[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 28




INDONESIA----executions

Indonesia executes 4 drug traffickers


The Indonesian government on Friday said it had executed 4 drug traffickers, 
giving a reprieve of uncertain duration to 10 others it had said would also be 
put to death.

Deputy Attorney-General Noor Rachmad said 1 Indonesian and 3 Nigerians were 
executed by firing squad not long after midnight local time.

He said the government hasn't decided when the other executions will take 
place.

Earlier this week, Indonesia's attorney-general said 14 people, mostly 
foreigners, would be executed.

Relatives, rights groups and foreign governments had urged Indonesia to spare 
their lives.

It is the 3rd set of executions under President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo who was 
elected in 2014 and campaigned on promises to improve human rights in 
Indonesia.

(source: Associated Press)

***********************

Reports: Indonesia executes convicted drug traffickers----Reports say the 
Indonesian government has executed 4 of the 14 convicted drug traffickers.


The Indonesian government has carried out executions of 4 convicted drug 
traffickers, while sparing the lives of 10 other prisoners, Al Jazeera has 
learned.

The convicts were shot by firing squad at the Nusa Kambangan penal island 
shortly after midnight on Friday local time (1700 GMT on Thursday) amid pouring 
rain, according to TV reports.

Al Jazeera's Step Vaessen, reporting from Jakarta, said among those who were 
executed were 2 Nigerian citizens, a South African citizen and 1 Indonesian.

"All the others are still waiting their trials to be reexamined," our 
correspondent said. "It's not very clear what actually were the last 
conclusions why these executions didn't take place. But the government is 
saying it has something to do with legal issues."

The attorney general's office had said earlier on Thursday that 14 people, 
including foreigners, would be executed "soon".

The lawyer of Pakistani prisoner Zulfikar Ali earlier told our correspondent 
that his client was not among those who had reportedly been executed.

Al Jazeera's Vaessen said there had been "a lot of pressure" until the last 
minute to stop the executions.

The executions were the 3rd set carried out since President Joko Widodo took 
office in October 2014.

Widodo's 2-year-old administration will have executed more people than were 
executed in the previous decade. 14 were put to death last year. But 1 
prisoner, a woman from the Philippines, was spared the death penalty at the 
last minute.

The European Union and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights had called on 
Indonesia to impose an immediate moratorium on executions, and the Indian and 
Pakistani governments also made urgent efforts to save 2 nationals among the 
condemned.

The Indonesian government said the death penalty is necessary for 
narcotics-related crimes because the country was facing a drugs epidemic, 
particularly affecting young people.

But critics argue that capital punishment is not an effective deterrent and 
some have also questioned the accuracy of the government's drug abuse 
statistics.

The government of Jokowi's predecessor did not carry out executions between 
2009 and 2012, but resumed them in 2013.

(source: aljazeera.com)

************************

'Be strong': Indian man's last call to kin before execution in Indonesia


Gurdip Singh, the Indian man who was executed by midnight along with others in 
Indonesia on drug charges, appeared to have given up hope when he called his 
wife on Thursday morning, despite the Indian government's bid to save his life.

"This is my last call to you. They are going to kill me today. Now you will be 
able to see my body only. Take care of both children," were his words to wife 
Kulwinder Kaur, who was undergoing treatment at a local private health centre 
at the time of the call.

After midnight, his younger sister Binder Kaur confirmed having got a call from 
the Indian embassy officials that Gurdip was executed by a firing squad. It was 
not immediately clear if all other 13 convicts were also executed along with 
him.

On Tuesday, Kulwinder had fallen ill with anxiety after Gurdip informed her in 
another call about the planned execution on Thursday night. He also talked to 
daughter Manjot Kaur (17) and asked her to be strong.

Kulwinder broke down talking about the "last", 5.30am phone call from Gurdip, 
who belongs to Sitalpur in Saharanpur (UP). But she said she still believed the 
Almighty would halt the execution.

External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj telephoned Kaur, 41, at 5.30 pm on 
Thursday and assured her the Indian government was doing its best to halt the 
execution. "She said she has taken up the matter with the Indonesian government 
and a delegation of Indian officials has already gone there. She told us to 
pray too," Kaur told HT at her parents' home in Nakodar.

Singh, 48, was found guilty of trying to smuggle 300 grams of heroin into 
Indonesia in 2004 and sentenced to death by a state district court in Banten 
province in February 2005. His appeals against the death penalty were turned 
down by Banten high court and the Supreme Court. Kaur said she had requested 
the minister during the 10-minute call to do everything possible at the 
earliest.

