[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

July 6



ETHIOPIA:

UN calls for 'immediate release' of British activist jailed in Ethiopia


United Nations (UN) has called for the immediate release of an 
Ethiopian-British citizen being held on death row in Ethiopia for more than a 
year, a case which campaigners have claimed exposes Britain's poor diplomacy.

The United Nations (UN) has called for the immediate release of an 
Ethiopian-British citizen being held on death row in Ethiopia for more than a 
year, a case which campaigners have claimed exposes Britain's poor diplomacy.

Signalling an abrupt hardening of its stance on the case, experts from the UN 
Human Rights Council have asked Ethiopia to pay Andargachew Tsige 'adequate 
compensation' before sending him home to London, reported The Guardian.

An 8-page judgement handed to Ethiopia by the UNHRC's working group on 
arbitrary detention also claimed that 'reliable evidence' had suggested 
possible situation of physical abuse and mistreatment which could amount to 
cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Earlier, internal Foreign Office emails, disclosed for the 1st time, had 
revealed that Tsige was abducted and jailed in an unknown location in June 
2014, with many British officials voicing fears about real risk of torture if 
Tsige was returned to Ethiopia.

The 60-year-old was detained at Yemen's main airport while in transit and 
forcibly moved to the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa. He is a prominent 
opposition politician and an outspoken critic of the Ethiopian government and 
the country's human rights record.

(source: The Financial Express)






SOUTH KOREA:

Lawmakers push to abolish death penalty


Lawmakers here Monday submitted a bipartisan bill to the National Assembly 
proposing to abolish the death penalty, citing a clause in the South Korean 
Constitution that obligates citizens to "respect human dignity."

South Korea last carried out its last death sentence in December 1997. Amnesty 
International considers Korea a de facto abolitionist country, according to a 
2014 report by the human rights nongovernmental organization.

But the new draft bill aims to raise Korea's status to an outright abolitionist 
country, chief sponsor Rep. Yoo Ihn-tae of the main opposition New Politics 
Alliance for Democracy said, citing decades of efforts by human rights workers 
to have the practice outlawed here.

Rep. Yoo Ihn-tae of the main opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy 
submits an anti-death penalty draft bill early Monday. (Yonhap) "It is time we 
illegalize the death penalty here, in a country that has produced a U.N. 
secretary-general and is a member of the U.N. Human Rights Council," Yoo added, 
referring to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon.

"It's time that we declare the death penalty something that goes against our 
country's conscience."

At least 61 have been sentenced to death here, according to Amnesty 
International.

Lawmakers proposed 6 draft bills from 1999 to 2010 proposing to abolish the 
death penalty outright. But the draft bills failed to pass Korea's unicameral 
parliament.

Yoo's proposed bill comes nearly five years after the last anti-death penalty 
bill was chiefly sponsored by lawmaker Joo Sung-young of the Grand National 
Party, a precursor to the ruling Saenuri Party, in November 2010.

The draft bill must pass the Legislation and Judiciary Committee and plenary 
voting at the National Assembly, before receiving final approval from the 
Cabinet for it to become law. More than 170 of the Assembly's 298 lawmakers 
have signed on to the proposed bill as cosponsors.

South Korea was among the 34 countries that abstained on a U.N. General 
Assembly vote to abolish the death penalty in December last year.

(source: Korea Herald)






NORTH KOREA:

North Korea has carried out 1,400 public executions since 2000, report claims


Nearly 1,400 North Koreans were publicly executed between 2000 and 2013, 
according to new research, which suggests that the number of these deaths 
peaked at 160 in 2009. Further increases after 2013 have also been reported.

The Korean Institute for National Unification, funded by the South Korean 
government, said in its annual white paper on human rights in North Korea that 
1,382 executions took place in public in the 13-year period.

The figures, which cannot be independently verified, were said to be based on 
in-depth interviews with North Korean defectors and confirmed by witnesses in 
the country. The number of executions carried out away from the public eye is 
also impossible to ascertain.

North Korean media have reported only 2 executions in 2014 and none so far this 
year, according to Cornell University's Death Penalty Watch research group. 
During 2009, only 1 was officially reported.

But the South Korean newspaper Joongang Daily reported in late 2013 that 
thousands of North Koreans had been forced to attend executions by firing squad 
held in stadiums, the 1st known large-scale public executions under Kim 
Jong-un's leadership.

Public executions are considered to be a way to keep the population in line. 
According to witness testimonies from the DPRK, public executions for watching 
or distributing South Korean films and drug smuggling have increased in recent 
years, as well sentences for "crimes against the regime". Many more are 
punished by being sent to work-camps, with Amnesty International estimating 
that 200,000 North Koreans are in prison.

North Korea does not allow access to human rights groups, but an Amnesty report 
confirms the 2013 spike in executions, claiming that at least 70 death 
sentences were carried out in the DPRK, from a total of 776 around the world.

Amnesty said the actual number was likely to be far higher, but even without 
taking this into account North Korea, a country with 0.3% of the world's 
people, carries out nearly 10% of its confirmed executions.

This total is still less than Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, which account for 
80% of the world's confirmed executions between them. The US executed 761 
people between 2000 and 2013, according to the Death Penalty Information 
Centre, but many countries, most notably China, refuse to reveal the number of 
people sentenced to death by the state.

Since 1996, the South Korean unification institute has published annual 
statistics on executions. This year's figures were based on testimonies of 221 
North Korean defectors, selected based on demographics and background, of the 
total 1,396 escapees who came to South Korea last year.

(source: The Guardian)






IRAN:

2 Women Sentenced to Death Pardoned by Plaintiffs----Plaintiffs have helped 
save 2 women from death row in Iran through a pardon


During a recent meeting of "peace and reconciliation" between prisoners in 
Isfahan's central prison and a number of plaintiffs 2 women sentenced to death 
and 6 women charged with financial crimes were pardoned, according to a report 
by the public relations office of prisons in Isfahan.

The meeting, reportedly the first of its kind at the prison, was held to 
reportedly help reduce the amount of prisoners behind bars. The meeting was 
reportedly attended by Iranian actor Hassan Aklili, a number of clerics and 
also the director of prisons in the province of Alborz. Additionally, 17 other 
plaintiffs have reportedly agreed to pardon prisoners with financial crimes 
under the condition that they pay back their debt.

(source: Iran Human Rights)