[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

January 21




UKRAINE:

Ukraine Liashko supports return of death penalty to Ukraine



Leader of the Radical Party Oleh Liashko supports the introduction in Ukraine 
of the death penalty for corruption, high treason and terrorism.

“For this extraordinary period in which we live, Ukraine has every right to 
protect our future, to protect every Ukrainian, to protect us all and future 
generations, we have the right to impose the death penalty for corruption, for 
treason and terrorism as an exception. I will bring the death penalty for 
corruption to a referendum,” the politician said at the XXII Congress of the 
Radical Party headed by him, which takes place in Kyiv on Monday and will 
consider the nomination of Liashko as a presidential candidate.

The politician said that if he is elected to this post, he will come up with an 
initiative to reduce the number of deputies from 400 to 250.

“I will suggest eliminating the post of Prime Minister of Ukraine. Today, the 
president, the government and the parliament are like Krylov’s swan, cancer and 
pike … I propose that the president, who is elected by the people at the 
elections, should head the executive branch of power,” the leader of the 
Radical Party said.

Liashko also said that he has a plan for economic recovery, which will increase 
the population in the country.

In addition, he stressed that his program is aimed at overcoming poverty in the 
country.

In the early presidential election in 2014, 8.32 percent of voters voted for 
Liashko (3rd place after Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko).

(source: Kyiv Post)








INDONESIA:

Saws and sarongs: French drugs suspect escapes Indonesian jail



An accused French drug trafficker has broken out of an Indonesian jail by 
sawing through bars on a second floor window and rappelling to freedom with a 
sarong, police said Monday (Jan 21), as they launched a manhunt to find the 
fugitive.

Felix Dorfin's daring escape happened Sunday evening at a police detention 
centre on Lombok island, where the 35-year-old was awaiting trial in a possible 
death penalty case.

"He escaped through the window on the 2nd floor in the detention centre and, 
using a sarong and curtains which were tied together, he climbed down and then 
escaped," West Nusa Tenggara police spokesman I Komang Suartana told AFP.

Police believe Dorfin is still on Lombok and have deployed officers to scour 
the island to search for him, Suartana added.

The Frenchman was arrested in September allegedly carrying a false-bottomed 
suitcase filled with 4kg of drugs - including cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines 
- at the airport on the holiday island next to Bali.

It was not clear whether prosecutors would seek Dorfin's execution if he was 
convicted, but Indonesia has some of the world's strictest drug laws - 
including death penalty sentences for some traffickers.

Indonesia has executed several foreign drug smugglers in the past including 
Australians Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, who were ringleaders of the 
notorious Bali 9 heroin smuggling gang and faced the firing squad in 2015.

Serge Atlaoui, a convicted French drug smuggler, has been on death row since 
2007.

Jailbreaks are also common in Indonesia, where inmates are often held in 
unsanitary conditions at overcrowded and poorly guarded prisons.

In 2017, 4 foreign inmates tunnelled their way out of a Bali prison.

3 of the fugitives were captured a few days later, while the 4th - an 
Australian - is still on the run.

(source: channelnewsasia.com)








INDIA:

1 in every 3 under-trial prisoners in India is either SC or ST: Study----The 
report also finds that certain states have strikingly higher levels of 
disparity between the percentage of SC/STs in their total population and in 
their prisons



Members of the Scheduled Castes (SC) and Scheduled Tribes (ST) are 
over-represented, in relation to their population, in India’s prisons, a new 
study has found. While the groups account for 24% of India’s population, their 
representation in prisons is significantly higher, at 34%.

The report titled ‘Criminal Justice in the Shadow of Caste’ has been prepared 
jointly by the National Dalit Movement for Justice and the National Centre for 
Dalit Human Rights. It draws heavily from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) 
data.

The report also finds that certain states have strikingly higher levels of 
disparity between the percentage of SC/STs in their total population and in 
their prisons. It says that Assam, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Rajasthan as the 
worst performers. In Tamil Nadu, for instance, the difference is as high as 
17%. As many as 38% of under-trials in Tamil Nadu are either SC or ST, while 
their share in the total population is 21%.

“These facts together point to a pattern of targeting Dalit and Adivasis and 
call for investigation of factors leading to the continued victimization of the 
community by the Police and further victimization as under trials,” the report 
said.

