[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

May 27




VIETNAM:

Man indicted for murder of Vietnamese girl


Prosecutors indicted a man Friday for murdering a 9-year-old Vietnamese girl 
who attended an elementary school east of Tokyo where he was head of the 
parents' association.

The 46-year-old suspect, Yasumasa Shibuya, was also indicted on other charges 
including abandoning the body of Le Thi Nhat Linh, a third grader at the school 
in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, who went missing on March 24. Her body was found 
2 days later.

The identity of the girl was previously withheld because police suspect she was 
a victim of sexual assault, but her name is now being reported in accordance 
with her father's wish.

Shibuya, who was head of the parents' group at the time of the girl's 
disappearance, will be tried under the lay judge system. He has refused to 
speak about the case during questioning, investigative sources said.

The prosecutors decided to indict Shibuya based on evidence including a DNA 
sample taken from the victim's body that matched Shibuya and hair found in the 
suspect's car matched the victim's DNA.

Following the indictment, Le Anh Hao, the 34-year-old father of the girl, told 
reporters at his home in Matsudo that he "cannot forgive the perpetrator."

"I want the culprit never to forget that he killed my daughter, not just 'a 
girl,'" he said, asking media to use her name when reporting on the case. After 
Shibuya's arrest, Hao had requested that media not state his daughter's name.

Hao said he hopes to be present during the trial and that the death penalty 
will be imposed if Shibuya is convicted.

The girl is believed to have been strangled to death, given marks on her neck. 
She disappeared shortly after leaving home to walk to school on the morning of 
March 24.

Shibuya, who lives about 300 meters from the victim's home and is accused of 
abducting her by car, was initially arrested on April 14 on suspicion of 
abandoning her body near a drainage ditch in Abiko, Chiba. On May 5, he was 
served with a fresh arrest warrant on charges including murder.

Autopsy results suggest that the girl was likely murdered not long after her 
abduction.

(source: Japan Today)






GAZA:

Human Rights Watch opposes : The executions in Gaza not the rule of law


In response to the execution today of three men convicted of charges related to 
the killing of Hamas leader Mazen Fuqaha, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive 
director of the Middle East division of Human Rights Watch, said:

"Rushing to put men to death based on an unreviewable decision of a special 
military court days after announcing their arrests and airing videoed 
confessions smacks of militia rule, not the rule of law. Reliance on 
confessions, in a system where coercion, torture and deprivation of detainee's 
rights are prevalent, and other apparent due process violations further taint 
the court's verdicts. Death as government-sanctioned punishment is inherently 
cruel and always wrong, no matter the circumstance."

Since it took control of Gaza in 2007, Hamas authorities have carried out 25 
executions, most recently in April, and courts in Gaza have sentenced 111 
people to death, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.

Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances, because it 
is inherently cruel and irreversible.

(source: Palestine News Network)






IRAN----executions

3 Prisoners Hanged on Murder Charges


2 prisoners were reportedly hanged at Mashhad's Vakilabad Prison (Razavi 
Khorasan province, northeastern Iran) on Tuesday May 23 on murder charges. On 
the same day, prisoner was reportedly hanged at Zahedan Central Prison on 
murder charges.

The state-run newspaper, Khorasan, identifies one of the prisoners from 
Vakilabad Prison as H.N., 42 years of age, imprisoned for 17 years before his 
execution. According to the Khorasan newspaper, there was no evidence or 
confessions in the prisoner's case file, the prisoner was sentenced to death 
based on the testimonies of 50 relatives belonging to the murder victim. The 
report says that the prisoner claimed to be innocent throughout the entire 
imprisonment.

The report identifies the other prisoner from Vakilabad Prison as A.Kh., a 
34-year-old prisoner who was arrested in 2009 during a street fight at an 
intersection in the town of Sabzevar (Razavi Khorasan province).

The Baluch Activists Campaign reported on the execution at Zahedan Central 
Prison. The report identifies the prisoner as Abdolkarim Shahnavazi, 30 years 
of age. Prior to his execution, Abdolkarim and two other prisoners, identified 
as Habib Golbeigi and Saeed Hoot, were transferred to soliatry confinement in 
preparation for their executions. According to the report, Saeed's execution 
sentence was postponed by the complainants on his case file, and he was 
returned to his cell. The fate of Habib is not known at this time.

