[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 8



INDONESIA:

The Cogs of Indonesia's Death Machine----Indonesia's executions for 
drug-related crimes are based on political expedience, not necessity.


12 months following the Indonesian government's execution of 8 people, some of 
whom were foreign citizens, all on charges of drug smuggling, President Joko 
"Jokowi" Widodo visited Germany in April, where Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced 
her opposition to his country's continued use of capital punishment, especially 
for drug-related crimes.

The president, by way of a justification, responded: "There are between 30 and 
50 people in Indonesia dying per day because of drugs," quoting figures 
questioned by many health experts. But it was left to Attorney General Muhammad 
Prasetyo to put the matter more bluntly when he stated: "We are fighting a war 
against horrible drug crimes that threaten our nation's survival... I would 
like to say that an execution is not a pleasant thing. It is not a fun job. But 
we must do it in order to save the nation from the danger of drugs."

There can be little doubt from these words that the Indonesian government 
equates both the death penalty and the executions of its 'enemies' in the war 
on drugs as a necessity for national security. In doing so, it is hardly 
original. As far back as 1764, the Italian philosopher Cesare Beccaria wrote in 
his famed essay, "Of Crimes and Punishments," that the death penalty is a "war 
of the whole nation against a citizen whose destruction they consider 
necessary." Capital punishment is, as we are informed by some, a "necessary 
evil" - one of the most vulgar terms in the political vocabulary.

In doing do, however, the Indonesian government rests its case upon a false 
premise. Its continued, or rather increased, use of the death penalty has 
little to do with national survival and more to do with quotidian politics; it 
is not forced to execute but simply chooses to do so, however much it may say 
otherwise. (This is not an original point, as those with knowledge of 
Indonesian politics are aware, but just as a lie told repeatedly becomes the 
truth, so too does a truth not repeated become effaced.)

But first, it is worth describing the actual process that takes place. Since 
1964, Indonesia's mechanism of death has changed only slightly. Months before 
the execution is to take place, the condemned is transported to Nusa Kambangan 
island, a former Dutch prison colony, and today the site of maximum security 
prisons, nicknamed Indonesia's Alcatraz. They will be given 72 hours' notice 
before the execution takes place, and, at some point around midnight, the 
condemned is woken and walked by guards, along with either a priest or cleric, 
to a grassy area to stand in front of a firing squad composed of 12 riflemen 
from a paramilitary force called the Mobile Brigade Corps. A white shirt is 
placed on the condemned, who is then blindfolded and asked whether he would 
prefer enjoy the last few seconds of life standing, sitting, or kneeling. A 
doctor pens an X on the white shirt, above the convict's heart. Then, after a 
commander's yell, 12 shots are fired from a distance of 5 to 10 meters. Only 3 
shots, however, are live; 9 of the soldiers will be supplied with blanks, so no 
one knows who took another person's life. If more than one execution is to take 
place, they are conducted simultaneously.

One is reminded of Albert Camus' following passage from "Reflections on the 
Guillotine":

What then is capital punishment but the most premeditated of murders, to which 
no criminal's deed, however calculated it may be, can be compared? For there to 
be equivalence, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had 
warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him 
and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months.

In a few months' time - no date has yet been set - this fate awaits another 15 
inmates who will be executed by the Indonesian government: 5 Indonesian 
nationals, 2 Chinese, 1 Pakistani, 2 Nigerians, 2 Senegalese, and 1 Zimbabwean. 
Some publications have noted, rather cynically, that "there is unlikely to be 
the same kind of uproar... [for] the next round of executions" compared to last 
year's, as Time magazine put it. The reason: because 12 of the condemned are 
from countries that implement the death penalty and the remaining 3 are from 
"poor African countries." This prediction, most probably quite accurate, does 
not expect Australia or other nations to raise such an opposition, as they last 
year, when it is not their own citizens being killed - a rather shameful show 
of empathy and internationalism.

In any case, there is unlikely to be any wavering on the part of the Indonesian 
authorities. Chief Security Minister Luhut Pandjaitan told local media 
recently: "The executions can take place any time, but there will not be a 
'soap opera' about it this time." And the country's attorney general made it 
clear that the executions are intended to show drug offenders "we are really at 
war with drugs."

It is believed that between 50 to 70 % of prisoners in Indonesia, Malaysia, 
Myanmar, the Philippines, and Thailand are in jail for drug-related crimes. For 
Indonesia this is accepted to be at 70 %; most are low-level drug users.