Singh, who worked as a driver, and his family belong to Uttar Pradesh but Kaur 
and her 2 children have been staying in Nakodar. Relatives and neighbours were 
visiting the house to express solidarity. He had wanted to go to New Zealand in 
2002 to seek employment as a driver but got stuck in Indonesia "as his agent 
cheated him", Kaur said.

According to Kaur, Singh was arrested in 2004 as the agent, who belongs to 
Uttar Pradesh, did not give him back his passport and then "made him do the 
crime". She also blamed an unnamed "Pakistani agent" for his imprisonment.

Kaur, who works in the packing section of a local candy-manufacturing unit to 
support her family, said she was hoping that Gurdip would come soon and plan 
for the kids' future. "In the last 12 years, he used to call every 2 or 3 
months with the embassy's help, and we had hopes that he would come soon after 
completion of jail sentence."

She said his younger brother Gurpreet Singh, who lives in Dehradun, had met him 
in jail in Indonesia through the embassy 2 years ago. "We married in 1995 and 
he (Gurdip) went back to Libya for a driver's job after a few months of 
marriage." He returned after 3 years before leaving again in 2002 with the aim 
to reach New Zealand.

Daughter Manjot, a student of Class 11 in a local private school, said "I was 4 
years old when my father left us here to earn better." She said she wants to go 
to college and dreamt that her father would come to support her education, "but 
all the dreams are now shattered".

Son Sukhbir Singh (14) - who has never met the father as he was born after his 
father left a pregnant Kaur behind to explore chances of going to New Zealand 
via the Southeast Asia route - did not speak any words to HT when asked to 
comment.

(source: Hindustan Times)

*******************

The Long Cruel Reach of Indonesia's Death Penalty


On July 25, in the Indonesian port town of Cilacap, a 52-year-old Pakistani man 
was placed in an ambulance and transferred to Nusa Kambangan, otherwise known 
as "execution island." Zulfiqar Ali, a textile worker, was arrested for 
possessing heroin in 2004; like many caught with drugs in Indonesia, he was 
convicted and sentenced to die. Human rights activists denounced his case; Ali 
had been tortured into signing a confession, they said, and his primary accuser 
had retracted his statements at trial. Nonetheless, on Monday, the Sydney 
Morning Herald reported, while Ali recovered from stomach and kidney surgery, 
government officials came for him at the hospital. 3 days later, he would be 
dead, executed by firing squad in the middle of the night.

Ali would not die alone. Earlier this year, the Indonesian government announced 
it would soon execute of more than a dozen unnamed prisoners, the third round 
of executions following a four-year moratorium on capital punishment. The 
announcement - part of a zero-tolerance drug policy implemented under President 
Joko Widodo in 2013 - sparked grim speculation about who might be next to die. 
There were the 3 drug offenders transferred to Nusa Kambangan from Batam, a 
different island prison, in early May, as reported by the Jakarta Post. Or 4 
"black-skinned people from Nigeria," in the words of the sentencing judge in 
the case of Humphrey "Jeff" Ejike Eleweke, who was targeted for surveillance 
because of his nationality - and who swore he was innocent. By Thursday, 
newspapers reported, coffins were being ferried to Nusa Kambangan, while family 
members and spiritual advisers were given name tags for their final visits - 
"an indication that executions were imminent."

But 1 prisoner was spared from the firing squad. In late June, thousands of 
miles from Nusa Kambangan, a diminutive Filipino woman spoke from a stage at 
the Oslo Opera House, a sleek white building on the harbor of Norway's capital 
city. "My name is Celia Veloso," she said in her native Tagalog. "I am the 
mother of Mary Jane Veloso, who is on death row in Indonesia." Arrested at the 
Java airport with heroin in her suitcase, Mary Jane was nearly executed in 
April 2015 alongside 8 other drug convicts, but was spared at the last second. 
The hasty reprieve was so unexpected, people in the Philippines awoke the next 
day to inaccurate headlines reporting her death.

Family members of Philippine death row drug convict Mary Jane Veloso, (L-R) 
father Caesar Veloso, mother Celia Veloso and sons Mark Darren and Mark Danniel 
show the press presents they brought as they wait outside the Yogyakarta 
prison, in Yogyakarta on January 12, 2016, before visiting Mary to celebrate 
her 31st birthday. Veloso was sentenced to death in Indonesia after being 
arrested in 2009 with 2.6 kilograms (5.7 pounds) of heroin sewn into the lining 
of her suitcase. She had been due to face the firing squad along with other 
foreign drug convicts in April but was granted a temporary reprieve after a 
woman suspected of recruiting her was arrested in the Philippines.

