Aug. 3
BANGLADESH:
Child rape: SC commutes death of child convict
The Supreme Court today commuted death penalty of a child convict to
imprisonment until death over rape and murder of a child in Manikganj.
A 4-member bench of appellate division headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar
Sinha passed the order after hearing a plea filed by convict Shukkur Ali
seeking review of its judgment.
On July 12, 2001, a Manikganj court sentenced Shukkur, now in Dhaka central
jail, to death for raping and killing the child in 1999.
The High Court on February 25, 2004, upheld the judgment of trial court. Later,
the appellate division also upheld the High Court verdict on February 23, 2005.
Later, Bangladesh Legal Aid and Services Trusts (BLAST) filed two separate
appeals with the top court seeking cancellation of his death sentence and
detention. The Supreme Court on May 5 this year rejected the appeal and upheld
his death penalty.
Shukkur recently filed a review petition with the Supreme Court against its May
5 judgment.
(source: The Daily Star)
******************
Bangladesh human rights activists welcome death penalty to BNP leader for war
crimes
Bangladesh's academicians and human rights activists hailed a last week
decision of Supreme Court to uphold the death penalty to senior opposition
leader Salauddin Quader Chowdhury, paving the way for his execution. Chowdhury,
66, a legislator from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was found guilty
of torture, rape and genocide during the 1971 liberation war.
He is also the 2nd former minister to have the death sentence upheld after
Jamaat-e-Islami's Secretary General Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mojaheed was sentenced
in June this year.
A professor at Dhaka University, Dr. Nazmul Ahsan Kalimillah said the July 29
court verdict reflected the desire of the people to try all those involved in
the war crimes. BNP supporters have been carrying out protests in Dhaka and
other cities since Chowdhury was sentenced to death first by the International
War Crimes Tribunal.
A Bangladeshi writer and human rights activist, Shahriar Kabir condemned the
politics by BNP and its ally Jammat-e-Islami.
(source: ANI news)
EGYPT:
Ibrahim Halawa: Irish teenager's mass trial in Egypt adjourned until October
The trial of a Dublin teenager held in an Egyptian prison for almost 2 years
has been adjourned until 4 October.
Ibrahim Halawa, the son of the most senior Muslim cleric in the Republic of
Ireland, was arrested during a siege on the Al-Fath mosque in Cairo in 2013.
The mass trial of Mr Halawa and more than 400 others began in March after being
postponed 5 times since his arrest.
Mr Halawa, 19, could face the death penalty if he is convicted.
Mr Halawa was on a family holiday to his parents' homeland when he and three of
his sisters were arrested by Egyptian security forces during a crackdown on
protests in the country's capital.
He was 17 at the time.
His family said he had taken refuge in the building during violent clashes
between supporters of ousted president Mohammed Morsi and the security forces.
His sisters were allowed to return to Dublin in November 2013.
Disappointment
On Sunday, a court in Cairo postponed the mass trial of more than 400
defendants, including Mr Halawa, until 4 October.
Mr Halawa's trial has now been postponed e8 times.
RTE reports that Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan has
expressed his disappointment that Mr Halawa's case has been further postponed
because of the non-attendance of a number of witnesses.
He said he had regularly emphasised to his Egyptian counterpart Same Shoury the
importance of due process in the case and the Irish government's concern at the
continued detention of an Irish citizen while awaiting trial.
In Cairo, to attend the trial, were Mr Halawa's sister Khadija, his solicitor
Darragh Mackin and MEP Lynn Boylan, but they were not inside the courtroom.
Mr Mackin said he and colleague Gavin Booth, who are both from the
Belfast-based law firm firm KRW Law, were told they were not allowed access to
the court.
"Not allowing a lawyer to access his client's hearing is gravely concerning and
belies any suggestion that fair trial requirements are being met," he said.
"Our client, Ibrahim Halawa, has now been held for almost 2 years without
trial.
"We are concerned that there has been yet another delay, this time of a further
two months. Ibrahim was aged 17 when arrested - he is now 19."
(source: BBC news)
IRAN:
The Court Gave Its Charges Out Against Mohammad-Ali Taheri
The Islamic Revolutionary Court held its charges against Mohammad-Ali Taheri
the founder of a spiritual group in Iran as his lawyer said.
Mohammad-Ali Taheri, an Iranian physician, researcher and author in the field
of Interuniversalist alternative medicine, convicted to death penalty at branch
28 of the Revolutionary Court and the court decision received by his lawyer
Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabaei on July 2015.
Dr. Taheri, the founder of a spiritual group so-called "Erfan-E-Halgheh"
(deviated Halqeh Cult) who has been in Evin prison since May 2011, was
sentenced to capital punishment on the charge of "Ifsad fi al-Arz" (spreading
corruption on Earth) under Islamic Penal Code as his lawyer Mahmoud Alizadeh
said.