Last year, the country's National Narcotics Agency estimated that almost 4 
million Indonesians had ever used drugs - 1.6 million who have "ever tried" 
drugs, 1.4 million "regular" users, and 943,000 "addicts." With 250 million 
citizens, that makes just 0.004 % of the population drug addicts.

To be side-tracked slightly, it was recently reported that Indonesia is set to 
have the world's highest rate of smokers in the coming years. Currently, 67 % 
of all males above 15 years old smoke cigarettes, and tobacco related illnesses 
are thought to account for upwards of 200,000 deaths per year. (That works out 
at 547 deaths every day, making the 50 per day because of drugs seem paltry.) 
But do we hear the government calling for the CEOs of tobacco firms to be 
executed? No. Perhaps because tobacco firms are the 3rd-highest payer of tax in 
Indonesia, an estimated $13 billion each year, and are key funders of 
presidential candidates when elections come around.

The effects of Indonesia's "war on drugs" are becoming apparent. The number of 
people with HIV/AIDS is rising sharply, with many putting this down to drug 
users being forced into sharing needles - being found with a needle could lead 
to being sent to prison. "It's creating difficulty for the outreach worker to 
give away clean needles and also to collect used needles ... and it has put us 
in danger of an HIV epidemic," Suhendro Sugiharto, an outreach worker with the 
Indonesian Drug Users Network, recently told Al Jazeera. (The same article 
warned that Indonesia is even considering "force-feeding drug dealers their own 
narcotics until they die".)

Many drug workers in Indonesia are in agreement that rehabilitation and 
treatment, not arrest and execution, are what's needed to prevent drug use 
continuing to rise. One might add into this mixture solutions to the problems 
that lead many people to take drugs - poverty, unemployment, poor health care, 
etc.

One might be also justified in arguing that if the world's 10th largest economy 
is incapable of finding the finances and resources to help treat 0.004 % of its 
population, instead of locking them up and shooting them dead, this must surely 
raise questions about its capabilities of sitting on the UN Security Council, 
as it aspires to do in 2019, or its other international ambitions.

It should go without saying that an "eye for an eye," albeit in a polity sense, 
is a futile deterrence. "There is no evidence that the death penalty deters any 
crime,??? the UN Assistant Secretary-General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic 
has stated. What's more, executions for drug-related crimes are in violation of 
the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, signed by Indonesia 
in 2006, which rules, in Article 6, that capital punishment can only be used 
for the "most serious crimes," excluding crimes not resulting in the victim's 
death, and specifically naming executions for drug-related crimes "unlawful 
killings."

In any case, as Andreas Harsono, a researcher at Human Rights Watch, stated: 
"It is easier for [Jokowi] to execute... drug traffickers - who are basically 
weak people, they're not drug barons - rather than dealing with legal reform". 
More telling, however, was Harsono???s following comment. Not only is Jokowi 
"politically the weakest post-Suharto president," he is also "not in control of 
his own party."

This is certainly not a unique opinion. Tim Lindsey, director of the Center for 
Indonesian Law, Islam and Society at the University of Melbourne, stated that 
it is "hard to avoid the conclusion that the [Jokowi] administration's approach 
to drugs and death is driven more by populism than principle."

When Jokowi was elected president in 2014, he pitched himself to the electorate 
as a champion of human rights, a "modest" alternative to his competitor, 
Prabowo Subianto, a former general accused of atrocities in Timor-Leste and who 
promised to rule Indonesia with an iron-fist. Jokowi's iconography as a 
political outsider is, however, one of his major weaknesses. As the New Yorker 
deftly put it: "As an outsider to both Jakarta and the political elite, 
[Jokowi] finds it hard to wheel or deal his way out of the gridlock that the 
opposition gleefully drives him into." Accusations are also made that his own 
party, the PDI-P, is not fully behind him, including former President Megawati 
Sukarnoputri, the party's chairman.

The New Yorker added: Jokowi "has needed to reassert his credibility with 
Indonesian voters, to show that he's more than just Megawati's puppet, that 
he's still fighting for the interests of ordinary Indonesians. But because he 
can't get much done in the legislature, he has chosen quick wins that can be 
had solely through executive power. Executing foreign drug dealers is one of 
those."

