April 3
ENGLAND:
'An era of incredibly ambitious women': Director James Dacre on new play The
Thrill of Love; A new play about Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be executed in
the UK, depicts her life in seedy postwar London clubland but also celebrates
her as a force for change. Liz Hoggard meets its director
A Billie Holiday record is playing on a gramophone as a blonde femme fatale in
satin underwear walks across the stage. She reaches into her handbag and pulls
out a gun. The record hits a scratch and 6 gunshots ring out.
Amanda Whittington's new play, The Thrill of Love, is based on the true story
of London nightclub hostess Ruth Ellis, played by Faye Castelow. In 1955, at
the age of 28, Ellis was the last woman to be hanged for murder in Britain.
Whittington wanted to tell Ellis's story through the 3 women who knew her best:
her real-life friend Vickie Martin (a hostess turned actress played by Maya
Wasovicz) and 2 fictionalised characters, nightclub manager Sylvia (Hilary
Tones) and Doris (Katie West), the club char.
Reading the court reports and case histories of the time, Whittington found
women's voices were largely silent. "The people passing judgment on Ruth were
mainly men."
The production, which has just opened at the St James Theatre in Victoria, is
directed by James Dacre (who scored a hit with the Martin Luther King play, The
Mountaintop, which won the 2010 Olivier Award for Best Play).
With its vintage costumes, period dance routines and popping flashbulbs, the
play blends film noir with kitchen-sink realism, as Ellis tells her story to
the detective investigating the case. The intention is to put theatre-goers in
the action, to make them feel as if they're sitting in a Fifties nightclub
watching history unfold.
"The audience gets a sense of that privileged, conspiratorial access," says
Dacre, "and what it might have felt like to rub shoulders with the likes of
Stirling Moss and John Profumo."
Ellis left school aged 14 to work as a waitress. Later, as a single parent, she
became a nude model and a hostess at a Knightsbridge gentlemen's club. But when
she met upper-class racing driver David Blakely, her life spiralled out of
control. Driven half-mad by his cruelty and infidelity, she shot him dead on
Easter Sunday outside the Magdala pub in Hampstead, and immediately gave
herself up to the police.
The Old Bailey jury took just 14 minutes to convict her and she was executed at
Holloway Prison 3 months later. The public outcry and sense of injustice were
key factors in the abolition of the death penalty. The novelist Raymond
Chandler, then living in Britain, wrote a scathing letter to the Evening
Standard, referring to what he described as "the medieval savagery of the law."
The story inspired a film - Mike Newell's brilliant Dance With a Stranger
(1985), with a screenplay by Shelagh Delaney. It starred Miranda Richardson as
Ellis, Rupert Everett as Blakely and Bob Hoskins as his rival, Desmond Cussen,
a former pilot.
Watching the movie at the age of 16 was life-changing for Whittington. She went
on to write her own plays, including Be My Baby, about a pregnant 19-year-old
in the 60s who is sent to a religious mother-and-baby home, which became a GCSE
set text. But she remained fascinated by Ellis's life. When the New Vic Theatre
commissioned her to write a play about women caught up in the criminal justice
system, she suggested revisiting Ellis's case.
"Ruth committed a terrible crime but she had also suffered greatly at the hands
of people who were never brought to justice. In 1955, domestic violence and
sexual exploitation had barely been named."
None of the male characters from Dance With a Stranger appear in the play.
Whittington did this to keep the focus on the women, but also because she
couldn't bear to re-enact the scenes of domestic violence: 'I didn't want to
sit there in the theatre and watch Ruth getting beaten."
60 years on many questions remain about Ellis. How stable was she when she
killed Blakely (she had just miscarried his baby after he punched her in the
stomach)? Who gave her the gun? Why was no solicitor present during Ellis's
interrogation at Hampstead police station? And would she have won a reprieve if
she had toned down her "blonde bombshell" look during the trial?
If the events had happened today, Whittington suspects that Ellis would have
made a plea for diminished responsibility: "We know so much more about mental
health and gender politics and class and how all of that would have impacted on
Ruth."
For all the period authenticity, the play has an impressionistic, dreamlike
quality. Dacre keeps the set minimalist. "While it's an epic story that takes
place in 50s clubland, and also visits courtrooms and police cells, it doesn't
require much more than 9 chairs and 3 tables," he says. "It's a bare-bones
production."
As Holiday's bruised voice articulates Ellis's inner life, we're left in no
doubt about how intoxicating the thrill of love can be - but we also know she
is on a trajectory that leads to the hangman's noose.