He has been in the solitary confinement since his arrest, and in November 2014,
he started a dry hunger strike (whereby a prisoner refuses both food and water)
for 25 days to protest against his unfair isolation inside Ward 2-A Sepah at
Evin prison in Iran's capital, Tehran.
The governmental news agencies closed to Iran's Intelligence Service said that
Mr. Taheri convicted to 6 years imprisonment. He was previously sentenced to 37
years in prison, fine on the charge of blasphemy, disturbing the medical
treatment and also convicted to 74 lashes for touching his patients without a
medical license in the Revolutionary Court on 2014-2015 as news agencies said.
Mr. Taheri asked Ahmed Shaheed, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in
Iran, to review his case by sending an open letter in April 2014.
Hereof, Amnesty International has concerned about Mr.Taheri's critical
situation in a statement on 30 August 2014. Moreover, Amnesty International
started acampaign to release Mr. Taheri sending letter immediately to Iran's
authorities.
Mohammad Ali Taheri was detained on 4 May 2011 by officials linked to Iran's
Revolutionary Guards and held incommunicado for nine months in Ward 2-A of the
Evin Prison. Branch 26 of the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran convicted
him, on 30 October 2011, of "insulting Islamic sanctities" and allegedly
sentenced him to 5 years in prison after 4 court sessions in which he defended
himself.
The Iranian physician has been serving his prison sentence entirely in solitary
confinement and his repeated requests to be transferred to a cell shared with
other inmates have been denied.
He reportedly committed at least 7 hunger strike as rights groups declared.
His excruciating life in the chambers at the hands of the Islamic Republic
regime of Iran includes:
4 May 2011 - hunger/food strike, no news or trace of him, no
permission/information provided to his lawyer, or to his family, no text, phone
messages, nothing!
12 Apr 2011 - 1-day detention - arrested & released for no apparent reason, but
threatened to stop his lessons and group meetings.
18 Apr 2010 - arrested, spending 68 days in solitary confinement, bailed out
until further notice.
Mr. Taheri's fans have began a campaign to release him asking the worldwide's
citizens help them.
The Human Rights activist John Burke also started a petition to release him and
asking the globe citizens SIGN the petition to halt the unfair execution.
(source: iranian.com)
PAKISTAN:
Juvenile set to hang in Pakistan tonight despite international outcry
Shafqat Hussain, a Pakistani convicted and sentenced to death when under 18
following days of police torture, is set to hang tonight despite widespread
calls for a stay and investigation into his case.
Shafqat was sentenced to death in 2004 following days of police torture, which
extracted a confession' on which his conviction was based, despite being under
18 at the time. The Pakistan government has refused to back a judicial inquiry
into Shafqat's juvenility - instead withholding a number of documents, most
notably his school record, which would provide proof of his age. A mercy
petition is currently pending before the President.
Numerous calls have been made for the execution to be stayed, including from
the statutory rights body the Sindh Human Rights Commission. The Commission,
headed by a retired Supreme Court judge, urged the government to stay Shafqat's
execution after conducting an extensive inquiry into the case. The SHRC wrote
that "there are no eye witnesses [to the alleged offence] but only [the]
confession of the accused with [an] allegation of torture." They criticised
previous handling of the case, writing "we fail to understand why [there was]
such a careless handling of a serious case where [the] life of a human being is
at stake," and asking whether Shafqat can "be executed when there is so much
confusion and the evidence is lacking." They also criticised the initial
government inquiry, carried out by the government's Federal Investigation
Authority, concluding that it was 'not admissible'.
UN Special Rapporteurs - including experts on torture, summary executions, and
children's rights - have also called for a halt to Shafqat's execution and have
criticised Pakistan's rush to execute more broadly. In a statement released
last week they said that "most" of the hangings scheduled for the coming days
"fall short of international norms", and called on Pakistan "to continue the
moratorium on actual executions and to put in place a legal moratorium on the
death penalty, with a view to its abolition."
Pakistan has the world's largest death row of approximately 8500 people. Some
192 have been hanged since its moratorium on the death penalty was lifted in
December, and it has overtaken Saudi Arabia and the US in rate of executions.
The Pakistani government's claim that it is executing 'terrorists' was called
into question last week by a Reuters report finding that the vast majority of
those executed - an estimated 70 % - had no links to militancy.
Commenting, Maya Foa, the Director of Reprieve's death penalty team, said: "It
is an absolute disgrace that Pakistan is still on course to hang Shafqat, who
was convicted as a juvenile after days of brutal police torture. When will
Pakistan's government listen to the chorus of international and local voices
calling for a stay in this case? The fact that the Government has so far
ignored the recommendations of a statutory body like the Sindh Human Rights
Commission is a shocking indictment of Pakistan's attitude to human rights and
the rule of law. This execution must be stayed before another juvenile is sent
to the gallows."
(source: Reprieve.org)
GERMANY/SAUDI ARABIA:
Protest Held in Germany in Solidarity with Jailed Saudi Cleric
Dozens of protesters staged a peaceful demonstration in the German capital of
Berlin to voice their outrage over the continued imprisonment of prominent
Shiite cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqir al-Nimr by the Saudi regime and call for his
immediate freedom.
