April 28
INDONESIA----executions
RI executes 8 drug convicts
Defying intense pressure from the international community, the government
executed 8 death row prisoners early on Wednesday on Nusakambangan prison
island near Cilacap in Central Java.
"We've carried out the executions," said an Attorney General's Office (AGO)
official, talking to the press on condition of anonymity.
The 8 were Indonesian Zainal Abidin, Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran
Sukumaran, Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte, Nigerians Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise,
Raheem Agbaje Salami and Okwudili Oyatanze, Ghanaian Martin Anderson.
Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines was spared after a woman who
allegedly recruited her to act as a drug courier gave himself up to police in
the Philippines on Tuesday.
"The executions were carried out at 12:30 a.m.," Suhendro Putro, funeral
director with the Javanese Christian Church (GKJ) in Cilacap, said in a short
message service.
AGO spokesman Tony Spontana said the government had agreed to the final
requests fielded by 2 Australian death-row convicts for their bodies to be
flown to Australia for burial.
A Cilacap Police officer said that after the executions, prayers were said for
each person according to their respective religion. "The executions went well,
without any disruptions," he said.
The AGO stated that the executions had been carried out after it had heard all
8 convicts' final requests.
The execution was the 2nd round after the 1st was carried out on Jan. 18,
during which 6 inmates from Indonesia, the Netherlands, Brazil, Nigeria,
Vietnam and Malawi were killed by firing squad
(source: The Jakarta Post)
*****************
Chan, Sukumaran executed by Indonesia
Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran have been executed by Indonesia.
The Jakarta Post, quoting an Attorney General's Office official, says 8 of the
9 prisoners on death row have been shot dead by firing squad. Mary Jane Fiesta
Veloso of the Philippines was spared.
The Bali 9 drug smuggling ring leaders were executed by firing squad on the
island of Nusakambangan just before 12.30am local time (0330 AEST) on
Wednesday.
"We've carried out the executions," an AGO official, talking to the press on
condition of anonymity, said, The Jakarta Post reported.
The others executed were Indonesian Zainal Abidin, Brazilian Rodrigo Gularte,
Nigerians Sylvester Obiekwe Nwolise, Raheem Agbaje Salami and Okwudili
Oyatanze, and Ghanaian Martin Anderson.
Mary Jane Fiesta Veloso of the Philippines was spared after a woman who
allegedly recruited her to act as a drug courier gave himself up to police in
the Philippines on Tuesday.
Indonesian TV networks TV One and Metro TV are reporting the executions were
done at 25 minutes past midnight.
Chan, 31, and Sukumaran, 34, are the first Australians to be executed since
December 2, 2005, when 25-year-old Melbourne man Van Tuong Nguyen was hanged in
Singapore after being caught at Changi Airport with almost 400g of heroin.
The families spent their final hours with their loved ones on Nusakambangan on
Tuesday before returning to the port town of Cilacap.
Chan and Sukumaran were allowed to have their chosen spiritual guides with them
in their last moments after Indonesian authorities had a change of heart.
Salvation Army minister David Soper and minister Christie Buckingham were to
give Chan and Sukumaran solace and their last rites.
Australia's Consul General to Bali, Majell Hind, and lawyer Julian McMahon are
also on Nusakambangan for official duties.
Ms Hind will receive the bodies of Chan and Sukumaran and take legal
responsibility for them on the island.
They will be driven to Jakarta by local ambulance with an Australian consular
officer following the execution.
The Australians' bodies will then be flown back to Sydney.
A Cilacap police officer has told the Post prayers were said for each person
according to their respective religion after the executions.
"The executions went well, without any disruptions," he said.
The AGO stated that the executions had been carried out after it had heard all
8 convicts final requests.
Michael Chan had earlier tweeted: "Counting down the minutes until I loose a
great Friend and Courageous brother.!! You will never be forgotten by so many".
(source: The Australian)
BANGLADESH:
Bangladesh's Executions an Affront to Justice----Political violence and
repression are at levels not seen in decades.
Last week, thousands of Bangladeshis poured into the streets to applaud the
execution of an Islamist party official on charges of crimes against humanity
linked to the country's 1971 war of independence. They were joined by
supporters of the country's largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami,
whose members protested against the verdict. Last week's protests were not a
unique event: There have been more than 92 days of political unrest this year
alone, which the World Bank says has cost the country's economy $2.2 billion,
or around 1 % of gross domestic product.
This year's protests began on January 5, the 1-year anniversary of a
contentious general election. The election was boycotted by the opposition
Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and led to the reelection of Prime Minister
Sheikh Hasina, the leader of the Awami League (AL). This election set off a
battle between Hasina and Khaleda Zia, a former prime minister who heads the
BNP - widely know as the "battling ladies." In response to this unrest, police
have arrested thousands of activists and banned the opposition groups from
holding demonstrations. The opposition has defined that ban, leading to more
clashes across the country.
In fact, there are a number of signs that Bangladesh has descended into the
worst period of political violence, state repression, and injustice for 25
years or more. As reported by leading local human rights group, Odhikar, 18
people are killed extra-judicially every month by Bangladeshi police, and
torture is on the rise by law enforcement agents coupled with public lynching.
