Oct. 4
IRAN:
Iran, Which Executed Nearly 1,000 Last Year, Considers Cutting Back
Iran, which puts more people to death every year than any other country in the
world but China, is debating a measure that could significantly cut the number
of executions, local news outlets reported on Tuesday. But the bill seems
certain to face considerable opposition from hard-liners in the judiciary.
A newly installed Parliament, thought to be more liberal than its predecessor
but, until now, unwilling to take any unorthodox steps, is considering a bill
that would abolish the death penalty for drug smugglers, who account for a
large majority of those executed. While the government does not release figures
on capital punishment, the local news media said that 950 people had been
hanged in 2015. Human rights groups say the total could have been as high as
1,500, and the United Nations put the number at nearly 1,000.
Possession of as little as 30 grams of heroin is enough under Iranian law to
face execution by hanging. Nevertheless, drug addiction and smuggling are
rampant, officials acknowledge.
"We want to eliminate the death penalty for those criminals who act out of
desperation," Yahya Kamalpour, a reformist lawmaker, told the semiofficial ISNA
news agency. "We need a scientific and not an emotional approach to this
problem."
In a sign of changing attitudes toward capital punishment, public hangings have
become rare, and those that do take place are usually sparsely attended.
Representatives of the conservative judiciary have signaled that they will
resist any effort to change Iran's penal code, which they believe reflects
Islamic values and culture. They emphasize that these values supersede even
universal human rights and cannot be changed.
Anticipating the bill's introduction, the head of the judiciary, Sadegh
Larijani, called criticism of capital punishment "inappropriate." Speaking with
the semiofficial Fars news agency last week, he said, "If the judiciary had not
taken a tough stance, the situation would have been very bad, and drugs would
have been available even at traditional medicine stores."
Even if it were to win approval from the Parliament, the bill would still need
to be confirmed by the Guardian Council, which is dominated by hard-liners. The
position of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the last
word on such changes, is unclear.
Conservatives said they doubted that the measure could survive the determined
opposition of the judiciary. "Be sure they won't accept such a bill when the
judiciary opposes it," said Hamidreza Taraghi, an analyst with strong ties to
the hard-line faction. "The only wish of the parliamentarians is to please the
West."
The proposal is one of the first provocative plans to emerge from the new
Parliament, which was installed in August after elections in May. Although no
political faction holds a majority, the consensus was that the influence of
hard-liners on the assembly was not as strong as it had been.
(source: New York Times)
MALAYSIA:
Let us pause to focus on how to end crime, not lives
I became opposed to the death penalty when I realised that many desperately
poor people are being sentenced to death for drugs, that these were not crimes
of malicious intent, but rather crimes of desperation, and that this penalty
does not address the problem which it originally intended to address:
problematic drug use and societal instability.
Currently we have 1,064people on death row for drug-related offences. They are
on death row even though there is a growing recognition that their execution
will not reduce the amount of drugs on the street. We know that because many
executions have taken place already in the region. None have resulted in a fall
off in drug use. On the contrary, data from the Indonesian Drug User Network
(known by its Indonesian acronym PKNI) shows that after the 1st and 2nd wave of
executions due to drug trafficking, drug use actually spiked.
The fact is, overwhelmingly, those sentenced to death for drug related offences
are not running the drug business, and in the larger scheme of things, their
execution has no impact on reducing the drug problems we face. We know their
socio-economic status because as part of my work with Harm Reduction
International four or five years ago, I collected data on the names, ages and
employment status of the people sentenced to death for drugs in Malaysia. They
sell vegetables at wet markets; they are car mechanics, food hawkers, or
unemployed persons.
You don't see the sons or daughters of millionaires being arrested for drug
trafficking, nor persons gainfully employed as doctors, lawyers, academics.
That's not because people such people do not use or sell drugs, but because
arresting them would result in more complications than arresting low-level
street suppliers and drug mules.