During the rally held near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin on Sunday, protesters
carried anti-Saudi placards to condemn the oil-rich kingdom's decision to
execute Sheikh Nimr.
Unnamed European diplomatic sources have said that Saudi Arabia intends to
carry out the death sentence of Sheikh Nimr.
Back in early March, a Saudi Arabian appeal court approved the death penalty of
the prominent cleric.
Sheikh Nimr was detained in July 2012 following demonstrations that erupted in
the country's Qatif region. He has been charged with disturbing the kingdom's
security, delivering anti-government speeches, and defending political
prisoners.
His arrest sparked widespread protests in the Arab country.
(source: Tasnim news)
INDIA:
India won't beat terrorism with the death penalty
Yakub Memon became the latest convict to be hanged in India last week. Memon
was executed for his role in the 1993 bomb blasts in Mumbai, which left 257
people dead.
Memon's execution has reignited a debate on the death penalty in India. A de
facto moratorium on executions from 2004 to 2012 has been interrupted by 3
executions since. All were related to terrorism offences.
Most of India, led by right-wing Hindus, strongly endorses Memon's hanging. To
them, doing so was in line with getting tough on terrorism. They argue that
death was the only fitting punishment and one that achieved closure for the
survivors of the blasts and the families of the victims.
It is the 'ism' of terrorism that needs tackling. Seeing capital punishment as
a panacea to terrorism is myopic
Memon's collusion in the 1993 carnage cannot be condoned. But is the death
penalty really a deterrent? Statistically, research in countries across the
world proves the death penalty does not correlate to being a deterrent. In
India, murders have increased in the years the death penalty was used. Between
1990 to 2000, 8 offenders were executed, but the number of murders increased
from 35,000 to 37,000.
Moreover, there ought to be a caveat in seeing the death penalty as being
effective in deterring terrorism. It is the "ism" of terrorism that needs
tackling. Seeing capital punishment as a panacea to terrorism is myopic. At
best, it provides symptomatic relief to the issue at hand.
Executions are likelier to result in a backlash and to spur the growth of more
terrorists. The 1993 bomb blasts were in fact a retaliation to the Hindu-Muslim
riots in India that killed over 1,000 people and saw destruction that included
damage to property owned by the Memon family.
Terrorists are individuals who organise both inside and outside the nation for
a purported cause; they outsource war to themselves as part of that
organisation. Tackling the "ism" of terrorism involves a causative approach.
This means India should spend more resources on developmental goals (it spends
only 1 per cent of its gross domestic product on health care, which is
inadequate in a population of 1.2 billion) and uplift minorities such as the
Muslims, and its political fraternity must stop playing vote-bank politics,
which instigates communal strife. This will eradicate terrorist sympathisers
from the minorities.
Some debates on social media have upheld Russian President Vladimir Putin's
stance on terrorism as a lodestar for India. But Russia's counterterrorism
policy has no evidence of its effectiveness. Rather, it has terrorised local
populations. The anger resulting from the 1993 carnage in India is real, and
the country needs to channel it to strike the terrorists and render their
purported cause toothless.
(source: Dr Priya Virmani is a political and economic analyst; South China
Morning Post)
*****************
Secular-Left opposition to death penalty is often driven by hidden motives
The current debate about the death penalty boils down to a simple moral
question about natural justice: does a killer have greater rights than the
people he kills? A priori, one would have to say that no, killers do not have
greater rights than their victims.
But the establishment toils mightily to reframe the question in other ways, and
natural justice suffers in the process. Natural justice, or the right to a fair
trial, implies there is no real or imputed bias on the part of the judges. In
other words, the judicial system ought to produce a judgment that the
proverbial impartial Martian (or a computer) would. And that is the presumption
behind the statement that justice is blind, and the typical depiction of
Justice, blindfolded, holding a scale.
The reality, though, is that real judges are human, and can be swayed by
extraneous factors such as tear jerker sob-stories, media pressure,
blandishments and threats, public opinion, and midnight circuses. All of these
were in evidence in the case of Yakub Memon recently. So there is clearly an
element of subjectivity in any trial, and the outpouring of alleged Leftie
grief whenever a minority community member is on trial is intended to be a
signal to both judges and the minority constituency.
Just as many Left-leaning people ask, "What would Gandhi do?", we need to ask
the question, "What would a computer say, solely based on evidence and
precedent?" That is not even a theoretical question any more, as machine
intelligence has reached a stage where a mechanical assistant can help a judge
by dispassionately considering the facts and precedents. There is the IBM
programme Watson that is now being used in trials as a medical assistant: the
days are not far off when similar technology should be available to judges, and
that could be a benchmark.
