Some Nigerians believe that only death penalty can help the government to win a
war against the cancer of corruption.
"Honestly speaking, death penalty is the answer to corruption in Nigeria," Oni
Oluwafemi noted.
"The only option in which will stop Government corruptions in Nigeria is DEATH
PENAITY. And the execution date will be shown live in Chanels Tv, Ait ,Nta i,
Cnn, BBC, Arise News & other media stations, so that our politicians ...
governors ... ministers ... ex-leaders ... will see it and know things have
CHANGE. We support it," David Chukwuka stressed.
"Let the Government try the following options to eliminate corruption in all
its ramifications. 1. Plea bargaining where the culpit is made to return the
stolen money intact to Government Treasury & banned from holding public office
for life 2. Outright death penalty to serve as a deterent," Akhidenor Dominic
suggested.
Unfortunately, some Nigerians have already lost hope and think that even
capital panishment won't prevent people from corrupt practices and thieves will
escape from punishment.
"Even if they implement the death penalty for corruption, it is the ordinary
Nigerian that will be punished while the big thieves in government will go
free," Laila Musa Alonge noted.
"Who is going to sign the bill? Is that not the same corrupt members? With the
level of corruption in this country, democracy is not a solution. That's why I
said Buhari will not do more than past presidents. He is tied down with
democracy," Mbaji Benendict Chidozie wrote.
"In China, death penalty is the reward for corruption. But that can not happen
in Nigeria because those to pass the Bill ARE BLOODY THIEVES. So, fear of
falling victims won't allow them to make such an anti-corruption bill. Anyway,
whether they pass such a bill or not, God Himself shall SEVERELY PUNISH ANY
OFFICER THAT STEALS OUR MONEY BECAUSE HE IS IN POSITION TO DO THAT, AMEN.God
bless Nigeria," Bayo Oloidi emotionally noted.
However, some Nigerians have spoken out against the introduction of death
penalty for corrupt officials, suggesting replace it with imprisonment.
"Death penalty is too big, I am not in support of death penalty for corrupt
officials but at least 20 years imprisonment for whoever was found guilty of
corruption," Bashir Usman Riyadh suggested.
"Death penalty is not the solution. Death penalty has been on for armed robbers
since 1970. Has it stop robbery?" Steve Otoadese wondered.
"Nigerians are corrupt but if you think death penalty should be melted out as
punishment to offenders that means nobody is safe in the system ..."
Christopher Idegbe Abiodun warned people.
"It can only affect the poor not the rich people, we know our country and the
rich people can buy the mind of the judge with money. I'm not in support of
death penalty. Let's look for another way round to takle corruption in
Nigeria," Pat Kizito Nlem wrote.
"Who will kill who ? Is it the corrupt judges that will sentence the corrupt
politicians. Dogs don't eat dog," Ogungbo Rasheed noted.
Ochayi Daniel wrote: "People that are supporting this are myopic, when death
penalty is passed into law it will go beyond government officials to our
households ,churches, family meetings and even trading and you see that people
will die everyday,then those protesting today will be regretting and even
protest again.We should look for other ways to punish offenders."
Meanwhile, there are indications President Muhammadu Buhari is likely employ 5
proposed laws to fight corruption in Nigeria. According to the sources close to
presidency, a committee led by Yemi Osinbajo, Nigeria's vice president, already
directed 5 bills to Buhari for consideration.
(source: naij.com)
INDONESIA:
Young father faints after hearing he may receive death sentence for couriering
drugs
A young man, identified by police as DY, stood besides North Jakarta Police
Commissioner Susetio Cahyadi as the drug smuggling case he was implicated in
was explained to reporters at a press conference today.
DY was wearing a bright orange prison uniform and a black ski mask to protect
his identity from the media. He was also standing next to 16 kg of
methamphetamines that he allegedly helped deliver to a 40-year-old Nigerian man
police are identifying as EST.
