Rick Halperin
Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:01:12 -0500 (Central Daylight Time)
Aug. 18 SOUTH AFRICA: Calls for return of death sentence Reinstatement of the death penalty and an end to affirmative action for born-free South Africans have emerged as two dominant themes in changes the public want made to the constitution, according to submissions to a parliamentary committee. Each year Parliament's constitutional review committee considers public submissions on changes to the founding law. 5 of 19 submissions to the committee this year called for the death penalty to be reinstated. The equality clause and affirmative action featured prominently others. In papers before the committee, Alan Brown said the judiciary should be allowed to pass the death sentence for crimes such as murder and rape. NK Govind asked for death for murderers. Parliaments legal services said in a legal opinion the Constitutional Court had held the death penalty violated the constitutional right not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment. "The court further held that if public opinion were to be decisive there would be no need for constitutional adjudication. The protection of rights could then be left to Parliament, which has a mandate from the public, and is answerable to the public for the way in which its mandate is exercised, but this would be a return to parliamentary sovereignty and a retreat from the new legal order established in the 1993 constitution." Reinstating the death penalty would conflict with SAs international law obligations as Parliament ratified the second protocol of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that no one shall be executed and the state must abolish the death penalty. Freedom Front Plus MP Willie Spies said the law should be changed so that affirmative action did not apply to young South Africans who reached schoolgoing age on or after the dawn of democracy in 1994. (source: Business Day) CUBA: Sentences Commuted But Treatment Still Harsh Prisoners in Cuba who were facing the death penalty but have had their sentences commuted to life imprisonment or 30 years in jail are still being treated like death row inmates, a dissident organisation complained on Tuesday. "The announcement was made 5 months ago, but they're still being meted out the same punishment," Elizardo Snchez told IPS after the launch of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation (CCDHRN)'s 6-monthly report on human rights in this socialist Caribbean island nation. Snchez, the leader of the CCDHRN, said his statement was based on the testimony of family members and even some inmates who telephoned the organisation from jail. The prison regime is austere, but the prisoners are allowed visits every 4 months, he acknowledged. Cuban President Ral Castro announced in late April that a group of convicts facing the death penalty, some of whom have been waiting for years for a pronouncement by the Council of State, will now serve life sentences or 30-year terms instead. Snchez said this decision was "positive," although he deplored the lack of public information about how many prisoners would benefit from the measure, and how many would serve 30 years or be behind bars for life. "Our Commission had to make inferences to estimate that between 20 and 30 people sentenced to capital punishment had their sentences commuted, and about half of these will serve life sentences," says the CCDHRN report signed by Snchez, where he is described as a "human rights observer and former prisoner of conscience." The statement, distributed to foreign correspondents in Havana, says it is "disturbing" that prisoners who had their death penalties commuted are still being held under extremely harsh conditions, pointing out that some have been in isolation for more than 10 years. The government's handling of the death penalty issue remains "very conservative," and there are still dozens of crimes to which capital punishment still applies. "It's a sword of Damocles hanging over Cubans," Snchez said. Nevertheless, the decision to commute the death penalty reaffirmed the de facto moratorium on capital punishment that has been in force in this country since 2003, after 3 men who hijacked a passenger ferry were executed by firing squad. Since then no death sentences have been handed down by the courts and no new executions have been carried out. The Cuban government argues in favour of keeping the death penalty on the books as a legal weapon to defend the country from foreign aggression and from possible domestic attempts to undermine the state, as well as to protect the population from the most heinous crimes. In line with this argument, Havana links the possible abolition of the death penalty to a cessation of the U.S. policy of "hostility and terrorism" and the 4-decade U.S. economic embargo, according to official documents like a 2004 letter from Cuba to the United Nations Human Rights Council. "We have been forced to choose, in legitimate defence, the route of establishing and enforcing severe laws against our enemies, but always strictly within the framework of the law and with respect for legal guarantees," Castro said in April at the closing session of a plenary session of the Communist Party Central Committee. The Commission's report indicates that between January and July this year, the CCDHRN documented 219 cases of political prisoners, 15 fewer than the 234 it identified in 2007. But the real figure could be higher, due to the hermetic nature of the regime which does not permit "any kind of scrutiny," the dissident group says. The authorities do not generally reply to the organisations reports, nor do they provide any statistics on the prison population. But Snchez declared that "short-term" detentions have increased, and the CCDHRN has also documented mistreatment at the hands of the police, something he said had been avoided in the past. The document names 219 people who are serving prison sentences or are awaiting trial, and also mentions 67 "Cuban prisoners of conscience adopted by Amnesty International who are still serving their sentences." 10 of these are under house arrest, rather than in prison, for health reasons. The list includes 3 persons sentenced to death whose appeals to the Supreme Court will be analysed soon, Castro said in his April speech. 2 are Salvadorans, Ral Ernesto Cruz and Otto Ren Rodrguez, who were convicted of terrorism in 1998 after taking part in a series of bombings of tourist facilities in Cuba, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian businessman. The third is Humberto Eladio Real, a Cuban arrested on Oct. 15, 1994 after disembarking on the island, committing a murder and stealing his victim's car. He was tried and convicted of murder and acts against the security of the state. (source: IPS News)