If true, Jokowi wouldn't be the first politician to use executions for 
political gain - though precedent does little to excuse it. It should also 
raise questions about whether local and international media exaggerated his 
human rights credentials before and after the election.

In recent months, however, Jokowi's position has been boosted as the country's 
2nd-largest party, Golkar, announced it would lend support to the president's 
minority ruling coalition, following a power struggle within the party that saw 
the former parliament speaker, Setya Novanto, elected as its new chief. This is 
expected to make it easier for Jokowi to pass legislation through the 
legislature.

Although, with the ferocity that the government has approached the upcoming 
executions, it appears such political shifts have done little to change the 
president's mind. Populism must still trump idealism, and executions certainly 
appear popular with the Indonesian majority. The last opinion poll on this 
issue, as far as I am aware, was conducted in 2006 and 76 % of Indonesians 
asked said they supported the execution of drug traffickers, and slightly less 
for murderers. And, to give the people what they want, Jokowi recently added 
the rape of children to the list of crimes carrying the death penalty - and, 
again, experts stated this would do little in the way of deterrence.

It seems beyond doubt that at some point in the coming months, in the small 
hours of the morning, 15 people will lose their lives because of a lie. There 
is no 'necessity' to execute people to save Indonesia from drugs; it is a 
political decision and should be admitted as such. To quote British politician 
William Pitt the Younger: "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of 
human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants."

(source: David Hutt is a journalist and writer based in Phnom Penh, 
Cambodia----The DIlomat)






EGYPT:

Halawa case ruling expected within weeks----Ibrahim Halawa's trial in Egypt has 
been postponed 13 times. A verdict and sentencing is due on June 29


The case against Ibrahim Halawa, the Dublin man held in prison in Egypt for 
almost 3 years, could conclude this month.

Since his arrest in August 2013 for speaking on stage at a rally organised by 
the Muslim Brotherhood in Cairo, Mr Halawa's trial has been postponed 13 times. 
He is being tried alongside 493 other protesters and could face the death 
penalty if found guilty.

When the case last came before a judge, last month, the court indicated that 
the verdict and sentencing would be announced on June 29.

(source: The Times)






PAKISTAN:

Pakistan executions pass 400 despite international protests over 
re-introduction of the death penalty----The British Government said it had 
opposed the death penalty with the Pakistani government 'at the highest level'


The number of people executed in Pakistan since it resumed hangings just 18 
months ago is feared to have passed 400.

The government has ignored international appeals to reinstate a moratorium on 
the death penalty, which was removed following a Taliban terror attack that saw 
130 children massacred at a school in Peshawar in 2014.

Pakistan has since become one of the most prolific users of the death penalty 
in the world, executing 404 people so far according to research by Reprieve.

Maya Foa, director of its death penalty team, said: "That Pakistan has gone 
from a non-executing state to executing over 400 people in little over 18 
months is truly shocking.

"The Pakistani Government seems indifferent to the plight of the many prisoners 
who should not even be on death row - those arrested as children, or suffering 
from severe physical or mental illnesses.

"They need to put a halt to all executions until a full review of this chaotic 
capital punishment system can be carried out."

More than 70 hangings have taken place this year, putting Pakistan among the 
top countries for the death penalty behind China, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Among a number of controversial cases is that of Abdul Basit, a paralysed 
prisoner who remains on death row despite concerns that there is no way to 
execute him that would not carry a high risk of prolonged suffering.

He told his lawyers that during a previous attempt to hang him, the prison 
authorities had built a slope or ramp up to the gallows in order to take him to 
be hanged in his wheelchair.

As in Saudi Arabia, convicts who were arrested under the age of 18 are among 
those awaiting executions, in violation of international law.

Pakistan was among the human rights priority countries highlighted by the 
Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in a recent report, which said the 
British Government had been "pressing" ministers in Islamabad on a number of 
issues.

The 325 people executed in 2015 may have been the highest number in Pakistani 
history, the report said, while an estimated 8,000 people remain on death row.

The de facto moratorium on the death penalty was lifted first for terrorism in 
December 2014 and then the following March for all capital crimes, including 
rape, adultery and murder.

"There were serious concerns over Pakistan's use of the death penalty, 
including fair trial issues and the execution of persons who were alleged to 
have been minors at the time of the offence," the FCO said.

"At the highest level, the UK made clear to Pakistan its opposition to the 
death penalty. We urged Pakistan to reinstate the moratorium and comply with 
international commitments."

(source: The Independent)