Watson can also explain how it arrived at its conclusion. Watson would be
unable to countenance any emotional issues, being a machine. And it is
illogical, even irrational emotional outbursts that form the basis of the case
against the death penalty. Stories of the noble suffering of death-row inmates
can be heart-breaking. In a junior college decades ago, we studied a wonderful
one-act play 'The Valiant'. It quotes the stirring lines from Shakespeare,
"Cowards may die many times before their deaths, the valiant never taste of
death but once". The protagonist is a death-row inmate, and his narrative is
that he intends to die without letting his long-estranged mother and sister
know that he is indeed their son and brother. It made such an impression on me
- and indeed, it will on you - that I still remember it vividly although I have
never read it again in decades. But I can now see some nuances in the story:
the convict was apparently innocent, as he was framed; and he endeavours to
'gift' his insurance money to his mother and sister. We, as the readers can see
that, despite his attempts to hide it, these are indeed his relatives. But then
the question arises, why did he estrange himself from them in the first place?
That was cruelty, too. So it's difficult to accept his nobility without
question, and anyway that shouldn't be the criterion for the death penalty.
Where is the possibly even more touching stories of his victim(s)?
Similarly, in the classic science-fiction film 'Blade Runner', the
cyborg/replicant delivers a poignant soliloquy, quite possibly the best
monologue in all of science fiction. It moves you to tears, but then he's a
cold-blooded killer on the loose, and has murdered a number of people, whatever
his rationale; the fact that he's about to die, and that he has just saved his
tormenter, the cyborg-hunter, from certain death, should not be reason enough
to deter the death penalty if he were tried.
So far as I can tell, there are three reasons why Indian Lefties are
anti-death-penalty: (1) Fashion, because this is what Western Lefties are now
espousing; (2) Discrimination, because in the US, blacks are far more likely to
be sentenced to death than whites; and (3) anti-Modi tirade. This is yet
another way for them to say, "We hate Modi".
The 1st reason is that being anti-death-penalty is quite the latest cool,
trendy thing among Western liberals. But why Indian Lefties ape this is beyond
me, considering that they generally despise the West and particularly America.
They always take the side of China and the Muslim world against America. So why
ape what they say in America?
In fact, it would make much more sense if they were to pay attention to the
current practice in countries that they admire, namely China and the Arab
world, in particular, Saudi Arabia. How do they stack up? Here is the data from
Amnesty International for 2013, and the cumulative total from 2007 to 2013, via
The Guardian.
Intriguingly, China executes more people than the rest of the world put
together. Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia are quite prolific in executions, and if
you take ISIS numbers in more recent years, Muslim Middle-Eastern States and
quasi-states are among the major practitioners of execution.
Given that Indian Lefties look to these countries for inspiration, isn't it
cognitive dissonance when they condemn India for executing just a few people -
just 3 in a decade?
The 2nd reason is discrimination. On the face of it, helping avoid
discrimination is the very picture of fairness. In the US, it is true that
blacks are executed far out of proportion to their numbers in the populace, and
also that they are far more likely to be executed if they kill a white,
compared to vice versa. Also, given the spate of killings of unarmed blacks in
the US lately, it is not hard to believe there's systematic bias. Here is
summary data about the race of people executed since 1976. It appears that 35 %
of death penalty recipients are blacks, compared to their 12 % share of the
population according to data in Wikipedia quoting the 2010 census.
Now consider the situation in India. The Leftie argument is that, similar to
blacks in the US, Muslims are disproportionately subject to the death penalty.
Let us see the facts. According to the New Indian Express there have been at
least 1,414 executions in India since 1947. Of these, 72 have been Muslims,
that is 5 percent. According to Wikipedia, Muslims are 13.4 % of India's
population.
Thus, contrary to what the Lefties imply, no case for anti-Muslim bias is made
out in the death penalty statistics. The Lefties have no leg to stand on in
this allegation.
The 3rd reason, that of yet another front to open against Narendra Modi, is
probably the actual reason. That good old racist Winston Churchill once said
that his people would fight the enemy "on the beaches, on the landing grounds,
in the fields and in the streets, in the hills". Similarly, the Lefties are
fighting the PM in the streets, in the courts, in Parliament, in universities -
anywhere and everywhere. It is total war. In fact, as far as they are
concerned, Yakub Memon is just a pawn, to be used and discarded.
It was entertaining to see several people wax eloquent about opposition to the
death penalty. These exact same people had called earlier for the death penalty
for rapist-murderers, and the juxtaposition of their tweets was most
illuminating. One media person, Sagarika Ghose, seemed okay with the death
penalty for rapists, but not for Yakub Memon.
So the breast-beating about the death penalty is mala fide, without merit and
is ill-motivated.
Contrary-wise, is there a case for the death penalty? The entire edifice of
human law is built on the principle of lex talionis, in which the punishment
corresponds to the crime. From way back at the time of the code of Hammurabi of
the Assyrians, this principle has been upheld. Thus, 'an eye for an eye' is the
precise basis of Muslim law: in Saudi Arabia, beheading is the punishment not
only for murder, but for a large number of other crimes, including drug
trafficking. And they do offer the idea of 'blood money': if the victim (or
family) is willing to accept just compensation, then the accused can get off.