Commissioner Susetio got to a part of the press conference where, according to
Kompas, he explained, "For meth dealers caught with over 1 kilogram, the death
penalty will be charged under the article that applies."
Upon hearing that, DY suddenly fainted and went limp. He needed to be held up
by police officers. It took him about 5 minutes to regain consciousness.
DY is suspected of acting as an accomplice to EST who was caught in his home
with 16 kg of methamphetamines, hidden in electronic massager devices sent from
Guanzhou, China. DY was arrested while delivering a package to EST.
After he recovered from fainting, DY told reporters how he felt when he heard
he may be executed.
"I was surprised and shocked. But I must be strong if I'm facing the death
penalty. Later my children will watch," DY said.
DY maintains that he did not know the contents of the package he was delivering
to EST.
"I did not know what it was. As far as I knew, it was just an electronic
massage apparatus for massaging feet," he said.
(source: Coconuts.co)
INDIA:
Man's death penalty changed to life term
Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh high court on Thursday converted death sentence
of a man, convicted in gruesome rape and murder of 9-year-old, to life
imprisonment.
Jagdish Mehar, 30, resident of Pallapur village of Rajgargh district of Madhya
Pradesh, was in January 2015, convicted by session court for kidnapping, rape
and murder of 9-year-old girl and awarded capital punishment under various
sections of IPC and Protection of Children From Sexual Offence Act.
Advocates Abhijeet Dube and Rekha Shrivastava said this is the 1st time in
recent times, when HC has reduced the punishment, in such a sensitive case.
Jagdish had kidnapped the minor from his village and raped her on March 9,
2014. On March 13, 2014, a decomposed body of victim was recovered by police,
and after investigation, Jagdish was arrested and booked.
Sessions court held Jagdish guilty of murder, rape and kidnapping. As per rule,
capital punishment awarded by session court is tabled before high court for
approval.
In high court, double bench of Justices PK Jaiswal and JK Jain set aside the
capital punishment for murder, and their order observed that it was not murder
but culpable homicide, so he could not be awarded capital punishment.
HC upheld charges of rape and kidnapping and approved life sentence.
(source: The Times of India)
***********************
Rape accused sentenced to death
First Additional Upper Sessions Judge of Ashta Alka Dubey sentenced the 30 year
man, who had raped a minor girl to be hanged till dealth and a penalty of Rs
4000.
According the to the information received through the prosecution, on January
4, 2014 an 8 year old girl was abducted in Ashta Tehsil's Nipania Village. She
was on the 2nd day found on Badal Pull of Shajapur. She was primarily admitted
in Ashta and was then referred to Bhopal for treatment.
The girl during her statements said that the rapist was brown eyed man. Police
then short listed suspects who had brown eyes and started interrogating them.
During its search, the police said that it found that a Ramesh - a brown eyed
man had stepped down from a bus in Nipaniya. He had raped a girl before and was
sentenced to five year jail then. When the police reached Polay, they came to
know that the man had gone to Hoshangabad on a truck.
The police arrested the accused at Tawapul after which the arrest was
highlighted in front of media in presence of SP Raman Singh Sikarwar. The
police also conducted medical tests of the accused and then presented him at
the court. The court after hearing the case for 1 1/2 years sentenced the
accused to death.
(source: Free Press Journal)
CHINA:
Death demanded for child traffickers
Calls on social media to hand down death sentences to anyone involved in child
trafficking have created a heated debate on appropriate punishment for such
offences.
A post with pictures and stories of abducted children on the messaging app
WeChat that called for the child traffickers to get the death penalty had been
reposted 540,000 times by Thursday evening. Currently, only the most serious
trafficking crimes are punishable by death. The minimum penalty is 5 years in
prison.
Last year, police rescued more than 13,000 abducted children. Some of the
children had been sold to one of a growing number of childless families.Wu
Ming'an, a criminal law professor at the University of Political Science and
Law, said that the Criminal Law already stipulates that people who traffic in
children may be subject to the death penalty, so it would be unnecessary to
change the law.
