May 27
VIETNAM:
Man indicted for murder of Vietnamese girl
Prosecutors indicted a man Friday for murdering a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl
who attended an elementary school east of Tokyo where he was head of the
parents' association.
The 46-year-old suspect, Yasumasa Shibuya, was also indicted on other charges
including abandoning the body of Le Thi Nhat Linh, a third grader at the school
in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, who went missing on March 24. Her body was found
2 days later.
The identity of the girl was previously withheld because police suspect she was
a victim of sexual assault, but her name is now being reported in accordance
with her father's wish.
Shibuya, who was head of the parents' group at the time of the girl's
disappearance, will be tried under the lay judge system. He has refused to
speak about the case during questioning, investigative sources said.
The prosecutors decided to indict Shibuya based on evidence including a DNA
sample taken from the victim's body that matched Shibuya and hair found in the
suspect's car matched the victim's DNA.
Following the indictment, Le Anh Hao, the 34-year-old father of the girl, told
reporters at his home in Matsudo that he "cannot forgive the perpetrator."
"I want the culprit never to forget that he killed my daughter, not just 'a
girl,'" he said, asking media to use her name when reporting on the case. After
Shibuya's arrest, Hao had requested that media not state his daughter's name.
Hao said he hopes to be present during the trial and that the death penalty
will be imposed if Shibuya is convicted.
The girl is believed to have been strangled to death, given marks on her neck.
She disappeared shortly after leaving home to walk to school on the morning of
March 24.
Shibuya, who lives about 300 meters from the victim's home and is accused of
abducting her by car, was initially arrested on April 14 on suspicion of
abandoning her body near a drainage ditch in Abiko, Chiba. On May 5, he was
served with a fresh arrest warrant on charges including murder.
Autopsy results suggest that the girl was likely murdered not long after her
abduction.
(source: Japan Today)
GAZA:
Human Rights Watch opposes : The executions in Gaza not the rule of law
In response to the execution today of three men convicted of charges related to
the killing of Hamas leader Mazen Fuqaha, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive
director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, said:
"Rushing to put men to death based on an unreviewable decision of a special
military court days after announcing their arrests and airing videoed
confessions smacks of militia rule, not the rule of law. Reliance on
confessions, in a system where coercion, torture and deprivation of detainee's
rights are prevalent, and other apparent due process violations further taint
the court's verdicts. Death as government-sanctioned punishment is inherently
cruel and always wrong, no matter the circumstance."
Since it took control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas authorities have carried out 25
executions, most recently in April, and courts in Gaza have sentenced 111
people to death, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, because it
is inherently cruel and irreversible.
(source: Palestine News Network)
IRAN----executions
3 Prisoners Hanged on Murder Charges
2 prisoners were reportedly hanged at Mashhad's Vakilabad Prison (Razavi
Khorasan province, northeastern Iran) on Tuesday May 23 on murder charges. On
the same day, prisoner was reportedly hanged at Zahedan Central Prison on
murder charges.
The state-run newspaper, Khorasan, identifies one of the prisoners from
Vakilabad Prison as H.N., 42 years of age, imprisoned for 17 years before his
execution. According to the Khorasan newspaper, there was no evidence or
confessions in the prisoner's case file, the prisoner was sentenced to death
based on the testimonies of 50 relatives belonging to the murder victim. The
report says that the prisoner claimed to be innocent throughout the entire
imprisonment.
The report identifies the other prisoner from Vakilabad Prison as A.Kh., a
34-year-old prisoner who was arrested in 2009 during a street fight at an
intersection in the town of Sabzevar (Razavi Khorasan province).
The Baluch Activists Campaign reported on the execution at Zahedan Central
Prison. The report identifies the prisoner as Abdolkarim Shahnavazi, 30 years
of age. Prior to his execution, Abdolkarim and two other prisoners, identified
as Habib Golbeigi and Saeed Hoot, were transferred to soliatry confinement in
preparation for their executions. According to the report, Saeed's execution
sentence was postponed by the complainants on his case file, and he was
returned to his cell. The fate of Habib is not known at this time.
(source: Iran Human Rights)
GLOBAL:
Countries Using Child Rights to Justify Executions for Drug Offences
International child rights are being used by some countries to justify the
execution of people for drug offences, despite this practice being illegal
under international law.
The UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted in 1989,
stipulates that "governments must protect children from the illegal use of
drugs and from being involved in the production or distribution of drugs", and
has been ratified by every UN member state apart from the United States.
Additionally, the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Worst Forms of
Child Labour Convention - internationally adopted in 1999 - states that
governments must "take immediate and effective measures to [prohibit and
eliminate] ... the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit
activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs"
Every state party to these conventions must regularly report on their
implementation: every 5 years to the Committee on the Rights of the Child ("CRC
Committee") and every 2 years to the ILO Committee of Experts on the
Application of Conventions and Recommendations ("ILO Committee").
During this reporting process, several countries regularly detail their use of
the death penalty for drug offences as part of their fulfilment of their
Convention obligations.
In a report published by the Human Rights Law Review in April 2017, Damon
Barrett - the Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug
Policy - writes that neither Committee has challenged this practice. Rather,
both have - on occasion - seemed to encourage such behaviour.
Authorities in Egypt, Bahrain, Sudan, Singapore, and Guyana have all detailed
their respective country's use of the death penalty under the pretence of the
CRC, yet the CRC Committee has failed to challenge any of them on this point.
Similarly, whilst Iran did not mention the death penalty specifically in the
reporting process, its initial report to the CRC Committee stated that, in the
context of drug control, it applied "the severest punishment stipulated in law
... for cases involving the exploitation of children".
Iran is one of the world's most prolific users of the death penalty, 2nd only
to China. In 2015 alone, Iran executed at least 977 people, the majority of
whom were killed for drug offences. Given this repressive record, the CRC
Committee's failure to question the meaning of "severest punishment" is
suggestive of its acquiescence to the implementation of the death penalty for
drug offences.
Barrett warns that "unless these laws and policies are challenged by the
Committees, there is the risk that [states] have been provided with a clean
'bill of health' by human rights monitors or, put another way, that child
rights mechanisms demonstrate a structural bias towards the repressive status
quo".
A similar attitude of passivity has been adopted by the ILO Committee; in some
instances, it could be seen to extend beyond passivity and into the realm of
active support. In 2006, the ILO Committee noted that Section 347 of China's
Criminal Law provided "sufficiently effective and dissuasive penalties for the
use, procuring or offering of a child for the production and trafficking of
drugs". Section 347 includes the option of the death penalty for drug
trafficking or production, and makes the use of a minor an aggravating factor.
In his report, Barrett points out that addressing the issue of the death
penalty for drug offences is well within the remit of these Committees. The CRC
Committee, he notes, frequently makes recommendations that relate to adults,
due to their direct or indirect effects on children's lives.
The failure of the Committees in this respect is illustrative of the
international legal communitys disjointed approach to human rights; rather than
complementing and supporting one another, these human rights instruments seem
to be operating in isolation. The periodic reporting processes with the
Committees, which are meant to facilitate a "constructive dialogue", have been
ineffective at reducing the death penalty for drug offences - a major human
rights issue.
The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem
offered a glimmer of hope for human rights advocates when the CRC Committee
signed an open letter stating that "the negative impact of repressive drug
policies on children's health and their healthy development often outweighs the
protective element behind [punitive drug] policies".
If the CRC and the ILO Committees are able to translate such an understanding
into their implementation of the Conventions, then they may be able to improve
the human rights consequences of many countries' drug policies, and reduce the
misappropriation of child rights as an excuse for capital punishment.
(source: talkingdrugs.org)
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