Even if you don't look at it purely objectively, and take emotion into account,
the fact that a person has murdered and killed another human being, who might
have - who knows - been a most creative, most intelligent, most caring person,
perhaps the person who could have cured cancer or solved world hunger - then
that crime is unpardonable. Therefore it needs retaliation in kind. Anyone who
takes the life of another must expect that his own is forfeit.
As to mistaken identities, and the problem that a person was framed, the law
looks at the possibility of an innocent being executed as a grave disservice to
humanity. Yes, admittedly, if someone is executed in error, there is no way to
bring him/her back, and there is no restitution. But there I think we have to
be Utilitarian, and consider the greatest good of the greatest number.
Finally, I go back to the problem of the rights of the killer and his victim.
What if the killer finally gets away with his crime? This happened with the
principal murderer of Nirbhaya. On the technicality that he was a juvenile, one
of her rapists/killers went to juvenile detention, and will be released in
2017. Is that fair to Jyoti? Similarly, Charlie, alias Govindachamy, pushed
Soumya out of a moving train, raped her on the tracks, and beat her head in
with a stone. Should he return to society?
Presidents have been generous with pardons. For instance, Pratibha Patil
pardoned a large number on death row. Who knows which mercy petition will work
in future for a hardened criminal? Would anybody want these people possibly
back on the street, having literally gotten away with murder?
Thus, even though it is a wretched argument, in the case of India, the facts
clearly suggest that the death penalty is appropriate.
(source: Rajeev Srinivasan, firstpost.com)
*******************
What Modi must learn from Yakub Memon's hanging----The scene at Bada Qabristan
showed why the government needs to dispel the notion that justice is not being
served equally in India.
Silently and in a single file, they walked towards the Bada Qabristan at
Mumbai's Marine Lines. Even after the ground had been filled to capacity and
the police had locked the gates of the burial ground, the crowds kept trooping
in. There was no sloganeering. Instead there was a pall of gloom. Quiet anger
seeped through the air.
A majority of those who came to the Bada Qabristan were young, between 18 and
34. They were not fanatics. Far from it. Many were coming straight from work
and were upset that they hadn't been able to get away from office on time.
I asked Ismail Khan and Yunus Sultan whether they knew Yakub Memon or anyone in
his family. They said they didn't. What brings you here then, I asked. "We are
here in solidarity with Yakub". What Ismail said next hit hard. "We don't mind
that Yakub has been executed. He was a terrorist and should be made to pay for
his sins. But why is it that in 15 years all the terrorists who have been
executed belong to only one community? Why do the Khalistani and Tamil
terrorists get away even after the Supreme Court convicts them? The law is not
being applied equally in India."
Here were a couple of young men, with everyday concerns like the rest of us,
and they were voicing a concern that the Indian state had no good answer for.
On Friday, Arun Jaitley told India Today in an interview that the government
does not decide who is to be punished on the basis of their religion. But the
reality is that Devinder Pal Singh Bhullar, Balwant Singh Rajaona and Rajiv
Gandhi's assassins have been able to escape the noose because of the backing of
political parties in their states.
Take Bhullar's case. He was convicted by the Supreme Court of having carried
out a bomb blast in Delhi in 1993 in which nine people died and 25 were
injured, including then the Youth Congress president MS Bitta. In 2003, the
Supreme Court dismissed Bhullar's curative petition and condemned him to the
gallows. In 2011, President Pratibha Patil rejected his mercy plea. And in 2013
the SC dismissed Bhullar's plea for commutation of his death sentence to life
imprisonment. Bhullar should have been executed long before Yakub Memon but
because of pressure exerted by parties such as the Akali Dal, the case dragged
on for so long that in 2014 Bhullar's death penalty was finally commuted to
life term because of mental illness. He's currently ensconced at Amritsar Jail.
Balwant Singh Rajoana's case is disturbingly similar. In 1995 he was part of a
conspiracy to assassinate then Punjab chief minister Beant Singh. The bomb
blast in which Rajoana was involved killed 17 people, including the CM. In
1996, a Chandigarh court sentenced him to death. The district court even set a
date for Rajoana's hanging. But the Patiala Jail administration returned the
death warrant, citing legal and jurisdiction issues. In 2012, the Punjab CM led
an Akali delegation to meet the president and the Centre stayed the hanging of
the convicted terrorist.