"It is irrational for people to ask for the death penalty on all activities
involving the abduction and trading of children," Wu said.
"And you can't kill everyone who participates in the crime. A law allowing the
death penalty for the buyers is unlikely. People who buy a child purely because
they want to have a child in the family should not be sentenced to death."
The public should be aware that not all criminals deserve death," Wu said.
Wu suggested children should be protected by every possible means, and systems
that incorporate all government departments in fighting human trafficking
should be created.
He said the authorities should start collecting DNA samples from all newborns
and, if possible, from their parents, as this would help identity children and
prevent crimes.
Ministry of Public Security official Chen Shiqu said he supports the death
penalty for those guilty of serious human trafficking offences.
The law allows human traffickers who cause the death of abductees to be
executed.
(source: asiaone.com)
****************
Experts argue against death penalty despite public support
While nearly everyone agrees that child trafficking is a heinous crime, there
is considerable debate about whether the death penalty is a fitting deterrent.
The public seems to be in favor of giving capital punishment to child
traffickers. In a poll carried out on web portal Sina, more than 80 % of the
respondents voted in favor of the death penalty. But opposition voices have
emerged, too. Many come from legal scholars and sociologists. Some scholars
argue that the appeal for death is not rational and that crimes should be
handled more objectively.
They also propose severe punishments for buyers. Others say that extreme
punishments may actually put the abducted children in danger as they may make
the criminals more desperate.
(source: CCTV.cn)
EGYPT:
Is the Death Sentence on Egypt's Morsi a Death Sentence on Egypt?
The Egyptian court that sentenced former Egyptian president Mohammed Morsi to
death this week may have done more than commit a human-rights violation. It may
have condemned Egypt to years of violence and more decades of economic
stagnation. Support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which Morsi led, probably has
fallen to about 1/5 of Egyptians, but that is a very large minority to nurse a
grudge against the system. Bombings and violence have returned to Egypt's Luxor
tourist destination, which last witnessed a major attack in 1997. The US
government appears now to have made its peace with Egypt's military junta,
satisfied that the holding of phony presidential "elections" in 2014, won by a
general, has removed the stigma of the 2013 coup. Arms and aid shipments are
back to normal, and the rise of ISIL has made the military regime useful to the
West.
Morsi squeaked to victory in the June 2012 presidential elections against Ahmed
Shafik, a former Air Force general and deposed dictator Hosni Mubarak's last
prime minister. Egyptians, who had demonstrated in the millions against
dictatorship and lack of jobs or affordable staples in 2011 at Tahrir Square
and elsewhere in the country, faced an unpalatable choice in their 1st free and
fair presidential poll. It was conducted on the French model, with some 14
candidates in a 1st round in May (I was in Egypt then, and the hope was
palpable) and then a run-off between the 2 top vote-getters. Most Egyptians
were deeply disappointed at this Hobson's choice between the religious right
wing and a man of the old regime. In effect, they've never since had any other
choice.
The Egyptian Revolution of 2011 broke out on January 25. 3 days later,
Mubarak's secret police arrested Morsi and 23 other Muslim Brotherhood leaders,
even though the Brotherhood leadership had been cautious about participating in
the protests and formed a minority of the demonstrators. 2 weeks later, in the
chaos of the revolution, the Brotherhood figures made a daring jail break.
Regime officials charged at the time that they were aided in escaping by
Gaza-based Hamas and by Lebanon-based Shiite Hezbollah guerrillas, which seems
a little unlikely, to say the least. Further, it was alleged that they passed
the plans of the maximum-security prison to those groups, which the Egyptian
government sees as terrorists, and so became guilty of material support of
terrorism. It is typical of the Egyptian military to attempt to smear the
Muslim Brotherhood, which foreswore violence in the 1970s, as being no more
than a terrorist organization closely connected to actual terrorists like Al
Qaeda. It was for the jailbreak and its circumstances that Morsi was sentenced
to death this week, even though the current regime says it honors the January
25 revolution that Morsi's questionable arrest had been intended, in part, to
forestall.