(source: Iran Human Rights)






GLOBAL:

Countries Using Child Rights to Justify Executions for Drug Offences


International child rights are being used by some countries to justify the 
execution of people for drug offences, despite this practice being illegal 
under international law.

The UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), adopted in 1989, 
stipulates that "governments must protect children from the illegal use of 
drugs and from being involved in the production or distribution of drugs", and 
has been ratified by every UN member state apart from the United States. 
Additionally, the International Labour Organisation's (ILO) Worst Forms of 
Child Labour Convention - internationally adopted in 1999 - states that 
governments must "take immediate and effective measures to [prohibit and 
eliminate] ... the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit 
activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs"

Every state party to these conventions must regularly report on their 
implementation: every 5 years to the Committee on the Rights of the Child ("CRC 
Committee") and every 2 years to the ILO Committee of Experts on the 
Application of Conventions and Recommendations ("ILO Committee").

During this reporting process, several countries regularly detail their use of 
the death penalty for drug offences as part of their fulfilment of their 
Convention obligations.

In a report published by the Human Rights Law Review in April 2017, Damon 
Barrett - the Director of the International Centre on Human Rights and Drug 
Policy - writes that neither Committee has challenged this practice. Rather, 
both have - on occasion - seemed to encourage such behaviour.

Authorities in Egypt, Bahrain, Sudan, Singapore, and Guyana have all detailed 
their respective country's use of the death penalty under the pretence of the 
CRC, yet the CRC Committee has failed to challenge any of them on this point. 
Similarly, whilst Iran did not mention the death penalty specifically in the 
reporting process, its initial report to the CRC Committee stated that, in the 
context of drug control, it applied "the severest punishment stipulated in law 
... for cases involving the exploitation of children".

Iran is one of the world's most prolific users of the death penalty, 2nd only 
to China. In 2015 alone, Iran executed at least 977 people, the majority of 
whom were killed for drug offences. Given this repressive record, the CRC 
Committee's failure to question the meaning of "severest punishment" is 
suggestive of its acquiescence to the implementation of the death penalty for 
drug offences.

Barrett warns that "unless these laws and policies are challenged by the 
Committees, there is the risk that [states] have been provided with a clean 
'bill of health' by human rights monitors or, put another way, that child 
rights mechanisms demonstrate a structural bias towards the repressive status 
quo".

A similar attitude of passivity has been adopted by the ILO Committee; in some 
instances, it could be seen to extend beyond passivity and into the realm of 
active support. In 2006, the ILO Committee noted that Section 347 of China's 
Criminal Law provided "sufficiently effective and dissuasive penalties for the 
use, procuring or offering of a child for the production and trafficking of 
drugs". Section 347 includes the option of the death penalty for drug 
trafficking or production, and makes the use of a minor an aggravating factor.

In his report, Barrett points out that addressing the issue of the death 
penalty for drug offences is well within the remit of these Committees. The CRC 
Committee, he notes, frequently makes recommendations that relate to adults, 
due to their direct or indirect effects on children's lives.

The failure of the Committees in this respect is illustrative of the 
international legal communitys disjointed approach to human rights; rather than 
complementing and supporting one another, these human rights instruments seem 
to be operating in isolation. The periodic reporting processes with the 
Committees, which are meant to facilitate a "constructive dialogue", have been 
ineffective at reducing the death penalty for drug offences - a major human 
rights issue.

The 2016 UN General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on the World Drug Problem 
offered a glimmer of hope for human rights advocates when the CRC Committee 
signed an open letter stating that "the negative impact of repressive drug 
policies on children's health and their healthy development often outweighs the 
protective element behind [punitive drug] policies".

If the CRC and the ILO Committees are able to translate such an understanding 
into their implementation of the Conventions, then they may be able to improve 
the human rights consequences of many countries' drug policies, and reduce the 
misappropriation of child rights as an excuse for capital punishment.

(source: talkingdrugs.org)