"The scenes are either set in the adrenaline-fuelled environment of the
nightclub, with all the sex, drugs, alcohol, peroxide and makeup - or in the
morning-after hangover of the club," says Dacre. "You get a forensic sense of
what it must have been like to wake up to the grim reality of those people's
lives. In many ways the clubs were the trading floor of a generation of young
women who came, like Ruth herself, from factory lives in Wales and Yorkshire,
and saw London as a marketplace, a world of influence and affluence. They saw a
lifestyle that might be able to elevate them beyond the very difficult lives
they had previously known."
Some climb the ladder, like Ruth's friend Vickie Martin, who became a protegee
of Stephen Ward (later a key player in the Prufumo scandal) and dated foreign
royalty. "It was an era of incredibly ambitious women who were prepared to
seize every opportunity with both hands," says Dacre.
The only male character in the play is the film noir-style detective obsessed
with solving the case. He is there to provide "tension and dynamic", to
represent patriarchy (the law, the press) and the various men in Ruth's life
but also to offer a final redemption. Detective Gale brings empathy to the
struggle of Ruth's life. "I didn't just want to tell an 'all men are bastards'
story," Whittington insists.
The Thrill of Love sheds a fascinating light on London's post-war history.
"There's a great temptation to portray the 50s and 60s as glamorous. On the
surface it all looks beautiful but there's a dirty, messy machine at the back
of all that," says Whittington. "These women were like soldiers, in a way. They
were physically embattled. There was no contraceptive pill so there were
ectopic pregnancies and abortions, there was physical violence and the sheer
exhaustion of trying to keep their lives going."
What animates the play for Whittington is the camaraderie between the women.
"The ending is dark, but the scenes with the women in the club provide a
counterpoint. The girls were full of optimism, they thought they had everything
ahead of them. Until Ruth pulled the trigger, she wasn't on the path of 'tragic
Ruth Ellis'."
Ellis's daughter campaigned, unsuccessfully, for a pardon for her mother until
her death in 2001. For Dacre, the play is essentially the hearing that Ellis
never received.
"Amanda has shown a real determination to sit alongside Ruth in those final
years in the club, to try to understand the circumstances, so we can better
understand her predicament," says Dacre.
"I wouldn't be bold enough to call Ruth Ellis a revolutionary but that term
does come up several times in the play," he adds. "And of course this was a
person - and a case - that changed the nature of the death penalty in this
country. That in itself was one of the most revolutionary acts of the century."
There's another resonance for Dacre. Much of the action takes place within a
square mile of the St James Theatre itself. "This was Ruth's stomping ground.
Every time we leave the theatre and see a Rolls-Royce coming up Buckingham
Palace Road, we think, 'Ruth might have been in that car...'"
(source: London Evening Standard)
SYRIA:
Syrian President Decreed Severe Penalties for Kidnapping Civilians
President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad issued a decree stipulating severe
penalties against those who commit the crime of kidnapping people, a recurrent
phenomenon by armed groups during the current conflict.
Legislation No. 20 of this year dictates that anyone who deprives a person of
his liberty in order to achieve political or materials objectives, revenge, for
sectarian reasons or for ransom, shall be punished with hard labor for life.
The penalty also applies to any person who blackmails the victim, spouse,
family and relatives, directly or indirectly. According to the decree the death
penalty will be imposed if the abducted person dies, is damaged permanently or
is sexually assaulted.
Moreover, the legislative decree stipulates that legal punishment will be
reduced to those who free their captives safely or deliver them to the
competent authorities within a period of 15 days after the effective date of
the law.
The kidnapping of civilians is one of the common practices of the mercenary
bands operating in the country, with the aim of get large amounts of money for
their return.
Journalists and foreign officials have been victims of these practices. One of
the most notable cases was that of the Ukrainian journalist Anjar Kochneva,
kidnapped last October and for whom was requested a ransom of $ 50 million
dollars, but managed to escape from their captors last month.
(source: Prensa Latina)
LIBYA:
Libya says it should be allowed to try spy chief
Libya has formally applied to the International Criminal Court to be allowed to
put Moammar Gadhafi's former spy chief on trial in Tripoli instead of sending
him to The Hague to face justice, according to documents published Wednesday.
In a lengthy written submission, lawyers representing Libya argued that
Abdullah al-Senoussi's home country is willing and able to prosecute him and
therefore has precedence over the world's first permanent war crimes tribunal.