Morsi's year in power did not reflect well on him. He proposed banning
unlicensed public demonstrations, a measure implemented by the current junta.
He prosecuted young dissidents who criticized him for political libel,
including the leader of the April 6 Youth organization, Ahmad Maher, now jailed
by the military. He went after comedian Bassem Yousef. He is accused of having
mobilized plainclothes Brotherhood thugs against demonstrators. He pushed
through a fundamentalist-tinged constitution in the face of protests by women,
Coptic Christians, youth activists, and liberals. He tried to pack the courts
with Brotherhood members, tried to impose fundamentalists (some with a violent
past) as provincial governors, and tried to create, unconstitutionally and by
fiat, a national legislature dominated by the Brotherhood. In short, he
conducted what looked to most Egyptians like a slow-motion coup. His economic
policies were a disaster. Egypt exploded in anger against him in June of 2013,
with millions in the streets and the biggest demonstrations, up and down the
Nile, that the country had ever seen. Some of the youth leaders of this protest
movement had links with the officer corps, but it is impossible to explain such
massive demonstrations by factory workers, urban quarters, towns, and villages
as a mere paid-for conspiracy.
After the military coup of July 3, 2013, junta leader and Morsi's minister of
defense, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Sisi went to the public and asked permission to
wage a "war on terror." The big demonstrations in favor of this step encouraged
him to crack down hard on Muslim Brotherhood demonstrators, killing hundreds in
August and more that fall. Al-Sisi could have branded the Morsi faction within
the Brotherhood a rogue, dictatorial one, and attempted to reach out to and
rehabilitate the moderate and youth factions of the movement. Indeed, there was
talk of this approach in August of 2013. Instead, al-Sisi decided to brand the
whole movement a terrorist organization. It would be as though evangelical
supporters of the religious right in the United States, about 20 % of the
electorate, were abruptly categorized as terrorists at the insistence of the
Pentagon. An Egyptian opinion poll done earlier this year found that while 2/3
of Egyptians believe that religious extremism is a problem for the country, 1/4
deny that there even is any religious extremism in Egypt. Likely this section
of the public includes supporters and sympathizers with the Brotherhood, who
are resisting the government line.
Al-Sisi's policy is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Clearly, for a legitimate
political party that came to power at free and fair polls to be abruptly
stigmatized and banned will create a backlash. Most Muslim Brotherhood members
and supporters have been incredibly patient and disciplined in retaining a
faith in peaceful change. But, regrettably, some militants on the fringes of
the movement have been radicalized. In the back pages of Egypt's local
newspapers, not a day goes by without an article on pipe bombs going off or
police shot dead in provincial towns. There have been some bigger attacks as
well, including the bombing of the police HQ in Mansoura in December 2013 and
the January 2014 bombing of the secret police headquarters in Cairo, which
damaged the adjacent Museum of Islamic Art and some of its holdings. Last week,
3 bombers attempted to blow up the ancient pharaonic Temple of Karnak in Luxor,
with one setting off his suicide vest, causing the renowned Thomas Cook and
Thomson travel agency to cancel tourist trips to that city. In the
pre-revolutionary days, tourism provided about 10 % of Egypt's income.
Egypt and the Arab world in general suffers from remarkably low rates of direct
foreign investment (DFI), which are unlikely to be helped by the social turmoil
of a generational "war on terror" intended to crush the political party that
significant numbers of Egyptians think represents them. Al-Sisi is hoping to
replace tourist income and Western investment with hundreds of billions of
dollars from the oil monarchies of the Gulf, but this approach seems more like
a forlorn hope than a concrete plan. Without economic growth, Egypt cannot hope
to provide jobs to its restless youth, who constitute a huge demographic bulge.
Secular youth activism is also in the sights of the military, which has had the
dreaded Ministry of Interior round up and cause to disappear 163 youth leaders
just since April.