Like law enforcement agents, the drug lords also target vulnerable people.
In the case of the vegetable seller arrested for transporting drugs - she'd
been selling vegetables for 15-20 years in wet markets when she was targeted by
drug lords. For someone who is struggling to feed and school children, and has
earned less than the minimum wage for most of her life, the promise of RM50,000
to carry drugs is a dream come true.
Do we want to sentence people to death for desperation? Is that the society we
want to bequeath to the children we seek to protect?
The death penalty doesn't combat drug use, because it doesn't tackle poverty or
the lack of human connections that are at the essence of social instability
everywhere. In fact, it increases poverty, because it leaves families,
children, without fathers and mothers. Without the necessary resources to
support the children of incarcerated parents, and without the necessary
resources to keep children in school, it's a vicious cycle.
I also know people on death row who are harmless, who haven't, and wouldn't,
hurt anyone, who have cultivated cannabis plants for epilepsy patients who
cannot tolerate pharmaceutical medicines. While the cultivation of cannabis
plants is illegal in Malaysia, medical research elsewhere has proven the
efficacy of cannabis for the reduction of epileptic seizures. Does this merit
the death sentence?
A huge amount of money is spent to detect drug mules, and keep people in death
row for years pending appeals. This effort cripples law enforcement agencies
who could be focused on more serious crimes. Should we not, instead, use this
money to tackle problematic drug use and instability in communities more
effectively?
What would a more effective approach to our drug problems look like?
Firstly, noted addiction scholars like the late Griffith Edwards, Tom Babor,
and others, have written that the threat of detection is a more effective
deterrent than harsh punishment. People are more deterred if there is a high
risk of being caught, than by a harsh punishment if apprehension seems highly
unlikely. Currently, it is estimated that drug seizures don't even stop 1 % of
drugs from reaching the street Moreover, an overwhelming increase in the
trafficking of synthetic drugs means that drug mules are less and less
relevant. These can be manufactured locally. For these, an increased police
presence in general is more effective.
Secondly, Malaysia's approach to problematic drug use is compulsory detention.
Voluntary rehabilitation, with evidence-based medicines such as methadone and
buprenorphine, and social and welfare support, has been proven to be far more
effective. Compulsory detention has a 90% rate of relapse, yet they continue to
be method du jour.
Thirdly, and above all, we need to fund programs that would give people a way
out of the desperation that makes them such easy targets. I don???t think there
are any micro-financing courses, or financial literacy courses going on in
prison. We do offer some vocational skills, like carpentry, that often keeps
people in the lower-middle-income trap. But we could instead offer them the
skills and support they need to make a comfortable living wage. I can think of
little that would be more effective at helping them turn away from temptation
when approached by the drug gangs, than a viable livelihood.
I realise that ours is a punitive culture. We believe in meting out harsh
punishments, and it will require a massive culture change for us to think about
understanding root causes and finding solutions. But if we truly want to solve
social problems such as problematic drug use and trafficking of those drugs, we
cannot keep on repeating the same ineffective policies forever.
Some members of our judiciary, and former judges too, come across as very
sympathetic. This is especially so in terms of judges who have had to, against
their individual consciences, sentence people to death for drugs. They want the
inflexibility in the law removed. I hope our government and parliamentarians
can understand that too. And I hope this will result in a shift away from
mandatory death sentencing in Malaysia very soon.
It's important for us in Asean to work together against the death penalty,
because people listen more when you're a larger group. We in ADPAN understand
we need to think about the Asean perspective, and we welcome the voice of CADPA
(Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty in Asean) and their campaign
to 'End Crime not Life'.
source: This is the personal opinion of the writer, Fifa Rahman, and does not
necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail Online
EUROPEAN UNION:
EU strengthens trade rules against goods used for capital punishment and
torture
The following press release was issued by the European Commission on October 4,
2016
On the proposal of the European Commission, the European Parliament has today
approved newrestrictions on certain services and revised rules on goods that
could be used to apply the death penalty.
