Jan. 21
VIETNAM:
Is Vietnam ready to abolish death penalty?
On January 19, a day after saying it had tried in vain to stop Indonesia from
executing a Vietnamese drug convict, Vietnam, where heroin trafficking is
rampant, sentenced eight drug mules to death.
Earlier, on January 5, following blanket media coverage about appeals by death
row inmates, the apex prosecutors' office had launched a review of 16
convictions that showed signs of miscarriage of justice.
On December 4, a day before a murder convict was to be executed by lethal
injection, President Truong Tan Sang had ordered a last-minute reprieve and
instructed related agencies to investigate if there had been a wrongful
conviction.
In a country where death sentences are often handed down to those convicted of
drug offences and murder, analysts increasingly raise 2 major questions: Has
the death penalty played any role in deterring those crimes? And, in the
context of increasingly disturbing media reports about wrongful convictions,
how can Vietnam ensure innocent people are not executed?
There is a 3rd, possibly more important, question: Is the country really
equipped to carry out executions?
Minority
"Vietnam belongs to an increasingly small minority of countries in the world
that continues to apply the death penalty despite the clear global movement
towards abolition and decreased use of capital punishment," Delphine Lourtau, a
lead researcher at the Cornell University Law School-run website Death Penalty
Worldwide, told Thanh Nien News.
In the past couple of years Vietnam has been one of just around 20 countries to
carry out executions. In Asia, 10 out of 51 states did so in 2013. The US
carried out 35 executions last year according to deathpenaltyinfo.org, with
only 12 of the executed being white.
Tran Van Do, deputy chief justice of the Supreme People's Court, said at a
conference last December that courts around Vietnam sentence some 200 people to
death every year.
In 2009 Vietnam amended its Penal Code, reducing the number of crimes
punishable by death to 22 from 29. The country remains among a handful of
states that consider economic offenses like fraud and corruption serious enough
to warrant death.
There are no official statistics in the public domain on the number of death
sentences carried out in Vietnam. But with at least 500 people awaiting
executions, "Vietnam's death row is amongst the 12 largest in the world, and
only four Asian countries have more death-sentenced prisoners," Lourtau said.
Vietnam switched to lethal injection from firing squad in 2011.
But an EU refusal to sell drugs for lethal injections led to a delay in
executions until August 2013, when Vietnam began manufacturing them.
In a 2013 decree the government said "drugs that make a person lose
consciousness, relax the muscles, and stop the heart" would be used.
In a letter to the Vietnamese health ministry later that year, the British,
Danish and German medical associations expressed "grave concern" about such
locally produced drugs, which they called "a 3-drug protocol".
"The use of 3 drugs is controversial because of the potential for executions
resulting in excruciating pain for the prisoner if insufficient anesthetic is
administered," the letter said.
"In the United States of America, where the three-drug protocol was originally
pioneered, the Supreme Court has declared that the punishment would amount to
medical torture if the first drug did not fully anesthetize the prisoner."
In April 2014, a botched execution in Oklahoma in the US using the 3-drug
protocol left a convicted killer writhing and clenching his teeth on the
gurney, leading Oklahoma prison officials to halt the proceedings before the
inmate's eventual death from a heart attack, according to the Associated Press.
Meanwhile, miscarriages of justice in Vietnam seem to be getting increased
media coverage in recent years.
The most recent high-profile case was that of Nguyen Thanh Chan, 55, of the
northern province of Bac Giang.
Chan was found guilty of murdering a local woman and sentenced to life in
prison in March 2004. 4 months later the Supreme People's Court dismissed his
appeal and upheld the sentence.
But his wife's persistent investigation forced the real murderer, another local
man, to give himself up in October 2013. Chan was released a month later and
the Supreme People's Court officially cleared his name in January 2014.
In what was Vietnam's 1st public review of police torture in September, Truong
Trong Nghia, an outspoken lawmaker who is also vice chairman of the Vietnam Bar
Association, condemned the practice as a threat to the integrity and stability
of the political system.
"Wrongful verdicts, threats and torture are critical threats to the system
itself. The [victims'] descendants will hold us accountable," he said in the
National Assembly.
