[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

June 28



BOTSWANA:

Will Death Row Hit Men Escape The Hangman's Noose? Among cases to watch during 
the July Court of Appeal (CoA) session are of death row inmates, Daniel Semi 
(30) and Gaolatlhe Thusang (35) who are seeking to convince the bench to rescue 
them from the noose.


The duo, who hail from Ntlhantlhe in the Southern District, were sentenced to 
death by Lobatse High Court Judge Michael Leburu despite pronouncement by Judge 
Tshepo Motswagole that death penalty was unconstitutional.

Leburu had interpreted Section 203 of the penal code differently after 
Motswagole had argued, in sentencing a murder convict, that it contravened 
several sections of the constitution hence rendering the death penalty 
unconstitutional.

Evidence led showed that the duo were hired by their co-accused, Agisanyang 
Motukwa, 34, to kill his father whom he believed to be bewitching him. It is 
however, believed that Motukwa had his father killed for insurance money. He is 
set to appeal his 25-year sentence.

Motukwa, who in 2008 left many in shock when he was accused of hiring 2 hit man 
to kill his father after believing he was bewitching him, was in January given 
a chance to put his house in order after he alleged that the record of 
proceedings he got from the High Court was incomplete.

He said the record did not show most of the proceedings, especially the one 
between him and the first state witness therefore he was not happy with it. 
Furthermore he complained that there was communication breakdown between him 
and his lawyer at the time, which was not also recorded in the records despite 
having raised it several times in court.

(source: mmegi.bw)






MALAYSIA:

Kevin Morais murder trial adjourned till July 12


The prosecution in the murder trial of Deputy Public Prosecutor Datuk Anthony 
Kevin Morais offered an alternative charge to one of the seven accused in the 
High Court today.

G Gunasekaran, 48, the second accused, then claimed trial to the alternative 
charge of hiding the body of Morais and destroying a car registered under plate 
WA 6264Q, with the intention to prevent the other 6 accused from facing the 
law.

The others are S Ravi Chandran, 43, S Nimalan, 23, A Thinesh Kumar, 23, R 
Dinishwaran, 24, M Viswanath, 26, and army pathologist Col Dr R. Kunaseegaran, 
53, who is changed with abetting the 6 men.

DPP Datuk Abdul Razak Musa offered the alternative charge under Section 302 of 
the Penal Code, read together with Section 34 of the same code.

He said if Gunasekaran pleaded guilty to this alternative charge, he would be 
discharged of the original charge of murdering Morais, which carries a 
mandatory death sentence.

This new development occurred after Gunasekaran's counsel, V Rajagopal, told 
the court his client wanted to appoint a new counsel to represent him as he 
(Rajagopal) had refused his client's instruction due to a conflict of interest.

He then requested the court to discharge him from representing Gunasekaran.

Judge Datuk Azman Abdullah, in granting the request, said the trial had to be 
adjourned until Gunasekaran, who faces a charge that carries the mandatory 
death penalty on conviction, has first to be represented.

"We cannot proceed without a counsel for the accused and this only surfaced 
this morning," he said.

Abdul Razak, however, objected to adjourning the case as an important witness 
had come from Bangladesh and has to return today.

When another defence counsel, M Manoharan, objected to proceeding with the case 
with Gunasekaran being unrepresented, Abdul Razak said he could offer 
Gunasekaran an alternative charge, which carries a seven year jail term and 
fine, thus does not require a compulsory counsel representation.

However, when Gunasekaran pleaded not guilty for the alternative charge, the 
trial had to be adjourned.

Azman then fixed July 12 for case management for Gunasekaran.

(source: thesundaily.my)






CHINA:

'A bloody harvest': Thousands of people slaughtered for their organs, new 
report reveals


The Chinese government continues to carry out mass killings of innocent people 
in order to obtain their organs for transplants, a damning new report reveals.

The report - by former Canadian politician David Kilgour, human rights lawyer 
David Matas, and journalist Ethan Gutmann - shows that organ transplants are 
carried out in China 10 times more than official government figures reveal.

"The (Communist Party) says the total number of legal transplants is about 
10,000 per year. But we can easily surpass the official Chinese figure just by 
looking at the 2 or 3 biggest hospitals," Matas said in a statement.

