Malaysia: Expanded penalty condemned

Malaysian human rights activists have condemned the reported expansion of the death penalty for terrorism offences.

Malaysians Against Death Penalty and Torture (MADPET) said in a statement on 20 March it was "shocked and disappointed" at the new offence, which applies a mandatory death sentence for terrorist acts that cause death.

A second offence applies the death penalty to people convicted of giving financial aid to terrorists.

The new laws reportedly came into effect on 6 March, one day after they were gazetted by Minister in the Prime Minister's Department Datuk Seri Mohamed Nazri Aziz.

MADPET said, however, Minister Aziz was reported in 2006 as saying: "For me, a life is a life. No one has the right to take someone else's life, even if that person has taken another life..."

The wrong direction
The organisation said the death penalty was an unsafe and unnecessary response to serious crime.

"It is not possible in any system of human justice to prevent the horrifying possibility of the execution of innocent persons; and the infliction of the death penalty makes wrongful convictions irreversible.

"In an age, when it is possible to isolate persons guilty of the most heinous of crimes from society by the imposition of life imprisonment, there can be no more justification for the usage of the death penalty," it said.

The statement said 128 countries had abolished the death penalty in law or practice, compared to the 69 countries that retain and use it.

"It is ironic that at a time when the nations of the world are rapidly moving towards abolition of the death penalty, Malaysia is once again unnecessarily and imprudently extending the range of capital offences," MADPET said.

Calls for abolition
The organisation pointed out that a Malaysian television poll conducted last year showed 64% in favour of abolishing the death penalty.

The poll was conducted on 7 May 2006, during the Hello on Two programme, which "has an estimated audience of 80,000".

In March 2006, the country's peak legal organisation the Malaysia Bar passed a resolution calling for an end to the death penalty and for all death sentences to be commuted.

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Renewed debate on death penalty in Malaysia -- 23 March, 2006
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