The International Criminal Court indicted Al-Senoussi in June 2011 for crimes
against humanity allegedly committed during the Gadhafi regime's brutal
attempts to put down the rebellion that ousted the dictator after four decades
in power.
Al-Senoussi is jailed in Libya (where he faces the death penalty). His lawyers
argue he will not get a fair trial at home and should be sent to The Hague.
(source: Associated Press)
INDONESIA:
Executions in Indonesia: Sacrifices to the False God of Deterrence
You just could not make it up. In Indonesia, the public wants action on
corruption, and on drugs. Judge Setyabudi Tejoahyono, deputy head of the
Bandung court, had been trained to handle corruption cases. He was assigned to
preside over a corruption trial. Last week, he was arrested for taking a bribe
in the case.
Corruption is endemic. Earlier in March, Indonesian authorities carried
convicted drug courier Adami Wilson, a Nigerian, to a remote location and
executed him by firing squad. Wilson had complained that he had paid what he
had been told was the necessary bribe to secure commutation of his sentence,
but the promised mercy never came. He was executed in part because he admitted
to corruption.
At a recent public meeting here, an official in the Indonesian narcotics police
said that they have to execute drug mules like Wilson because it is the only
way to get them to stop dealing drugs. He explained that the condemned
prisoners know that they must pay a bribe to get mercy; since capital
punishment means those without the capital get the punishment, none of them has
the money; so they have to deal drugs in prison to raise the funds to save
their own lives. To stop this, he said - and he might have been quoting
directly out of Joseph Heller's Catch 22 - we have to kill them.
There is clearly an appetite for executing foreigners, who have been tarred as
the cause of all Indonesia's addictions: at least 40 of the 71 prisoners facing
execution for drugs are foreigners. Now that Wilson is dead, seventeen are
Nigerian. I ran across a legal judgement yesterday where the three judges
imposed death on man, saying that one reason he had to be guilty because he was
a black Nigerian.
I am in Jakarta on a human rights mission, focused on a number of Europeans
facing execution here, including British grandmother Lindsay Sandiford. So
where does all this leave her? It appears that the drug cartels - from Iran and
elsewhere - have recognised that Nigerian mules are now a liability, perhaps
owing to the blatant racism that provokes disproportionate searches of dark
skinned Africans at the airport. The cartels are now turning to vulnerable
Europeans, who they believe to be more likely to get past the customs agents.
No matter whether it is Indonesia or the United States, when one hears a
politician beating the drum of the death penalty, we know what is happening:
the politician has noted a complex problem, cannot be bothered with a sensible
solution, so pretends that killing a few black foreigners will cure society's
ills. It is a lie, a corruption that is perhaps more pernicious than the bribes
that Judge Tejoahyono apparently accepted.
With more than half a million Indonesians between 10 and 19 addicted to drugs,
there is certainly a challenge, but the sheer scale of the addiction proves the
failure of the Indonesian policy. The flood of drugs can only be stemmed by
rooting out the cartels, rather than the mules; it is not going to be stopped
by the fluid border of Indonesia's 17,508 islands. There must be effective
sharing of information, yet because a large majority of countries (111 in the
last UN vote, including every member of the European Union) are opposed to the
death penalty, international cooperation on the narcotics trade is hugely
hampered by the Indonesian appetite for executions.
Executing Lindsay Sandiford will simply undermine what little cooperation
currently exists between the UK and Indonesia - and perhaps deter British
tourists from coming here on holiday. Meanwhile, executing the odd Nigerian is
nothing more than a token, ritual sacrifice to the false god of deterrence.
(source: Clive Stafford Smith.Clive Stafford Smith is a US lawyer and the
founder and Director of legal action charity Reprieve; Huffington Post)
CHINA:
Closer Look: Putting China on the Path to Ending Capital Punishment; The
country has a history of miscarriages of justices and experts are calling for
gradually ending the death penalty
Several miscarriages of justice have made the news in China in recent decades.
These included cases of wrongful imprisonment and even execution.
In 1995, Nie Shubin, 20, was executed for raping and murdering a woman. 10
years later, another man confessed to the crime.
3 years later, She Xianglin, 47, was sentenced to 15 years in jail for
murdering his wife. After spending 11 years in prison, he was declared innocent
and released because his wife was found living in a neighboring province.
Zhao Zuohai, 58, was convicted in2002 of murdering a man and given the death
penalty. 10 years later, the "victim" turned up and Zhao was freed.
