June 18
SUDAN:
Lawyer for pastors on trial in Sudan says no new evidence against them
A lawyer defending the 2 South Sudanese pastors jailed in Khartoum said he does
not expect any new evidence to be presented against his clients when their
trial restarts tomorrow.
According to the attorney, the prosecution has failed to present any evidence
against the 2 church leaders who could face the death penalty if convicted of
waging war against the state and spying.
The lawyer added that Sudanese authorities have violated the law and
constitution by denying visits to the 2 pastors and by holding them in separate
cells.
"This is a psychological warfare and harassment against the clients. It is
illegal," he said.
The lawyer said when he tried to speak with his clients at Kober Prison he was
prevented on the pretext that only a judge could grant permission for visits.
But when he visited the magistrate, he was told such decisions were out of a
judge's jurisdiction.
Family members of the pastors have also said they have been blocked from
visiting.
(source: radiotamazuj.org)
VIETNAM:
In Vietnam, death penalty cannot be a remedy for corruption
As legislators in Hanoi weigh removing "war crimes" and "surrendering to the
enemy" from Vietnam's list of capital offenses, ongoing debates at the National
Assembly suggest that "corruption" is not among the crimes being considered.
Vietnam enacted its first Penal Code in 1985, and did not remove "fraud" from
its list of crimes punishable by death until 2009, when the National Assembly -
the national legislature -- reduced the number of capital crimes from 29 to 22.
More recently, the Ministry of Justice submitted a bill to the house that could
cut 7 more crimes from that list -- namely robbery, vandalizing equipment and
works significant to national security, gross disturbances of public order,
surrendering to enemy forces, acts of sabotage, waging invasive wars, and
crimes against humanity.
The ministry has been soliciting public opinions so that the parliament could
vote on it later this year.
Proponents of the death penalty say it needs to remain in place to fight
rampant graft and overhaul the business climate. But with corruption remaining
massive and the death penalty clearly being no deterrent, holding on to it as a
panacea seems naive.
The 2014 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranked Vietnam 119 out of 175
countries and territories with a score of 31/100 -- a ranking the country has
retained since 2012. Study after study has proved that the practice of giving
and taking bribes is so common that it is understood to be a routine and
infamous part of doing business here in Vietnam.
Vietnam's business climate and rule of law have remained a bureaucratic
labyrinth, fueling a bribe-for-approval system that has permeated every level.
Repeated rhetoric from the top leadership notwithstanding, the commitment to
address corruption has apparently failed to trickle down the system. Meanwhile,
the cosseted state sector, notorious for its less-than-efficient performance,
has done nothing to assuage the fears that it is the bane of the economy and a
major source of corruption.
It is in this context that the idea of simply killing a person while leaving a
broken system untouched does not wash.
A number of lawmakers have also objected to scrapping the death penalty for
corruption on the grounds that doing so would go against the will of the
people.
But this misses the larger point. The bottom line is people are sick of
greasing official palms to get through their lives.
Businessmen cannot countenance paying "informal charges" to complete mundane
licensing and tax procedures; ordinary people are sick of paying "informal
charges" to see a doctor or get their child into kindergarten.
Lawmakers cannot pretend they are addressing these issues by killing those who
lack political connections or financial resources to weasel their way out of
capital punishment.
It may be true that people, frustrated by such entrenched practices and fed up
with stubborn corruption, demand immediate tough action against white-collar
criminals who steal public money.
But lawmakers just cannot ride this backlash to insist that the death penalty
should remain in place, claiming they are merely speaking for their
constituents.
What the public longs to see is a no-holds-barred crackdown on corruption and
real political will to tackle the root causes. There is no point in carrying
out a few high-profile executions and then continuing with business as usual.
Proponents of the death penalty are also convinced that it would play a crucial
role in repairing the shattered trust of foreign investors as the country is in
the middle of implementing major financial reforms. Again, it is unlikely that
many would buy into this. Foreign investors and members of the public want to
see a crackdown on corruption -- one that brings economic reforms and respect
for the rule of law.
The death penalty may help to placate concerned citizens in the short run. But
it cannot be used as a sales pitch in place of larger, more comprehensive
long-term moves to weed out corruption.
So if Vietnamese lawmakers want to show their constituents that they are not
lame-duck representatives, it is time they directed their efforts and endeavors
toward amending laws and rectifying deep-seated ills that allow widespread
corruption instead of noisily advocating the death penalty as a remedy.
The public is discerning.