It also notes that when members of the Dalit or Adivasi communities register 
atrocity complaints, the accused often register counter FIRs against the 
victims. “This is done with the sole intention of counter blasting the 
complaint filed by the SC victims. As a result of the counter cases, SC victims 
of atrocities are being arrested and subjected to criminal litigation as 
accused in the counter cases,” the report said.

This is the kind of misuse that the Supreme Court said the SC/ST (Prevention of 
Atrocities) Act was subject to, and based on which it decided to dilute the Act 
in March last year.

The 2015 NCRB report noted that Dalits, Adivasis and Muslims constitute 55% of 
the undertrial prisoners in India. This figure is considerably disproportionate 
to their total share of the population. According to the 2011 Census, the three 
communities constitute 39% of the total population in India.

The report on criminal justice also pointed out that a disproportionately high 
percentage of those sentenced to death are from the backward classes. The 
analysis, based on the Death Penalty India Report by the National Law 
University launched in 2016, found that of the 279 prisoners on death row, 127 
or 34% are from the backward classes. Those from the general category 
constitute 24%.

Another 20% of those sentenced to death belonged to religious minorities. That 
figure climbed to 79% in Gujarat, where 15 of the 19 prisoners sentenced to 
death were Muslims.

According to the report, ‘deeply entrenched prejudices’ play a crucial role in 
the harassment and incarceration of underprivileged communities. “Usually the 
victims of police torture are mainly Dalit’s and Adivasis. They are often 
picked up and jailed on concocted charges,” it said.

The report also highlighted that delayed police investigations result in large 
number of Dalits and Adivasis in jail. “Many prisoners languish in prisons 
because the police do not complete investigation and file the chargesheet on 
time. This is a very serious matter because such people remain in prisons 
without any clue of a police case against them.”

(source: business-standard.com)








MALAYSIA:

Death penalty opponents have no humanity, says Hadi



In his harshest condemnation yet of the move to abolish the death penalty, PAS 
president Datuk Seri Abdul Hadi Awang declared that its supporters lack 
humanity.

In a lengthy statement today, he said Islam upheld the practice of Qisas 
(retaliatory) punishment for crimes, including that of murder.

“The priority to preserve human life is a living principle to which even 
dietary laws are rendered secondary, permitting the consumption of prohibited 
foods rather than death by starvation,” Hadi said.

He said that according to Islamic teachings, the death penalty meted out to 
criminals gives life, as it saves the lives of countless others by eliminating 
said criminals who could have gone on to become a disease upon society.

“Those who (hold on to) the theory of abolishing the death penalty are in the 
wrong, disbelieving in God and lack all humanity,” Hadi said.

He called upon Malaysians to make every effort to fight the abolition of the 
death penalty, encouraging them to stand up against its supporters, whom he 
called fools who think themselves better because they are Western-educated even 
as the West is in the continuous throes of crime.

“The so-called anti-terrorism influence of the West, disguised with the agenda 
of abolishing the death penalty for the most severe crimes, has successfully 
influenced some of the rakyat.

“They who uphold such thoughts consider themselves most intelligent, aping the 
mindset of the supposedly advanced West, but have lost their humanity up to the 
extent of fighting for terrorists’ basic rights without regard for the true 
human costs of the victims and their families who deserve sympathy,” he said.

In October last year, Hadi urged the government to review the move to abolish 
the death penalty thoroughly, with fairness and transparency.

Similar sentiments were echoed by then-MCA deputy president Datuk Seri Wee Ka 
Siong, who said a Parliamentary Select Committee should be established to 
review the proposed abolishment.

De facto Law Minister Datuk Liew Vui Keong said last month that the Bill to 
abolish the mandatory death penalty was expected to be tabled at the next Dewan 
Rakyat sitting.

He said the Attorney General’s Chambers was currently in the final stage of 
preparing the legislative papers for the purpose.

According to the Parliament website, the next Dewan Rakyat sitting is scheduled 
for March 11 to April 11 next year.

Prior to this, Liew announced that the Cabinet had decided that the death 
penalty for 33 offences under eight Acts of law would be abolished, including 
Section 302 of the Penal Code (murder).

He had said that the decision, achieved collectively on October 10, would 
include the Firearms (Heavier Penalties) Act 1971, Firearms Act 1960, 
Kidnapping Act 1961, Armed Forces Act 1972, Water Services Industries Act 2006, 
Strategic Trade Act 2010 and Dangerous Drugs Act 1952.