A look at the timeline of the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case shows that the
four terrorists - Nalini, Santhan, Murugan and Perarivalan - were able to get
their death sentences commuted to life on account of the inordinate delay in
the carrying out of the execution order. This delay was made possible by Tamil
politicians. First the Tamil Nadu Assembly adopted a resolution asking the
president to commute their death sentences. The state cabinet even passed an
order in February 2014 ordering the jail authorities to free the 4 death row
convicts but thankfully the Supreme Court stayed this controversial order. In
2015, their death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
Arun Jaitley says that rioters will also be made to face the gallows, just like
terrorists. But the fact is that successive governments in Maharashtra made no
attempt to implement the findings of the Justice Srikrishna report on the
Mumbai riots in which 900 people were killed. Over 15,000 pages, Justice
Srikrishna laid out specific details about the role of Balasaheb Thackeray and
the Shiv Sena in instigating the riots. So far only 3 convictions have taken
place in the riot cases. A former Sena MP Madhukar Sarpotdar and 2 party
activists were sentenced to one year's rigorous imprisonment. Satpotdar got
bail immediately and died in 2010 without serving his sentence. 31 policemen
were indicted for their roles by the Commission. All of them got away.
While taking part in a debate at the Bombay Stock Exchange on the evening of
Yakub Memon's execution, former Mumbai top police officer YC Pawar gave a peek
into the biased mindset that policemen carry into the investigation of riot
cases. Without mincing words, Pawar bluntly told India Today, "A terror attack
needs to be taken more seriously than a riot case because it involves an
external enemy. Riots happen because of clashes between local communities so
the priority of the cops is to control the situation. Punishing people will
only reopen wounds but in terror cases the terrorists must be punished to teach
them a lesson." This is exactly the kind of perverse mindset that fuels rage at
the Bada Qabristan.
In the run up to Yakub Memon's hanging, bleeding hearts cried themselves hoarse
arguing for the need to abolish capital punishment. But a look at hard facts
reveals that the Indian judicial system is hardly as bloodthirsty as the
naysayers would have us believe. In the past 15 years the courts have handed
out 1,600 death sentences. Out of these only 4 convicts were executed.
In comparison, a liberal democracy like the United States executed 35 people in
2014 alone. According to Amnesty International 55 countries sentenced people to
death last year. At least 607 executions were carried out in China, 90 in Saudi
Arabia and 61 in Iraq.
While people in India can debate whether the time has come to join the 98
countries that have abolished the death penalty, one thing is clear. Till the
time the death penalty remains on the statute books, the government needs to
ensure that capital punishment is implemented equally without letting politics
make a mockery of the judicial system.
In the aftermath of the execution of Yakub Memon, the Modi government needs to
pressurise its allies in Punjab about the need to stop shielding convicted
terrorist Balwant Singh Rajoana and ensure he gets the punishment he has been
served.
As the restive crowds started dispersing from the Bada Qabristan on the evening
of July 30, I asked Ismail and Yunus what happens next. "We are rushing to get
home. Lest there is any lafda (problem) and the pandus (policemen) think the
entire community is responsible for the trouble".
(source: Rahul Kanwal; dailyo.com)
****************
A selective ban on death penalty already exists
Yakub Memon was hung at the early hours of July 30. This was preceded by hectic
activity in Lutyens' Delhi, televised live with self-congratulations that made
Bharatmata blush. Her eyes must have widened with excitement and moistened with
pride as she saw Attorney General and others doing their duty far past the
midnight hour. "Grandmother, what big eyes you have!" cried the child tutored
to believe that grand-mothers are necessarily loving creatures. We know how
that one ends.
On Kolkata???s roads, there are always men at work, working through the night.
From my years of conversation with many of them, I know that their shift often
goes on past sunrise, after which they don't necessarily get rest. That some
human beings may work at night when others are sleeping, isn't exceptional.
Millions toil like this hourly, daily, monthly, yearly, generationally. It's
only when those who never work this hard at any hour of any day of their lives,
let alone at 3am, deign to do something like that, it becomes a 'rarest of the
rare' spectacle. Duty and diligence become the flavour of the night. Such
selective adulation is an insult to road-makers, truck-drivers and millions of
others who spend their nights under oppressive, life-threatening conditions,
not for the 'nation', to stealthily 'encounter' or 'disappear' others, but for
mere survival. Theatre by frauds has huge currency. Like when out-of-power gods
almost smelled the armpit of humans in Dalit villages between exotic vacations.
Like when powerful gods embraced and bowed to some old woman with high-power
spectacles in the crowd after selling entire coastlines to friends-in-need. We
rock.
Barring the few who were part of the hectic late-night Lutyens saga not as part
of job-description but from their ethico-moral churnings, the rest agreed that
justice was done. The Indian Union stands in a minority among UN member nations
in having death-penalty. Most countries that practise death penalty call
themselves 'Islamic Republic', whatever that means. In the last decade, Indian
Union has been the sole practitioner of death penalty in South Asia among
nation-states that don't have Islam as the state religion. It's the only one
that seriously considered bringing children under the ambit of death-penalty.
We have reasons to be very proud.