"Today's vote in the European Parliament underscores the importance the
European Union attaches to respect for fundamental rights. As the European
Union, we promote the global abolition of the death penalty with all the means,
tools and instruments that are available to us", said the High Representative
for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy/Vice-President of the European
Commission, Federica Mogherini. "The eradication of torture as well as the
abolition of the death penalty requires political will and a joint effort of
parliaments and civil society across the world. Today we are demonstrating that
our European Union has always been and will remain at the frontline of this
work", she added.
"We can never accept loopholes that allow instruments of death and torture to
be traded or promoted", said EU Commissioner for Trade, Cecilia Malmstrom,
adding: "From lethal drug injection systems to electric chairs or spiked
batons, such terrible devices have no place in our societies. In addition to
prohibiting sales and exports, we are now banning the promotion of these goods
at fairs and exhibitions, and introducing a fast-track mechanism to make sure
that new products of this kind can be banned quickly. It???s imperative that we
can keep up with new developments."
The European Union adopted a Regulation to ban trade in certain goods which can
only be used for capital punishment or torture and to impose export controls on
goods that could be used to these ends already in 2005. In January 2014, the
European Commission made a proposal to amend this legislation to further
strengthen these rules. Following discussions both with and within the Council
and the European Parliament, an agreement was reached within a trilogue.
Following today's vote in the Parliament, the changes should now be approved by
the Council and then the text amending the original Regulation (1236/2005) will
be published in the Official Journal of the EU and become Union law.
Background
Respect for human rights is one of the core values of the European Union. It is
also an essential element of the Union???s relations with third countries,
including in trade. The Union's Charter of Fundamental Rights prohibits capital
punishment, torture and inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Regulation 1236/2005 bans the export and import of goods which can only be used
to apply the death penalty or to inflict torture or other cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment and punishment. The Regulation also imposes an export
authorisation requirement on goods that could be used for the purpose of
torture or other ill-treatment.
The strengthened text includes a specific set of rules for the export controls
applied to prevent goods from being used for capital punishment in a third
country. A Union general export authorisation, an exemption that can be invoked
by any exporter, is foreseen for exports to countries that, like the EU Member
States, have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. Of course, this
exemption is subject to a number of conditions which ensure that re-exports to
other countries require prior approval. If the general exemption does not
apply, exporters need to apply for prior authorisation, which may take the form
of a global authorisation or an individual authorisation.
For the time being, these export controls apply to certain anaesthetics. A
specific procedure empowers the European Commission to list additional goods
that have been approved, or actually used, for capital punishment by 1 or more
3rd countries. As usual scrutiny by the European Parliament and the Council of
the EU is foreseen, but in urgent cases the amendment can enter into force when
the scrutiny phase begins.
As regards the supply of certain services, the Regulation bans, in relation to
goods whose export and import is prohibited, the supply of brokering services,
technical assistance and training on their use. The presentation of such goods
in international trade fairs in the EU, and the international supply and
purchase of advertising space or time are also prohibited.
If the export of goods requires an authorisation but is not prohibited, the
supply of brokering services and technical assistance in relation to the
relevant goods also requires an authorisation. In some cases, the general
authorisation may apply to technical assistance. The definition of brokering
services is the same as that used in Council Regulation (EC) 428/2009 setting
up a Community regime for the control of exports, transfer, brokering and
transit of dual-use goods, but the new Regulation goes further and stipulates
that an authorisation for brokering services is required whenever such services
are supplied to a third country.
The Regulation also prohibits transit, which is defined as transport within the
Union of non-Union goods which pass on their way to a destination in a third
country. If the export of the relevant goods requires an authorisation but is
not prohibited, the ban on transit applies if the transporter knows that the
goods are intended to be used for capital punishment, torture or other
ill-treatment.
(source: neweurope.eu)
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