(source: malaymail.com)








SAUDI ARABIA:

Saudi human rights activist Ali Adubisi agitates from Berlin



Since fleeing to Germany, Ali Adubisi has been campaigning for human rights in 
Saudi Arabia. Now he and his organization have published a report on the death 
penalty in his home country.

Israa Al-Ghomgham is still facing the death penalty. The Saudi women's rights 
activist was arrested in December 2015. She was denied access to a lawyer and 
spent 32 months in prison without being brought before a court. Al-Ghomgham is 
accused of participating in riots in the predominantly Shiite province of 
al-Qatif in eastern Saudi Arabia.

According to the indictment, she is charged with inciting the demonstrators as 
well as instigating protest songs, filming the demonstrations and posting the 
videos online. For these and other actions, the Saudi state prosecutor called 
for the death penalty at the start of her trial in August 2018. Al-Ghomgham did 
not appear in court on the 2nd day of her trial, 3 months later, and this has 
raised concerns among her supporters about her physical and mental health.

The case of the Saudi human rights activist is also mentioned in a document on 
Saudi Arabia and the death penalty published last week by the Berlin-based 
European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR).

Israa Al-Ghomgham is not the first woman to face the death penalty, says Ali 
Adubisi, the founder and director of ESOHR. Some women have already been 
executed: Tuti Tursilawati, for example, a young Indonesian woman born in 1984 
who was working as a maid in Saudi Arabia. According to a report by the human 
rights organization Migrant-Rights.org, her employer began subjecting her to 
sexual abuse in 2009. During one such attack in March 2010 she stabbed her 
rapist, and he died. Tursilawati was sentenced to death and executed in October 
2018.

Ali Adubisi says it's deliberate policy to impose harsh sentences on women, 
especially women's rights activists who come to the attention of the courts. 
"Women are increasingly fighting for power in Saudi Arabia," he explains. 
"That's too much for the conservative hardliners — they don't like it. They 
don't want to allow women to claim any more freedom, and they signal this to 
women via the judiciary."

Escape from Saudi Arabia

Ali Adubisi, who comes from the al-Qatif region, has had experiences of his own 
with the Saudi judiciary. He was arrested for the first time in the spring of 
2011. Police officers stopped him for a traffic check; they found politically 
and culturally undesirable brochures in his car, in particular texts relating 
to human rights. They were not deemed criminally relevant, so he was released 
from prison after 3 days.

In September of the same year he was arrested a further time — again because he 
was found in possession of "undesirable" literature. This time his detention 
lasted four months, during which, as he describes it in his resume, he was 
vilified, insulted and abused. He was slapped, kicked, left standing for hours 
blindfolded and with his hands in the air, and was exposed to extreme changes 
in temperature in his cell, he says. Altogether, he was detained for more than 
260 days without any reason or legal justification being provided. He spent 
seven weeks in solitary confinement. In March 2013, when the authorities began 
to show an interest in him once again, Adubisi and his family left the country.

'Happy to be here'

After his escape he came to Germany, where he has been campaigning ever since 
for politically persecuted people in Saudi Arabia. To this end, he founded the 
European Saudi Organization for Human Rights (ESOHR). "I'm happy to be here," 
says Adubisi, "because here I can work freely and in safety."

His organization regularly publishes studies on the human rights situation in 
Saudi Arabia — like last week's report on the death penalty. Adubisi draws on a 
network of informants in his old home country for his work: "There are a lot of 
people there who collect and pass on the relevant information," he says.

The report on the death penalty also refers to official Saudi sources. The 
Saudi authorities regularly inform the public about death sentences that have 
been carried out. "These announcements also serve to intimidate the 
population," says Adubisi.

ESOHR recorded 146 executions in Saudi Arabia in 2017, which corresponds to the 
findings of Amnesty International. According to ESOHR, 149 people were executed 
in 2018. Adubisi says there is also a low single-digit number of unreported 
cases. Most of the victims were executed for violations of criminal law, but 
they also include political or sectarian activists, such as Shite cleric Nimr 
al-Nimr, a non-violent activist who was executed in 2016.

In Germany, Adubisi says, he is not afraid. However, he does find the murder of 
the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggiat the Saudi consulate in Istanbul last 
October very worrying. It has caused unrest among many dissidents, he says, not 
just in Turkey. It makes Adubisi all the more determined to fight for human 
rights in Saudi Arabia: "I owe that to many of my fellow citizens," he says.

(source: Deutsche Welle)