The Brotherhood was founded in 1928, and many Egyptian governments have
attempted to destroy it without success. A minority constituency exists in
Egypt for a political religious right wing, and forbidding it from
participating in parliamentary politics is a recipe for social discontent.
Morsi himself, with a ruling style that was arrogant and uninterested in
compromise, bears some blame for creating fears among a wide spectrum of
Egyptians that he was taking their country in the direction of an Iran-style
theocracy. He paid a heavy price for his inability to hold on to the loyalty of
the vast majority of Egyptians (the Brotherhood's favorability ratings were
down to 19 % in June of 2013, according to Gallup). But that he did anything
warranting a death sentence is at the least unproven in an unbiased court of
law. Turning him into a Muslim Brotherhood martyr is guaranteed to roil Egypt
for decades to come.
The Egyptian press gleefully pointed out that social media seemed completely
uninterested in the death sentence, except in Turkey, which has a long history
of civil society and religious right struggle against military dictatorship.
Despite the 2013 coup, which should have required the United States by law to
cease military aid to Egypt, Congress has accepted the fiction of a return to
democracy (even though al-Sisi strong-armed most rivals into not running
against him and dominated the media, winning by 97 %, a sure sign of fraud).
The rise of ISIL in Syria and Iraq has made al-Sisi's insistence that Islam be
private religious practice and not mix into politics appealing not only in the
West but in regional countries like the United Arab Emirates. In fact, Egypt
has proffered almost no help in rolling back ISIL except in the Sinai
peninsula, where marginalized tribespeople have long turned to forms of radical
Islam as ideological support in their struggle against the authoritarian
Egyptian state.
Not only Egypt is at stake. Powerful movements of moderate political Islam
participate in civil politics in Morocco, Tunisia, Turkey, Pakistan, Indonesia,
and elsewhere in the Muslim world. That choice should be reinforced, as long as
they agree to play by the rules of democracy (continued aboveboard elections,
respecting minority rights, a rule of law, and the losers go home). Al-Sisi has
vindicated Al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who denounced Morsi in 2012 for
participating in civil politics, warning that it was a trap for devotees of
political Islam. Likewise, ISIL castigates elections as un-Islamic and voting
as a grounds for excommunication and even execution. In demonstrating that the
wages of moderate parliamentarianism on the part of Muslim religious parties is
death, al-Sisi is not helping stand against radicalism - he is fomenting it.
(source: The Nation)
IRAN:
32 prisoners executed on the verge of holy month of Ramadan
The Iranian regime's henchmen hanged at least 32 prisoners on the verge of the
holy month of Ramadan.
On Tuesday, June 16, 25 prisoners were collectively hanged in Gohardasht (Rajai
Shahr) Prison in Karaj. Prior to that, on Monday, 4 prisoners were collectively
executed in the Central Prison in the same city.
Additionally, on June 16, 1 prisoner in Vakilabad Prison in Mashhad and another
prisoner in Eqlid (Fars Province) were executed. On June 17, an Afghan prisoner
was executed in the city of Sari. The executions in Eqlid and Sari were public
hangings.
Moreover, on June 16, the authorities in Adel-Abad Prison of Shiraz transferred
22 prisoners to isolation in preparation for their execution. Death verdicts
for 10 more prisoners in Zahedan prison was also confirmed by the Iranian
regime Judiciary.
The Iranian Resistance calls on the Iranian people, especially the courageous
youth, to protest this atrocity and to support the families of the victims and
urges the international community to adopt a resolute policy toward this
regime.
Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, President-elect of the Iranian Resistance, stated in the
giant rally of supporters of the Iranian Resistance on June 13 in Paris: For
violation of human rights in Iran, the nuclear impasse, the crisis in the
region, and to confront ISIS, the solution lies in the overthrow of the regime
in tehran. She referred to the escalating uprisings and protests of the Iranian
people and said: The velayat-e faqih has reached the end of the line and the
Iranian people demand a major change.
(source: Secretariat of the National Council of Resistance of Iran)
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