Family members of Philippine death row drug convict Mary Jane Veloso, father 
Caesar, mother Celia, and sons Mark Darren and Mark Danniel wait outside the 
Yogyakarta prison, on January 12, 2016, before visiting Veloso to celebrate her 
31st birthday.

Mary Jane is the youngest of 5 children and has 2 sons of her own. Her mother, 
who struggled to make a living as a street vendor, described how her daughter 
had been offered employment as a domestic worker abroad, at the behest of a 
relative named Kristina Sergio. In reality, Sergio was a drug smuggler who 
allegedly planted the heroin inside Mary Jane's suitcase. Even as her daughter 
sat in an Indonesian jail in the spring of 2010, Veloso recalled, Sergio 
assured her and her husband "that Mary Jane was happy and that her employer was 
kind." It was only when Mary Jane called home that her parents learned the 
truth.

Yet it was Sergio who later stood in they way of Mary Jane's execution, by 
turning herself in to police in Manila just hours before she was to die. With 
Sergio's own trial now underway, Mary Jane is set to testify against her. Her 
family hopes that her testimony will force the Indonesian government to 
recognize she was a victim and commute her sentence altogether. "We long for 
the day when she will be reunited with her sons," her mother said in Oslo, 
breaking down in tears. "We hope with your help that she can return to the 
Philippines and start a new life."

The people in the audience included lawyers, academics, and human rights 
activists. They had traveled from 121 counties for the Sixth World Congress 
Against the Death Penalty, a 3-day event featuring speeches, panels, and 
artistic performances. Inside the Opera House, there was anti-death penalty 
artwork by high school students; an "Abolitionist Village" housing activist 
booths and literature; and a large map of the world highlighting "retentionist 
countries" - the label given to nations that hold on to capital punishment. 
Outside, in the heart of Oslo's fashionable tourist center, red and blue 
banners lined the street where visitors dined and shopped, carrying the event's 
official logo, a handprint reading ABOLITION NOW!

The first World Congress, in 2000, was inspired by a French polemic titled 
"Open Letter to the American People for the Abolition of the Death Penalty." 
The organizers' scope soon broadened beyond the United States; today, Ensemble 
Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM) - or Together Against the Death Penalty - holds 
the World Congress in a different city every 3 years. Although there were 
plenty of Americans in Oslo, the panels and speakers focused largely on other 
regions, particularly Asia and the Arab world. One major theme was the growing 
problem of terrorism, which has sparked a resurgence of capital punishment in 
many countries.

But in Indonesia, the deadliest offenses are drug crimes. All 14 people 
executed last year were convicted of drug trafficking, and all but 2 were 
foreign nationals. With hundreds of Indonesians on death row in other 
countries, many have decried the hypocrisy of a government that fights to save 
their own people while targeting foreigners for execution. As a reporter for 
the Jakarta Globe wrote in 2011, "How can Indonesia expect other countries to 
grant clemency for our citizens while standing firm on the death penalty for 
foreign convicts in this country?"

With Indonesian officials hinting they would carry out new executions after 
Ramadan ended, the specter of new executions loomed in Oslo last month. One 
Indonesian speaker displayed a graph showing how executions rise during 
election years. Another presenter discussed the case of a Brazilian man named 
Rodrigo Gularte, among those shot to death after Mary Jane won her reprieve. A 
paranoid schizophrenic, news reports described how he was unaware of what was 
going to happen to him until he was taken out of his cell. "Am I being 
executed?" he asked.

A few rows from the front as Celia Veloso spoke was Paul Wilkins, an Australian 
man in his 30s. A bartender from Melbourne, he traveled to Oslo alone after 
seeing the event advertised by the human rights group Reprieve. Wilkins did not 
know Veloso or her daughter. But he knew as much about Mary Jane's plight as 
anyone in the room. He could picture the visiting area where she had said her 
tearful goodbyes to her sons; he had seen the guards who according to media 
reports had cried as Mary Jane begged for more time. And he knew the field 
where the others had met their deaths later that night. He had glimpsed it in 
person and seen it again and again in his mind. It was the place where his 
friend, 31-year-old Andrew Chan, had died - 1 of the 8 shot by a firing squad 
in April of last year.