"Vietnam belongs to an increasingly small minority in the world that continues
to apply the death penalty despite the clear global movement towards abolition
and decreased use of capital punishment."
No letup
The police busted around 20,000 drug-related cases in 2014 and arrested nearly
30,000 people, some 1,500 more than in the previous year, the Ministry of
Public Security said in its year-end report in December.
A report by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)
Inter-Parliamentary Assembly in May 2014 acknowledged that in Vietnam drug
crimes involving foreign elements and drug trafficking activities by road and
air continue to rise.
"The fighting of drug criminal forces is getting more aggressive. Many new
synthetic drugs are going to penetrate into Vietnam," the report said. "The
number of addicts in the country has not decreased, the use of synthetic drugs
has increased and spread to many places."
Vietnamese authorities also admit that the number of violent, grisly murders
and robberies across the country is showing no signs of falling, even as the
media carries story after story of people not hesitating to kill for the most
trivial reasons.
Globally, opponents of capital punishment point out that decades of scientific
research has never been able to prove that the death penalty has any deterrent
effect.
They say it has long been observed that crime rates do not correlate with the
application of the death penalty. In fact, in many jurisdictions (such as
Canada and some US states), the murder rate actually declined in the years
following the abolition of capital punishment, they add.
In a definitive report published in April 2012, the US-based National Research
Council of the National Academies looked at 3 decades of studies on the
deterrent effect of the death penalty on homicide and concluded that they were
all methodologically flawed.
"So it's clear that the deterrence argument cannot and should not be relied
upon as the basis for retaining capital punishment," Lourtau said.
Against people's will?
But Vu Thi Thuy, a Vietnamese law instructor at the Ho Chi Minh City University
of Law, said whether or not the death penalty helps deter crimes depends very
much on the agenda of the researchers.
"Those who want to oppose capital punishment will tailor their research to
substantiate their argument. Those who are for it will publish research proving
otherwise."
The bottom line is that "a society free of capital punishment is one that has
developed to a certain high level in tandem with its citizens' awareness of the
law," she said.
"Vietnam's current socio-economic conditions don't allow for that [abolishing
the death penalty]."
The country is looking to scale back the death penalty, with debates continuing
in the National Assembly.
But what tops the agenda is not whether the country should abolish the death
penalty altogether: it is how many crimes the law should make punishable by
death.
A majority of lawmakers support reducing them to less than 10 from the current
29 by removing those like rape and smuggling.
Against the backdrop of an EU campaign for the abolition of the death penalty
worldwide, the proponents of its continuation in Vietnam are saying they do not
want further delays in executing death-row inmates.
Some even urge a return to the firing squad.
Even if the country looks to abolish the death penalty, international practices
have shown that a referendum would be needed, Thuy said.
"Overall, I'm pretty sure that the people would think that the death penalty
still needs to be in place."
She cited a survey of 500 people she did in 2007 in which 92 % of the
respondents backed the death penalty.
"I don't think that rate would change much now."
(source: Thaqnh Nien News)
GLOBAL:
Diplomacy and the death penalty in Indonesia
When Socrates, Plato and Aristotle deemed that to some extent the death penalty
was appropriate, their thoughts apply to the present situation in Indonesia.
Capital punishment in this country is reserved only for serious crimes, such as
narcotics and terrorism. Countries practicing the death penalty in the world,
including those in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, share similar
arrangements. Interestingly, most executions have been carried out for
narcotics cases in those countries. The death sentence is considered the last
resort after a selective and prolonged legal process.
Apart from its complicated process, the death penalty also has limitations.
Chief among them is the right of clemency where a death-row convict may be
pardoned. Qualifications, for example, children and pregnant women are exempt,
serve as additional restrictions as prescribed in the ratified 1966
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Nevertheless, many human
rights activists firmly contend that the death penalty violates basic human
rights in all aspects. In Indonesia, this claim was dismissed in 2007 when the
Constitutional Court decided that human rights do have limitations and as a
consequence, in some cases, the death penalty is acceptable. In practice, there
is relatively little issue about the death penalty for Indonesian convicts, yet
when it comes to foreigners, matters are more sensitive and complicated. With
bilateral relations at stake, the death penalty raises a problem of its own,
particularly on the issue of clemency and consular notification.