Not all citizens of the Indian Union share such views. Parties with huge
support-bases like DMK, AIADMK, Akali Dal, etc have opposed death-penalty
publicly and have led strong movements against it in specific cases. If
anything, they were responding to public sentiments against hanging. So not all
collectives in the Indian Union have the same kind of conscience. Death-penalty
opposers can rejoice that a selective ban on death-penalty exists for
'disappearances' in Kashmir, Punjab, Assam and Manipur and elsewhere, for
murders done by any serving Khaki of any type during 'performance of duty', for
targeted massacres of Dalits, for murder of 'Indians' who don't consider
themselves Indians, for 'encounter' killings, for 'secret killings' by SULFA
and Ikhwan, for air-bombing Indian citizens in the Indian city of Aizawl, for
Mumbai riots 1992-93, Bhagalpur 1989, Delhi 1984, Hashimpura 1987,
Kashipur-Baranagar 1972 and many, many other crimes done at a false goddess'
sacrificial altar. As a practising Bengali Shakto and a worshipper of Ma Durga,
blood-sacrifices in the name of a false goddess sicken me to the core. In this
Nation-state of routine 'encounter' killings, unmarked mass-graves, death in
custody by torture, 'disappearances' and other forms of Khaki manliness that
will never be given the death-sentence by any court of the land, the late-night
events in Lutyens' Delhi around one man's execution will 'go down in history'
as the 'dance of democracy'.
(source: Garga Chatterjee; Daily News & Analysis)
*******************
Death penalty files 'lost, eaten by termites'
Records of death penalty convicts who have been executed since independence
have gone missing from many prisons with the National Law University (NLU),
conducting a first of its kind study, able to confirm data related to 755
executions since 1947.
"Some prison authorities have written to us that either the records have been
lost or destroyed by termites," NLU director Anup Surendranath told TOI, who is
heading the death penalty research project. The NLU is compiling data on all
prisoners who have been executed since independence with the help of the
central government.
The missing files are not only a serious lapse on part of prison authorities
but has also hampered an ongoing attempt to study all death row convicts to
ascertain the fairness of the capital punishment jurisprudence, particularly
those who have been executed in independent India.
The casual attitude towards death row convicts is reflected in the loss of
mercy pleas of Krishna Mochi and three others in the Krishna Mochi & Ors vs.
Bihar case of 2001. Convicted by the TADA court, mercy pleas of the four have
been lost by the Union home ministry. Their pleas were sent to the President in
2003, and a recent RTI response to Suhas Chakma of Asian Centre for Human
Rights has revealed that the home ministry has no records available. "These
papers have evidently been lost," Chakma said.
Loss of data on executed prisoners reflects poorly on the record-keeping of the
government and the judicial system. Incidentally, the 35th report of the law
commission had confirmed execution of at least 1,410 death row prisoners in a
span of 10 years - between 1953 and 1963.
Data by the National Crime Records Bureau is also not without gaps. For example
the NCRB claims that as many as 2,052 individuals were awarded capital
punishment by courts between 1998 and 2013. And the NCRB also says between 2001
and 2013 the number of those whose death sentences were commuted was double:
4,497 persons.
CHRI's Venkatesh Nayak says that this is where the NCRB data becomes
"questionable". "The discrepancies probably crept in when jail authorities
counted all commutations even those of shortened prison time," he said.
"Information on executions are sourced from various prisons and courts across
the country which do not reveal either the religious or caste backgrounds of
the convicts who have been executed," Surendranath points out. The NLU report
on death penalty is scheduled for release in mid-August where a detailed
analysis of socio-economic profile, legal representation and duration on death
row would be made public.
The NLU has conducted interviews of 373 surviving death penalty convicts and
has drawn their socio-economic profile. The analysis of these surviving
prisoners shows that an overwhelming majority of them are from backward class,
religious minorities and economically vulnerable classes. In the category of
terror offences, 94% prisoners sentenced to death are Dalits and religious
minorities.
"We have been unable to find an exhaustive list of prisoners executed in India.
However, as per a report of the Law Commission (1967), the total number of
cases in which the sentence of death was executed from 1953 to 1963 was 1,410,"
Surendranath said.
(source: The Times of India)
****************
No proposal to scrap death penalty, say government sources amid debate
Chief justice Chandrachud, in office from February 22, 1978 to July 11, 1985,
upon receiving the "lightning" phone call from Fakhruddin held the hearing at
his residence and stayed the execution. The riot, worst in the history of
Mumbai, had left over 2000 people, mostly Muslims, dead.
Memon's father died during the long-running legal proceedings, 3 were acquitted
and 3 others are serving life in prison, including Yakub's sister-in-law,
Rubina Memon. Many well known jurists, politicians and academics were ranged on
opposite sides. Roy tweeted, "Intelligence shd keep a tab on all (expt
relatives & close friends) who assembled bfr Yakub Memon's corpse. The killers
of former PM Rajiv Gandhi and ex-CM Beant Singh are living after being given
death sentences because the respective state governments are against their
killing", it said. And the matter has to have a closure.
Opposition National Conference on Friday demanded the return of the mortal
remains of Afzal Guru and said his family being deprived of his body was
against the tenets of natural justice and undermined the constitutional
principles of the country.