Chan was one of the famed Bali Nine, a group of Australians convicted of drug 
trafficking in 2006. Along with a man named Myuran Sukumaran, Chan had 
recruited drug mules to smuggle heroin into Australia. Both were sentenced to 
death. While in prison, Chan had become deeply religious, evolving into a role 
model for his fellow prisoners. As his execution neared, his case became a 
cause celebre, with politicians and celebrities trying to intervene. But Paul 
knew Chan simply as Andy, a family friend whose company he'd come to enjoy. 
They talked trash about each other's favorite rugby teams and cracked dark 
jokes - "We had a fairly similar sense of humor," Paul recalls. After Chan was 
flown in shackles from Bali to Nusa Kambangan, Paul recalled, he laughed at the 
absurdity of the security video that had been played prior to takeoff. "If the 
plane's going down, I'm clearly going down with it," he said.

Wilkins had never given much thought to the death penalty before he met Chan, 
but then members of his family began visiting him in 2006. His parents were 
retired and very active in their church; they forged a deep connection with 
Chan and his family, returning to Bali repeatedly and eventually constructing a 
guest house near the prison where relatives could stay. Wilkins was skeptical 
at first. "It was like, what are you helping this guy out for?" he recalled. 
Chan was undeniably guilty of serious crimes, even if he did not necessarily 
deserve to die for them. But in early 2012, while working as a travel agent, 
Wilkins went to Bali and met Chan in person. With a scar across his head and 
"tattoos everywhere," Chan looked every bit the thug Wilkins had read about in 
the press. Yet he found Chan to be disarming, laid back, "very personable." 
Wilkins was especially impressed with his strength behind bars - he could tell 
during his visits that many of the drug convicts were finding ways to sustain 
their addictions behind bars. Yet Chan stayed clean, focusing on cooking and 
teaching religion. The same traits that had helped him rise up in the drug 
trade now made him an influential leader in prison. In the months leading up to 
his death, Wilkins recalled, "there was a steady stream of ex-prisoners who 
would come in and visit him." Many were doing well, had jobs and families. "And 
they'd come in basically to thank him for that. Seeing that firsthand made me 
think 'Well, if Andrew could do it, then you know, other people's lives can be 
changed.'"

On March 4, 2015, Chan and Sukumaran - a talented artist known to Wilkins by 
his nickname, "Myu" - were flown from Bali to Cilacap, a signal that their 
execution was weeks away. The transfer was a show of force; police in riot gear 
stood by while an armored "Barracuda" vehicle came to take the men. The next 
month, on April 25, Indonesian officials gave the state's minimum 72 hours of 
notice that Chan, Sukumaran, and 6 others would be executed within days. On 
April 28, they were dressed in white and led to the field, with Chan leading 
them in singing "Amazing Grace." Tied to cross-shaped poles and lined up in a 
row, the group declined to wear the blindfolds offered to them by the prison. 
At his funeral, Chan's wife, Febyanti - who he married as a last wish granted 
by the government - described how Chan had worn his much-hated glasses, so he 
could look his executioners in the eye.

Chan's funeral was held at the largest church in Sydney. Hundreds attended and 
thousands more watched it via live-stream. A childhood friend of Chan's read a 
eulogy he had penned for himself before he died. "Ask yourself, what story did 
I leave you with?" he wrote. "That will determine my legacy."

In Oslo, Wilkins introduced himself to as many people as he could. It was the 
1st time he had been surrounded by so many people who had some lived experience 
with the death penalty. For all the public support showered upon his friend - 
rare for any prisoner - Wilkins had not escaped the strange, disenfranchised 
kind of grief often felt by those whose loved ones are killed as a matter of 
law. When the state takes a life in the name of justice, mourning is not 
socially sanctioned; even as Wilkins received kind text messages from friends 
last year, he gave up social media to avoid the nasty comments from strangers.