(source: Opinion; An Dien----Thanh Nien News)
INDONESIA:
1 gets death penalty, 2 others get life
The Medan District Court sentenced Amrih Prayoga to death on Wednesday. He was
1 of 3 defendants accused of possessing 25 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine
and 30,000 ecstasy pills.
In a separate trial, the court sentenced the 2 other defendants, Ramlan Siregar
and Rahmat Suwito, to life imprisonment.
Prosecutors in both trials had sought the death sentence, but in Ramlan and
Rahmat's trial, the panel of judges opted for the lighter punishment.
The presiding judge in Amrih's case, Aksir, said in his verdict that the
aggravating factor was that the defendant had trafficked a large amount of
drugs and had also played a role as a middleman in smuggling the contraband
from Malaysia to Medan.
"The defendant violated Article 114 of Law No. 35/2009 on narcotics. Thereby,
Amrih Prayoga is sentenced to death," Aksir said.
Police arrested Ramlan, Rahmat and Amrih in September last year, seizing 25 kg
of crystal meth and 30,000 ecstasy pills weighing 10 kg.
Their arrest stemmed from the arrest of Hendra Gunawan in the parking lot of
Maju Bersama supermarket on Jl. Tritura, Amplas, Medan. Police confiscated 0.5
grams of crystal meth from Hendra.
Building on the case, police arrested Ramlan, but could find no evidence he was
involved in drug smuggling. However, Ramlan confessed he had obtained the
contraband at Tanjung Balai Harbor, North Sumatra, where it had been brought by
a Malaysian contact named Amir.
Ramlan said he had handed the drugs he obtained from Amir to Rahmat, who was
then arrested by police as he was waiting for a bus in Sekata Air Batu in
Asahan regency, North Sumatra.
Police seized a sack consisting of 25 plastic bags, each filled with crystal
meth weighting 25 kg, and 6 plastic bags filled with 30,000 ecstasy pills
weighing 10 kg.
Rahmat claimed he was instructed to take the drugs to Amrih, who was then
arrested by police at his house in Medan Baru, Medan. Amrih claimed he had
acted only as a field coordinator and as a direct contact for Amir.Amrih,
through his lawyer Laurence Manullang, said he would file an appeal, while the
2 other defendants and prosecutors were still considering whether or not to
appeal.
Meanwhile, on the same day, in a separate trial at the court, prosecutors also
sought the death penalty against Lithuanian citizen Mindaugas Verikas for
possessing 3.2 kg of crystal meth.
Upon hearing the sentence demand, Verikas immediately slumped in his chair.
Through his interpreter, Verikas claimed he was depressed and had received a
death threat while under detention in Tanjung Gusta prison.
In response to the complaint, presiding judge Indra Cahya asked prosecutors to
separate the defendant from other inmates.
Verikas' lawyer Effendi Barus said he would file a plea over the death sentence
sought by prosecutors in the next trial hearing on June 24.
Customs officers at Kualanamu International Airport arrested Verikas on Dec. 14
last year, confiscating the narcotics.
Meanwhile, the Atambua District Court in Belu regency, East Nusa Tenggara, has
sentenced Aisyah, 35, to 20 years in prison for attempting to smuggle drugs
into the country.
During Tuesday's trial, presiding judge Soesilo ruled that Aisyah was guilty of
attempting to transport 2,466.99 grams of crystal meth into the country. The
sentence was lower than the life imprisonment prosecutors had demanded.
Aisyah was arrested on Nov. 12 last year, at the Motaain post on the
Indonesia-Timor Leste border en route from Dili to Kupang.
(source: Jakarta Post)
**********************
Death penalty in Indonesia: Unsupported by the facts, law
From June 4 to 5, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) held a workshop
with Indonesian lawyers that we would much rather not have had at all. The
workshop was on how to handle death penalty cases in light of the country's
resumption of executions.
Until President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo suddenly embraced the death penalty, the
horrific practice seemed to be on its way out in Indonesia. Between 1999 and
2014, only 27 executions took place in the country, and in 2012 Indonesia
dropped its formal opposition to a UN General Assembly resolution calling for a
moratorium on the use of the death penalty (Indonesia had since 2007 been
voting "no"; in 2012 it abstained).
All this has changed under President Jokowi, who has allowed 14 people to be
executed by firing squad since he took power in October 2014.
All those executed this year had been convicted of drug-related offenses.
Indeed, President Jokowi says that the death penalty is needed to address drug
use, claiming in an Al Jazeera interview this year that 4.5 million Indonesians
require rehabilitation and 50 people die each day from drugs.
Even if this shocking estimate of the scale of the drug problem were accurate,
any argument that the death penalty is therefore lawful and justified would be
categorically wrong. But it is becoming more and more urgently clear that
President Jokowi's numbers themselves are deeply flawed and simply unreliable.