Let us consider, also, the flip-flop of the Indian criminal justice system in
terms of capital punishment. While not a single person has been convicted or
executed for the two causative crimes, there was a hue and cry for the blood of
Yakub. There are no answers. But it is equally true that most terror accused
become informants in the course of interrogation and investigation when they
spill out secrets of the crime, their motivations, names and numbers of people
involved, and finally the masterminds. Being a prominent Muslim voice, his
accusation against the state of discrimination against Muslims might be
politically motivated, but inadvertently, he pointed out the pitfalls of
awarding death sentences.
The others had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment. This
discrimination on the basis of religion has driven a deep wedge in the Indian
society where minorities, more particularly Muslim, find themselves on
receiving end. Sometimes it has recognized that undue delay in deciding on
mercy petitions of death row convicts amounts to torture, as it did in
Shatrughan Chauhan vs. Union of India case on 21 January 2014, in a verdict of
a 3-member bench headed by then Chief Justice P. Sathasivam. He was buried in
Mumbai the same day.
"The Supreme Court judgment in the Memon case is correct, but there are cases
pending regarding the 1992-93 riots, whose dates are constantly postponed, and
this causes a lot of suffering", Qureshi added. But that is least possible
given the fact that India is ruled by those very elements who owe their
existence to politics of hate.
(source: ifreepress.com)
UNITED KINGDOM:
Foreign Office drops references to its campaign to abolish death penalty ----
Foreign secretary Philip Hammond clashes with human rights campaigners over
relabelling of '6 global thematic priorities'
The UK Foreign Office has revised its global human rights priorities, dropping
any explicit reference to its campaign to abolish the death penalty. The
recalibration of the promotion of civil liberties overseas has triggered a row
between campaigners and the foreign secretary, Philip Hammond.
According to the department - which, like most of Whitehall, is under pressure
to make savings - the change in terminology does not signal a shift in policy
on capital punishment. The Foreign Office, however, has confirmed that it is in
the process of relabelling its much vaunted "6 global thematic priorities",
which consisted of women's rights, torture prevention, abolition of the death
penalty, freedom of expression on the internet, business and human rights, and
freedom of religion or belief.
In their place will be three less specific categories relating to human rights,
democratic values and the rule of law. There is no mention of opposing the
death penalty in the title of the new overarching themes.
The department also confirmed it was dropping the term "human rights countries
of concern" and replacing it with the less critical-sounding "human rights
priority countries".
The alterations, coinciding with the arrival of the Conservative majority
government, have alarmed the charity Reprieve, which campaigns against the
death penalty and assists people on death row around the world. In a letter to
Hammond, released to the Guardian, the organisation claims the changes amount
to "the UK's retreat from the fight for global abolition of the death penalty".
The charity also alleges that Foreign Office funding for death penalty projects
through its Human Rights and Democracy Department (HRDD) will no longer be
ringfenced and spending on human rights cut back.
This financial year, 2015-16, the Foreign Office is spending 600,000 pounds on
anti-death penalty projects. The work involves funding for civil society
projects, including setting up an abolitionist network in the Commonwealth
Caribbean.
Reprieve, which says it has been briefed on the new strategy, has asked Hammond
to reconsider his "decision to abandon the government's pledge to fight for the
global abolition of capital punishment". It deplores the decision to no longer
'class states such as Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran as 'countries of concern'
... despite dramatic spikes in their use of capital punishment and use of
torture".
Saudi Arabia has executed 104 prisoners so far this year, Reprieve points out,
a sharp increase on the 87 recorded for the whole of 2014; Iran has executed
nearly 700 prisoners, a number likely to exceed last year's total; and Pakistan
has ended a longstanding death penalty moratorium, hanging at least 192 people
in less than 8 months.
The UK's commitment to campaigning against the death penalty was codified under
the last government, which published a death penalty strategy in 2010. Reprieve
is calling on Hammond to renew his department's commitment to fighting for the
abolition of the death penalty overseas, publish a strategy setting out actions
for advancing abolition of capital punishment, and retain the "country of
concern" categorisation.M
Reprieve does not receive money from the FCO's HRDD fund but is supported by
the department's consular services for its work on death penalty cases
involving Britons overseas.
The overall rationale for the FCO changes is said to be to allow a more
flexible approach in policy. The department now lists Saudi Arabia, Pakistan
and Iran as "human rights priority countries".
Asked about spending on death penalty projects, the Foreign Office said the
budget and composition for its programmes was under consideration as part of
the Treasury's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), due to be resolved this
autumn.
An FCO spokeswoman said: "Our long-standing policy hasn't changed. We remain
committed to advancing global abolition of the death penalty and it is wrong to
suggest otherwise. The government opposes the death penalty in all
circumstances as a matter of principle and we would like to see the long-term
trend towards abolition continue throughout this parliament."
(source: The Guardian)
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