As the 1 year anniversary of Chan's death approached, Wilkins decided to make 
some changes. 2 old friends had unexpectedly died in rapid succession after the 
execution; he realized he had neglected other relationships. He stopped 
drinking and focused on exercise. Perhaps most important, Wilkins decided to 
start telling his story. He began by putting his thoughts on paper. He wrote 
about his visit to Nusa Kambangan to see Chan for the last time, describing the 
moment he realized the field behind them was the place where he would die. He 
wrote about the many loved ones Chan left behind - his mother, his brother, his 
nephew. He wrote about the uselessness of executing drug offenders as a 
deterrent when there was always someone new to take their place. He wrote about 
his friend's selflessness in his final hours, how he arranged for a delivery of 
KFC to other death row prisoners, how counterproductive it was for Indonesia to 
have killed a man who had done so much good in such a bleak place. Wilkins did 
not know what he would do with the essay. But it represented a bigger goal he 
set for himself. It had been nearly 50 years since his own country had executed 
anybody, he concluded. "My hope is that in the future, Indonesia, and other 
countries around the world that still carry out the death penalty, will be able 
to say the same thing."

On the last day of the World Congress, after the closing ceremony, participants 
marched downtown from Oslo's City Hall. Drummers led the march and chants rang 
throughout the city's busy shopping district. Holding a sign in English and 
French - "SAY NO TO THE DEATH PENALTY"- Wilkins wore the suit he wore to Chan's 
funeral, which now hung loose on his frame. He walked alongside Ndume 
Olatushani - a man from Tennessee who spent decades facing execution for a 
crime he did not commit - and Susan Kigula, a Ugandan woman, also innocent, who 
was released from death row just this year. At the end of the march, in a 
square across from the Opera House, participants gathered around a plain white 
banner. They put on blue plastic gloves and dipped their hands in bright paint, 
pressing their hands on its surface. Red and blue handprints collected until 
the banner was covered. Later, Wilkins posted a photo on Instagram from earlier 
that day. Wilkins is smiling, with his arm around Celia Veloso. Underneath it, 
he explained who she was, her connection to Andrew, and the uncertain fate of 
her daughter. "She's still in prison on death row," he wrote. "Celia and I are 
both committed to seeing the death penalty ended worldwide."

(soruce: theintercept.com)






PHILIPPINES:

Some minority lawmakers oppose death penalty, other Duterte priority bills


Some Minority members in the House of Representatives on Thursday said they 
oppose the restoration of the death penalty and question other priority bills 
being pushed by President Rodrigo Duterte.

Despite the leadership dispute between the 2 Minority blocs, some said they 
stand against capital punishment.

Duterte wants the return of the death penalty and a bill to reinstate it has 
been logged as the 1st measure filed in the House of Representative by a group 
of pro-administration congressmen.

In his Kontra-SONA (State of the Nation Address) on Wednesday, Albay Rep. Edcel 
Lagman said the measure is anti-poor. He also said the death penalty has not 
been proven to deter heinous crimes.

"What deters the commission of crimes are certainty of apprehension, speedy 
prosecution and inevitable conviction once warranted," said Lagman. "The death 
penalty is anti-poor because indigent and marginalized accused cannot afford 
the high cost of [top] caliber and influential lawyers to secure their 
acquittal."

His group, the smaller of the 2 Minority blocs, is also critical of moves to 
lower the age of criminal culpability from 15 to 9 years old. Lagman and the 
others say 9-year-old children still lack discernment and discretion.

"If children under 15 are used as couriers, accomplices and accessories in 
criminal activities, the solution is not ensnaring them into criminal 
culpability but subjecting the principal criminal adults to an aggravating 
circumstance which cannot be offset by any mitigating circumstance," Lagman 
added.

Lagman's group also believes there is a need to study the proposed shift to a 
Federal form of government.

"The greatest drawback of federalism is that most of the regions may sink 
deeper into poverty due to their inability to survive without subsidy from the 
central government," Lagman said. "The anchorage of the proposed federalism is 
nebulous and the projected benefits are grossly tentative."

Several bills supporting a constitutional convention to introduce amendments 
for a shift to the federal system of government have already been filed in 
Congress.

Members of the other minority group, particulary Buhay party list Rep. Lito 
Atienza and Kabayan party list Rep. Harry Roque, also said they are against 3 
of the administration's priority measures.

However, they elected as minority leader Quezon Rep. Danny Suarez, who is 
co-author of the bill restoring the death penalty for heinous crimes and the 
bill granting Duterte emergency powers.

Both Roque and Atienza also said they are against granting emergency powers to 
the president to solve the country's traffic problem.

"There are many dangers that come with emergency powers, and President Duterte 
may not be able to control what happens in the bureaucracy," Atienza said.

Together, the 2 House minority blocs number 38 members, but they face the 
formidable "super majority" of 252 pro-administration congressmen.

House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez is unfazed by the opposition and remains 
confident the priority measures will pass.

(source: cnnphilippines.com)