In the wake of these high-profile cases, the public and scholars have held an
increasing number of discussions over abolishing the death penalty. Recently,
Zhao Bingzhi, a professor of criminal law at Beijing Normal University, said
China should gradually limit use of the death penalty before abolishing it.
Zhao is the director of the university's College of Criminal Law Science and
serves as "distinguished counselor" to the Supreme People's Court. During a
recent debate at the French Embassy in Beijing, Zhao argued that China should
strictly limit use of the death penalty and gradually reduce the number of
times capital punishment is used. He suggested abolishing the death penalty
before 2049, for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic
of China.
Zhao said that when China embarked on a tough anti-crime campaign in 1982, the
National People's Congress Standing Committee approved use of the death penalty
for 24 criminal offences and economic crimes. In addition, the procedure for
reviewing death penalty cases was delegated to high courts in the provinces,
autonomous regions and municipalities.
In 2007, to prevent unjustified and wrongful executions and to control the
total number of death penalty cases in the country, the power of review was
returned to the Supreme People's Court. 4 years later, the country revised its
Criminal Law to remove 13 crimes from the list of those punishable by death.
Non-violent offenses such as financial and tax fraud; smuggling relics,
precious metals and rare animals; and looting cultural ruins were stricken from
the list.
However, China still holds the world record for the most capital offenses - 55.
Also, China considers the number of executions a state secret and has never
publicized it.
Some people argue that keeping capital punishment will help to curb corruption.
However, He Jiahong, a professor at Renmin University, disagrees.
He says that while current anti-corruption laws rely on severe punishment,
effective investigation is a better approach. The professor points out that
even though punishment for corruption in China is very harsh, graft is still
very common. The best way to curb corruption is democracy and the rule of law,
he says.
Professor Qin Hui of Tsinghua University says when the system shows progress,
it will guide and change public opinion. He said judicial reform involving
abolition of the death penalty will transform public opinion.
(source: Caixin Online)
PAKISTAN:
Pakistan Overturns Death Sentence Of Christian; Younis Masih Released
A Pakistani appeals court on Wednesday, April 3, overturned the conviction and
death sentence of Younis Masih, a Christian man who spent nearly 8 years behind
bars on charges of 'blasphemy', a lawyer involved in the case told BosNewsLife.
Masih, 34, was sentenced in May 2007 in the city of Lahore for making
"derogatory remarks" about Islam's Prophet Mohammad.
"However the Lahore High Court declared him innocent of the charges and ordered
his release," said attorney Sardar Mushtaq Gill of advocacy group Legal
Evangelical Association Development (LEAD).
Gill, who witnessed the ruling, told BosNewsLife that Masih will also not have
to pay a fine of some 100,000 Pakistani rupees ($1,000), a huge amount in
impoverished Pakistan. He said the young man was expected to embrace his wife
and 4 children later Wednesday, April 3.
His anticipated release ends an ordeal that began in 2005 when Lahore police
first detained him after Muslims complained that he asked them to turn down the
volume of Islamic Mystical Sufi Music.
HUNDREDS ATTACK
Some 400 Muslims attacked Christian homes, forcing over 100 families to flee
the area, according to LEAD investigators
Police also "tortured" Masih and a cousin who was initially detained with him,
according to Christians involved in the case. When Masih was eventually
sentenced to death in 2007, LEAD and other groups supported his appeal.
Gill told BosNewsLife that Wednesday's decision by the Lahore High Court to
free the young man "could positively impact" other blasphemy cases including
against his client Martha Bibi, a married mother with 7 children, who faces the
death penalty for blasphemy.
"Martha Bibi was released on bail in 2007 but she will face another hearing
this month and a final decision of the court," he explained.
Another jailed Christian woman, Asia Bibi, also hopes the Lahore High Court
will rule against plans to execute her for blasphemy against Islam. Earlier, a
Pakistani court dropped all charges against Rimsha Masih, a young mentally
challenged Christian girl, whose detention triggered a global outcry.
YOUNG MAN
Besides following the cases of these women, LEAD also supports 24-year-old
Khuram Shahzad, who faces life imprisonment under section 295-B of the
blasphemy legislation for "defiling the Koran", deemed a holy book by Muslims.
The cases have underscored concerns over Pakistan's blasphemy laws, which carry
a potential death sentence or long prison term for anyone who insults Islam,
with suspects often languishing for years in jail before their appeals are
heard.
Critics say the legislation is misused to persecute Christians and others or to
settle personal disputes on often trumped-up charges.