The report estimates that 60,000 to 100,000 organs are transplanted each year 
in Chinese hospitals.

According to the report, the tens of thousands of organ transplants not 
reported by the government, are sourced from executed prisoners of conscience 
who were locked up for their religious or political beliefs.

"That increased discrepancy leads us to conclude that there has been a far 
larger slaughter of practitioners of Falun Gong for their organs than we had 
originally estimated," the report read.

"The ultimate conclusion is that the Chinese Communist Party has engaged the 
state in the mass killings of innocents, primarily practitioners of the 
spiritually based set of exercises, Falun Gong, but also Uyghurs, Tibetans, and 
select House Christians, in order to obtain organs for transplants."

The authors claim that detained Falun Gong practitioners were forced to undergo 
medical tests before their results were put on a database of living organ 
sources so quick organ matches could be made.

Mr Gutmann said organ harvesting in China dated back almost 20 years when Falun 
Gong - a spiritual movement based on Chinese traditions - gained momentum.

"The Chinese Communist Party, alarmed at the growth of the (Falun Gong) 
movement and fearing for its own ideological supremacy banned the movement in 
1999," Mr Gutmann said.

"Falun Gong practitioners were arrested in the hundreds of thousands and asked 
to recant. If they did not, they were tortured.

"If they still did not recant, they disappeared. Allegations surfaced in 2006 
that the disappeared were being killed for their organs which were sold for 
large sums mostly to foreign transplant tourists. It is generally accepted that 
China kills prisoners for organs."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China has "strict laws 
and regulations on this issue."

"As for the testimony and the published report, I want to say that such stories 
about forced organ harvesting in China are imaginary and baseless - they don't 
have any factual foundation," she said at a press conference on Thursday.

The National Health and Family Planning Commission, which oversees organ 
donations in China, could not be contacted for comment.

In 2005, Chinese officials admitted they harvested organs from prisoners and 
promised to reform the practice.

5 years later, director of the China Organ Donation Committee, Huang Jiefu, 
told medical journal The Lancet that more than 90 % of transplant organs were 
still sourced from executed prisoners.

In 2014, China announced that it would end the harvesting of organs from 
executed prisoners and move to a voluntary donation-based system.

But according to several reports, the controversial practice is far from 
abolished.

The Chinese Government has repeatedly refused to reveal how many people it 
executes each year.

China was named the world's biggest executioner in Amnesty International's 
Death Sentences and Executions 2015 report.

In releasing the annual report in April this year, the human rights group said 
it was impossible to obtain an exact figure on the number of people China has 
executed, but it is believed the figure is in the thousands, and is more than 
all the other countries in the world combined.

China was also named as the world's top executioner in 2014, with Amnesty 
estimating it was at least 1000 - a conservative figure, and one it believes is 
much higher.

However this year's report did note, there are indications that the number of 
executions has decreased since the Supreme People's Court began reviewing the 
implementation of the death penalty in 2007.

According to Amnesty International, "tens of thousands of Falun Gong 
practitioners have been arbitrarily detained" since the government launched a 
crackdown on the practice in 1999.

(source: news.com.au)






PAKISTAN:

3 get death in blasphemy, extortion case


The Anti-Terrorism Court No-2 sentenced three accused to death in 
blasphemy-cum- extortion case here on Monday.

According to FIR got registered by the Satellite Town Police on May 15, 2015, 
accused Anjum Naz made derogatory remarks in respect of the Holy Prophet during 
a speech at a school.

His friends - Javed Naz and Jafer Ali, however, recorded the remarks.

Later Jafer Ali started extorting money from Anjum Naz, threatening him that he 
will leak his speech to public.

Seeing the increase in the demand for money from Jafer, Anjum contacted the 
Satellite Town Police and apprised the police of the matter.

At which the police registered a case against all the three friends under 
blasphemy and extortion sections.

Upon completion the hearing and testifying evidence and statements of the 
accused and witnesses, ATC Judge Bushra Zaman pronounced verdict on the case, 
handing down death penalty to all the 3 accused.