More than 202 Bangladeshis, primarily members of the political opposition, have
been disappeared by the Rapid Action Battalion, an elite anti-crime and
anti-terror unit of Bangladesh's security forces. Other opposition activists
have been harassed, arrested, or forced to go into hiding. Odhikar itself has
run out of money after it was deprived of foreign funds on Hasina's orders; its
head, Adilur Rahman Khan, was abducted 2 years ago and detained for 2 months.
The government has also targeted the media, arresting journalists, closing down
television stations, and disrupting mobile messaging apps such as Viber and
Tango. Bangladeshis who came out in support of Avijit Roy, a
Bangladeshi-American blogger who was stabbed to death by Islamist extremists in
February, have themselves been attacked by religious extremists for exercising
their freedom of speech.
As if things couldn't get any worse, the government has undertaken a campaign
of unjust trials of opposition leaders who are alleged to have committed war
crimes during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence, a bloody war against
Pakistan that left 3 million dead and 200,000 women raped. Established by the
AL government, the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) was created in 2010. The
mission of the ICT is to investigate and prosecute Bangladeshi nationals who
allegedly collaborated with Pakistani forces during the war in committing war
crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, mass rape, and other international
crimes. The tribunal has so far handed down verdicts to 18 defendants - all
found guilty of offenses including crimes against humanity, murder, and rape.
These trials have further polarized the country and represent an egregious
affront to justice and rule of law.
Initially, the ICT had good intentions: to deal with the legacy of the 1971 war
and hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable. Accordingly, in its early
stages, the tribunal received considerable international support from the UN
and the European Union, among others in the international community. Recently,
however, the majority of the ICT's cases have targeted leading political
figures from the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party, which, together with the
BNP, has become increasingly popular and threatened to take power from the
ruling AL.
Most recently, Mohammad Kamaruzzaman, former assistant secretary general of the
Jamaat party, was hanged in Dhaka for allegedly collaborating with Pakistan
military forces in the killing of at least 120 unarmed farmers during the 1971
war. Kamaruzzaman's due process rights were violated by the Bangladeshi
Government, which detained him for over a year without formally charging him,
leading the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to declare that his
detention was disproportional and breached international human rights
conventions. Kamaruzzaman's execution was carried out only 5 days after
Bangladesh's Supreme Court dismissed his request for a review of the death
sentence. Kamaruzzaman was the 2nd Jamaat leader to be executed, after another
former Jamaat assistant secretary was first sentenced to life imprisonment by
the ICT, but later executed after Bangladeshis protested against the sentence.
The international community has raised concerns about irregularities and due
process violations in cases handled by the ICT. In Kamaruzzaman's trial, Human
Rights Watch observed that the ICT refused the defense???s submission of
evidence, witnesses, and documents, and prevented the defense from challenging
the credibility of the prosecution witnesses, whose testimonies were highly
inconsistent. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also sounded the alarm
on Kamaruzzaman's trial, urging the Bangladeshi Government to uphold its
obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to
ensure that all trials leading to the imposition of the death penalty comply
with fair trial principles. Additionally, the EU and the International
Commission of Jurists urged Bangladeshi authorities to commute all death
sentences and introduce a moratorium on executions, intended to abolish the
death penalty. Similarly, in 2013, a letter issued by U.K. Lord Carlile and
signed by 8 members of the House of Lords and leading international lawyers
raised concerns over the ICT's processes after Chowdhury Mueen Uddin and
Ashrafuzzaman Khan, residents of the U.S. and the U.K., respectively, were
sentenced to death by the ICT in absentia after being found guilty of abducting
and murdering 18 intellectuals in the 1971 war.
These calls have been ignored by the Bangladeshi Government. Currently,
Bangladesh's Supreme Court is set to hear appeals from 2 individuals convicted
of war crimes who want to challenge their death sentences. The appeals have
been scheduled for April 28, despite requests from the petitioners that the
appeal be scheduled the end of May so they can have adequate time to prepare.
While the Bangladeshi Government certainly took a step in the right direction
by trying to come to terms with the legacy of the 1971 war, rather than
sweeping it under the rug, the ICT's egregious due process violations and
targeting of the political opposition doesn't do justice to the post-conflict
judicial process the Bangladeshi people deserve. To live up to these standards,
the ICT must be reformed to uphold all fair trial obligations specified by the
ICCPR to ensure that domestic political divides are not the driving force
behind the tribunal and that the accused are afforded due process protections.
If the ICT can live up to these standards, it has the potential to be viewed as
a legal tool rather than a political one and to help the Bangladeshi people
overcome both past legacies of conflict and current unrest and polarization.
Today, on April 28, the people of Bangladesh had the chance to have their
voices heard in municipal elections in the country's 2 major cities.
Unfortunately, the opposition8 has boycotted the elections on accusations of
widespread vote rigging. Fair elections are needed to give the Bangladeshi
people the opportunity to hold the governing AL to account for using the
nation's founding tragedy for political gain, and push for reform of the ICT to
open the door to a judicial mechanism that lives up to domestic and
international standards and bolsters rule of law rather than undermining it.
(source: Jared Genser is an Associate of the Carr Center for Human Rights
Policy, co-editor of The UN Security Council in the Age of Human Rights
(Cambridge University Press, 2014), and a columnist with The Diplomat.)
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