Last month, a Muslim mob attacked a Christian neighborhood, torching up to 100
homes and injuring dozens in Lahore's Joseph Colony over reports that a
Christian young man committed blasphemy against Islam.
The detained man, Savan Masih, has denied the charges.
More than a dozen people are known to be on death row over blasphemy
allegations and over 50 people have been killed while awaiting trial on similar
charges, according to rights activists.
(source: BosNewsLife is the first truly independent news agency covering
persecuted Christians)
TUNISIA:
Ghannouchi backs death penalty
Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia's ruling Islamist party, said he backs
the application of the death penalty, describing it as a ???natural law??? in a
television interview broadcast on Monday evening.
"We say that capital punishment is a natural law, a soul for a soul. And
whoever threatens the life of another must know that his life is also
threatened," the Ennahda party's veteran chief told news channel France 24.
He was asked in particular about the punishment of rapists, after a number of
incidents in Tunisia, including the case of a three-year-old girl repeatedly
raped by the caretaker of a children's nursery, which has caused shock and
anger.
"This crime must be sanctioned in the severest possible way and I would even
say yes, by capital punishment," Ghannouchi said.
"Rape is like a death sentence for a woman and for the entire family."
Under Tunisia's penal code, rape, murder, acts of terrorism and plotting
against the state are punishable by death, but in practice no executions have
been carried out in Tunisia since 1991.
Amna Guellali, the Tunisian representative of Human Rights Watch, said she
regretted Ghannouchi's comments, which follow efforts by rights groups to get
the death penalty's abolition inscribed in the new constitution currently being
drafted.
"It is a setback, given that Tunisia has a moratorium on the death penalty.
It's a challenge to that and it's quite serious," she told AFP.
Guellali said the Islamist leader was publicly expressing the position of a
number of members of his party, who believe the death penalty is "something
natural, an obligation in Islam and a just penalty for an atrocity that has
been committed."
Ennahda, which heads Tunisia's coalition government, is frequently accused by
the secular opposition and rights activists of seeking to Islamise society and
impose the key provisions of sharia, or Islamic law.
(source: IOL News)
UGANDA:
Ugandan MPs reportedly want closed anti-gay-bill debate
Uganda's Observer reports that some lawmakers are considering a plan to lobby
House Speaker Rebecca Kadaga to hold a closed session of debate on the
Anti-Homosexuality Bill for "fear of retribution from Western interests."
"This subject is very sensitive and some of us fear that if it is discussed in
public view, we will be persecuted for holding particular views," National
Youth MP Monica Amoding told The Observer.
According to the report, another MP who requested anonymity also feared that
"supporting the bill publicly could lead to being blacklisted." The MP pointed
to MP David Bahati, the bill's primary sponsor, saying he has been "ostracised
by some elements in the West because of his views."
Since its introduction by Bahati in 2009, the measure, also known as the Kill
the Gays bill, has faced persistent global condemnation. The bill has been
yo-yoing up and down the parliamentary order paper for months without debate,
even as Kadaga and other MPs have publicly and repeatedly emphasized that they
are determined to pass the measure.
The Observer indicates that it spoke to approximately 40 lawmakers who say
their constituents support the draft law, which reportedly still includes the
death penalty.
Addressing the threat that Uganda will cease to receive aid from various
countries if the bill becomes law, Bahati says his country "will never exchange
our dignity with the money from abroad."
Kadaga has been at the forefront of renewed efforts to push through the bill
after a verbal clash with Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird in
Quebec City, even as Uganda's Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi has expressed his
own reservations about the legislation's content, noting that homosexuality is
already unlawful in the country.
"To the extent that it is unlawful, and the attempt in this bill to repeat what
is already unlawful, is not something we'll support, supporting what is already
in the bill. Why? Why would we support it? Because it's already covered."
Still, he says, there are aspects that are "new," like "promotion of
homosexuality," that need to be debated.
Meanwhile, Gay Star News reports that an anti-gay march, led by 2 Ugandan
pastors, took place near slain gay rights activist David Kato's burial place
and home in the village of Mukono over the Easter weekend.
According to the report, pastor Solomon Male alleged that Kato's grave is a
site where "foreigners" come and pay "pilgrimage to homosexuality."
But some in the crowd reportedly countered Male's assertions, saying, "You say
homosexuals are given money to recruit people, but are you also given money to
come here?"
Gay Star News says Male was recently found guilty in a Uganda court for falsely
accusing a priest of male rape and was fined and sentenced to community
service.
(source: Xtra!)
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