The court also fined Anjum Naz Rs0.

5 million and awarded death penalty with life imprisonment and Rs0.

7 million fine to Javed Naz and Jafer Ali.

(source: The Nation)






INDONESIA:

Clock Ticks as Indonesian Execution Spree Looms


Hope and Hypocrisy: Despite fighting for the freedom of hundreds of its own 
citizens facing the death penalty abroad, Indonesia looks set to carry out a 
spate of executions of foreign nationals. Can international and local activists 
force the populist Jokowi administration to change its course?

16 executions are expected to soon take place in Indonesia, and most of the 
people are foreigners convicted of drug crimes.

Phelim Kine, deputy director of Human Rights Watch's Asia division, says 
Indonesia's "tragically misguided and wrongheaded" policy could see more than 
40 people executed by the end of 2017.

"We are greatly concerned because the Indonesian government has made it clear 
that as soon as Ramadan is over, in early July, they will begin executions 
again," Kine told The News Lens International.

Indonesia had a de-facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty until 2013, 
and human rights activists blame President Joko Widodo (often referred to as 
Jokowi) and his "War on Drugs" for restarting capital punishment.

"What we've seen since Jokowi took office in late 2014, is he has made the 
execution of convicted drug traffickers a signature policy issue," Kine says. 
"He refers to this as 'shock therapy' for what he perceives as an emergency 
facing Indonesia."

Diplomatic backlash or backlash to diplomacy?

Indonesia faced intense international criticism last year after it carried out 
14 executions; ambassadors left Jakarta in protest and Brazil refused the 
credentials of an incoming Indonesian ambassador.

Nithin Coca, a freelance writer and social activist, says only in the case of 
Mary Jane Veloso - the Filipino woman who escaped execution at the 11th hour 
last year - did international lobbying efforts make a "discernable impact."

"I don't think the current administration cares that much what the 
international perception of their policies are," says Coca, who shares his time 
between the U.S. and Indonesia. "I think [international lobbying] had a reverse 
impact, domestically at least."

Amid criticism, "especially from Australia,' Indonesians "became more 
nationalistic and more pro-death penalty than they would have had there been no 
international outcry," he says.

Further, he suggests that Indonesians are "very cognizant of hypocrisy" - 
Indonesians are executed in other countries with worse capital punishment 
records each year, but "the world doesn't care."

"There is this idea, because they are westerners [facing execution], now all of 
a sudden you care. But if it is an Indonesian or someone else from a developing 
country, you don???t really care."

Kine says although there is a perception that international pressure doesn't 
work, the criticism last year has "stung the Indonesian government."

"The biggest blowback, and the greatest pressure that the Jokowi administration 
has had, has been from close bilateral partners whose citizens have been 
executed despite strenuous diplomatic efforts to commute those death 
sentences," he says.

"After the peak of that pressure in March-April, 2015, when that last spree of 
executions occurred, the government paused and went silent on this death 
penalty issue. It has only been in recent weeks where it has suddenly 
reemerged."

Indonesia announced earlier this month it was ramping up efforts to provide 
legal aid and gain clemency for the more than 200 Indonesian nationals 
currently facing the death penalty abroad - most are in Malaysia. The Jakarta 
Post quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir as saying that 285 
Indonesians facing capital punishment overseas had been spared the death 
penalty in the past 5 years.

Coca says there is a "strange dichotomy" in Indonesia: one arm of the 
government is fighting for leniency for Indonesians facing the death penalty 
offshore, while domestically the government is executing people.

In Indonesia, "oftentimes you see this where one ministry is doing one thing, 
and another ministry is doing something else, and they are not really talking 
to each other," he says.

The result is that domestic capital punishment policy is putting the government 
"in a tougher position to protect its workers abroad," Coca says.

Kine notes that the Indonesian government expends significant financial 
resources to prevent Indonesian nationals on death row overseas from being 
executed.

"There is a horrific element of hypocrisy in the Indonesian government's 
embrace of the death penalty," he says. "The Indonesian government has gone so 
far, in some Gulf states, to provide 'blood money' to the families of the 
victims of Indonesian citizens who have been convicted of murder in order to 
save those Indonesian citizens from the death penalty."