A coalition of Indonesian academics and experts, writing in the world's most
prominent medical journal The Lancet earlier this month, expressed "serious
concerns about the validity of" the government's estimates, and called on the
government to "invest in the collection of better quality data on the scale and
nature of drug use in Indonesia" through a transparent, peer-reviewed process.
The flimsiness of the numbers that President Jokowi has been using to justify a
growing number of executions was really brought home to us by one of the
workshop participants, Claudia Stoicescu, a PhD candidate at Oxford University.
She explained that the Jokowi administration's claims were based on faulty
research, reportedly a 2008 study by the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) and
the University of Indonesia. She told us that the study had used poorly defined
classifications, inappropriate recruitment methods and definitions of addiction
that were inconsistent with accepted criteria for drug dependence.
The number of deaths per day, for instance, was determined by surveying 2,143
students, workers and general households who were asked questions such as: "how
many of your friends use drugs" and "how many have died because of drugs",
rather than the more accurate method of extrapolating based on existing
mortality data on overdoses or AIDS-related deaths.
The article also called on President Jokowi to establish a drug policy based on
empirical evidence, rather than resorting to forced rehabilitation and punitive
measures.
According to the group, existing studies on drug policies and reform proposals
show that a punitive law-enforcement approach is not effective in reducing the
prevalence of drug use.
It is equally important, though, to underscore that not only do President
Jokowi's arguments for the death penalty lack any reliable evidence, they are
simply irrelevant to and incompatible with Indonesia's obligations under
international law.
Governments, leading UN and other legal experts and civil society organizations
across the world have concluded that the death penalty constitutes a denial of
the right to life and is a form of cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment and
is therefore never justified.
Even those who disagree accept that the death penalty is prohibited for
anything other than "the most serious crimes" (murder and the like), and then
only after a trial meeting the highest international standards of fairness.
In this regard, in 2013 Indonesia was reviewed by the UN Human Rights
Committee, which assesses states' compliance with a key human rights treaty
ratified by Indonesia, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
(ICCPR).
The committee confirmed that Indonesia's use of the death penalty for drug
offences violated the treaty, as such offenses do not meet the "most serious"
threshold.
The committee called for a halt to all executions in Indonesia, but emphasized
that the law should at least be changed to ensure that crimes involving
narcotics are not punished by the death penalty. It further urged Indonesia to
consider commuting all death sentences imposed on drug convicts.
Participants in our workshop highlighted grave failings in trial processes in
Indonesia, such as failures to provide interpreters to allow the accused to
understand the proceedings, a fundamental requirement under the ICCPR.
Further examples of how executions in Indonesia violate human rights included
authorities proceeding with executions despite the victim having been diagnosed
with mental illness; and, sickeningly, that some people shot by firing squad
experience minutes of pain and suffering before they die.
Indonesia is now one of only a few countries in the world that continue to
apply the death penalty for drug-related offenses.
President Jokowi's stance on drug traffickers is at odds with the facts, with
the law and with global trends - approximately 160 UN member states that have
either abolished the death penalty or introduced moratoriums. Jokowi must
immediately reverse this unlawful and ineffective approach by halting all
scheduled executions and moving Indonesia back toward abolishing this dreadful
practice.
(source: Opinion; Leong Tsu Quin, Bangkok; The writer is an ICJ associate
international legal adviser----The Jakarta Post)
NIGERIA:
Protesters demand legislation on death penalty for corruption
A group which identified itself as Voice of the Voiceless yesterday protested
at the National Assembly to demand a legislation which would prescribed death
penalty as punishment for corruption in the country.
In seperate letters they addressed to the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and
the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, the protesters
asserted that there was no way Nigeria would make progress if corruption in
public office was not brought under control.
The group noted in the letter to the House, signed by its National Coordinator,
Mr. Oliver Ezeala, that, "Corruption, as we are all aware of, has eaten so deep
into the fabric of this great nation and we are strongly advocating the death
penalty to anybody who is found guilty of corrupt practices, no matter how
highly-placed such an individual is in the society.
"Nigeria has tried every other measure of deterrent but to no avail.
"We want this great nation to toe the path of countries such as Indonesia,
Singapore, China and other world powers who have achieved so much developmental
strides as a result of their zero tolerance for corruption."
Voice of the Voiceless however expressed confidence that with President
Muhammadu Buhari in power, the fight against corruption would be fast-tracked,
adding that, "he will fight this our common hydra-headed enemy to a complete
standstill".
(source: Daily Post Nigeria)
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