As history has shown, diplomatic and political considerations have played a
considerable role in the process of granting clemency. On many occasions, the
president has to make tough and last-minute decisions. Non-legal reasons such
as reciprocity, aid and bilateral support have to compete with rule-of-law
elements such as protection of Indonesians abroad, the gravity of the crime and
the supremacy of the law. Consular notification is also prone to complexities
if not properly exercised. The United States had to learn this the hard way. In
the 2004 Avena and Other Mexican Nationals case, Mexico argued before the
International Court of Justice (ICJ) that the US failed to inform 51 Mexican
nationals of their right to consular access including those sentenced to death
row in the US. The ICJ ruled in favor of Mexico and upheld Article 36 of the
1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. Currently, an official
publication of the US Department of State that is intended as instructions for
federal, state and local enforcement and other officials mandates the right to
consular access, particularly for death penalty-related crimes.
Another issue regarding consular notification is re-notification, whether a
foreign mission is required to be re-notified when their nationals are
sentenced to death or when their clemency requests are denied and the time of
execution nears. The US encourages its officials to carry out re-notification
and Singapore mandates 14 days of re-notification in the case of execution.
Japan and Malaysia, on the other hand, do not practice re-notification. The
complexity of the death penalty also comes from international pressure. With
the abolition of the death penalty gaining more support, Indonesia has come in
for criticism for maintaining capital punishment.In the diplomatic arena, much
of this complexity occupies the work of the Foreign Ministry. As the assigned
window to the international world, the ministry functions not only as messenger
but also defender of its nationals as mandated by law. Efforts are continuously
carried out to seek relevant legal and political justification both at home and
abroad. At home, diplomatic notes and visits from foreign missions requesting,
relaying, confirming and, in some instances, negotiating clemency have become
the Foreign Ministry's day-to-day business. The arguments put forward in
response to these diplomatic notes and visits may seem classic and cliched, but
they are nonetheless valid. One of the most common arguments conveyed is the
notion of an independent judicial system that is beyond the ministry's reach.
It argues that the legal process is distinct from the political process and the
death penalty is a product of the legal process. Even in the context of
clemency where international politics may come into play the final decision is
in the hands of the president who holds the prerogative to grant mercy.
As if the arguments are not clear and repeated enough, diplomatic notes and
visits remain adamant. The persistency of foreign missions in exercising their
consular duty is second to none. Ideas such as good bilateral relations,
respect for human rights and extradition are thrown in, hoping for a possible
loophole, if not a miracle.
Ironically, if the situation was reversed, Indonesian missions abroad would
simply do the same in exercising their consular function to assist Indonesian
nationals. In some extreme conditions, the Indonesian government has had to go
the extra mile to save its nationals from execution, such as those in the
Middle East and Malaysia. In conclusion, as of now the death penalty remains
the law of the land in Indonesia and as such diplomacy works in support of
enforcing the law. Albert Einstein put it succinctly in his famous statement
that nothing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of
the land than passing laws that cannot be enforced.
(source: Opinion, Sunan J. Rustam, Yogyakarta----The writer works for the
Foreign Ministry at the political, legal and security affairs desk.----The
Jakarta Post)
PAKISTAN:
Death penalty or life, for killing in the name of honour
The Senate standing committee on interior approved an amendment bill on
Wednesday declaring honour-killing an unpardonable offence.
Culprits of honour killing would be handed either the death penalty or life
imprisonment as per the amendment bill. It also proposes to outlaw compromises
between the culprit and the aggrieved party in such cases.
The bill was proposed by Senator Sughra Imam of the Pakistan Peoples Party
(PPP).
In 2012 alone, 705 people were killed in the name of honour, but majority of
the culprits got away due to leniency in existing laws.
To remove shortcomings in the relevant legislations, the bill proposes 5
amendments in the Pakistan Penal Code (PPC).
In the standing committee's meeting held earlier today, Senator Imam was of the
opinion that in such cases, the complainant and accused are often the same -
enabling culprits to escape the law.
She added, that women are not the only victims of honour killings as men also
suffer in such cases.
(source: geo.tv)
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