While there is "hope" that the government will realize that "just as no 
Indonesian citizens should have to face the death penalty overseas, nor should 
anyone have to face the death penalty in Indonesia," Kine says, human rights 
organizations have their "work cut out."

"The latest announcements from the Indonesian government of a looming spree of 
executions indicate that the government is adamant that the death penalty will 
stay," he says.

The key to change

Coca suggests local Indonesian activists could hold the key to changing the 
government's policy.

"There are a lot of local civil society advocates, especially in the human 
rights community and those who work on Indonesia migrant worker issues abroad, 
who see the direct connection between how these executions can make their work 
protecting workers abroad more difficult," he says. "The real possibility for 
change really comes from them."

According to Coca, some local activists do have "good connections" in 
government - he says on the day prior Veloso being taken off the immediate 
execution list, local advocates met directly with President Widodo.

"If local civil society and local organizers and activists can make a strong 
case and get attention and tell the story, that could make a discernable change 
in the government's policy," he says. "The question is, 'is the government 
going to listen to them?'"

Coca says others in the Jokowi administration may be pushing the use of capital 
punishment, rather than the president himself. According to Coca's local 
sources, the president is "either acquiescing or giving his tacit approval, but 
he's not the one forcefully pushing this policy."

Kine and Coca acknowledge, however, local opposition to the death penalty is 
not widespread.

"There are courageous voices within Indonesia???s civil society, who speak out 
against the death penalty," Kine says. "They tend to be lonely voices, at a 
time when, across a number of issues in Indonesia, there is a nationalist 
surge."

Coca similarly says while civil society in Indonesia is "very active, brave and 
they are willing to speak truth to power, they "only represent a very educated 
niche of society."

Nationalism and the 'War on Drugs'

Using the death penalty on foreign nationals involved in drug trafficking 
appears to be popular among the electorate and is being used by politicians 
riding a wave of patriotism across the archipelago.

Coca says there has been renewed nationalism in Indonesia under the Jokowi 
administration. He points to Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia's minister of Maritime 
Affairs and Fisheries, who has been promoting an aggressive defense of 
Indonesia's maritime territory.

"She's incredibly popular," Coca says. "She's probably the most popular 
politician in the country right now."

Pudjiastuti's confrontational rhetoric, Coca says, is "more for PR and more for 
show" than a sign of effective policy. Capital punishment in the so-called 'War 
on Drugs' is used similarly to portray an "image of power."

"The executions are not going to help actually stop the drug problem; they are 
really a show of force to demonstrate the government is doing something," he 
says.

Polls and surveys show a large number of Indonesians favor the death penalty, 
Kine says.

"You could debate why that is the case, but the fact is that reflex pursuit of 
some kind of 'justice' through the death penalty is not based on the facts, 
science and international law," he says.

12 of the 14 drug offenders last executed in Indonesia were foreigners. This 
February, Widodo said drug abuse "tops the list" of Indonesia's major problems.

Coca says the statement was "ridiculous," considering the country has 
challenges across electricity and infrastructure, education and literacy, and 
the environment, among others.

"To say 'it is drugs' is diverting the attention from the real problems and 
focusing on something that is easier for people to understand," Coca says, 
adding that it is concerning to see the military playing a bigger role in the 
so-called war.

He says that Indonesia appears to be "following the same dangerous path" as the 
failed drug policy in the U.S. - "mass incarceration and very police- and 
military-heavy."

"The world has come to the conclusion that this is not working. Indonesia 
should not have to follow the same mistakes."

Kine says while "there is absolutely no proven deterrent effect for the death 
penalty," Widodo appears confident executing large numbers of traffickers will 
make an impact on illegal drug use and trafficking in Indonesia.

"He seems to believe that executing drug traffickers is going to make a 
difference in the drug problem in Indonesia, despite the fact there is no 
evidence and in fact scholarship indicates that it will do nothing," Kine says.

Kine also says Indonesia's policy breaches international law - the death 
penalty is reserved for the most serious crimes that are lethal in nature.

"The United Nations has made clear that drug trafficking just doesn't meet that 
criteria," he says.

(source: The News Lens International)