Explaining Southeast Asia’s Addiction to the Death Penalty

Source: The Diplomat (25 November 2020)

https://thediplomat.com/2020/11/explaining-southeast-asias-addiction-to-the-death-penalty/

On November 17, the United Nations General Assembly voted on a resolution calling for a moratorium on the use of capital punishment. It passed convincingly: a total of 120 nations voted for the resolution, which called for nations to restrict the use of the death penalty, with the aim of eventually eliminating it altogether.

One curious fact was that of the 10 nations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, only three – Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines – voted to support the resolution. Singapore and Brunei voted against it, while the remaining five nations – among them some of the region’s most eager users of the death penalty – abstained.

The U.N. vote indicates an increasingly widespread international consensus against the use of the death penalty. As the General Assembly stated in a December 2007 resolution, “there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty’s implementation is irreversible and irreparable.”

But the vote also highlighted Southeast Asia’s continuing use of – and defense of – capital punishment, despite the tireless efforts of the region’s death penalty abolitionists. To start with, it is no surprise to see Singapore sitting squarely in the “NO” column. Anyone who has descended into Singapore’s Changi Airport will be familiar with airlines’ chirpy reminder that Singapore imposes the death penalty for drug trafficking offenses. According to Amnesty International, Singapore is one of four countries known to have carried out executions for drug-related violations in recent years. The country reportedly has 50 people on death row who have exhausted all appeals.

Moreover, the city-state has been among the most forthright and confident defenders of the death penalty as a punishment for serious crimes. This was reflected in Singapore’s introduction of an amendment to the U.N. resolution that asserts the “sovereign right of all countries to develop their own legal systems, including determining appropriate legal penalties.” The amendment was adopted by a vote of failed to pass, but was also supported by 33 other countries, including by Brunei, Laos, and Vietnam.

Some of those nations that abstained from the vote also continue to hand down death sentences. Take Indonesia. While the country has not executed anyone since 2016, the organization Human Rights Watch (HRW) points out that it has approximately 274 people on death row, including 60 people who have been there for more than 10 years. In 2019, Indonesian courts handed down at least 80 death sentences in 2019, up from 48 in 2018.

Vietnam and Laos, two other nations that abstained on the U.N. vote, do not publicize statistics on the use of the death penalty. But according to HRW, Vietnam may have executed as many as 429 people between 2013 and 2016.

Even those Southeast Asian nations that supported the U.N. resolution are uncertain allies of abolition. One of them, Malaysia, holds approximately 1,324 people on death row. While the reformist government that was elected in 2018 pledged to ban capital punishment, this has since been watered down into a pledge that it will merely abolish the mandatory use of the death penalty – a step in the right direction, but a small one.

The Philippines banned the death penalty in 2006, but since taking office in 2016, President Rodrigo Duterte has on various occasions threatened to reintroduce it, particularly for drug-related crimes. Indeed, one could mount a case that Duterte has introduced a de facto form of capital punishment in his violent “war on drugs,” which by one estimate has killed more than 12,000 people – many innocent, all without trial – since 2016.

Curiously, the nation with possibly the best record on capital punishment is Cambodia, a country whose government is not otherwise known as a staunch defender of human rights. The country banned the death penalty prior to the arrival of a U.N. peacekeeping mission in 1992-93. Indeed, with Prime Minister Hun Sen having mostly subverted the democratic institutions introduced by the U.N. mission, the ban on the death penalty may well turn out to be its most lasting legacy.

What explains Southeast Asia’s addiction to the death penalty? On one level, the region’s governments continue to cling to an outmoded zero-tolerance mentality toward crime, despite the scant evidence that capital punishment is an effective deterrent to crime. As evidenced by the language of Singapore’s proposed amendment to the U.N. resolution, the issue has also teased out an anti-colonial reflex on the part of some Southeast Asian nations, for whom foreign criticism has caused them to dig in their heels.

Whatever the causes, the result of the latest U.N. vote suggests that it will be some time before Southeast Asian nations move toward full abolition of capital punishment.

Asian Nations Reject UN Vote Against Death Penalty

Source: Human Rights Watch (24 November 2020)

https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/11/25/asian-nations-reject-un-vote-against-death-penalty

(Bangkok) – Eleven countries from the Asia-Pacific region were among the small minority that voted against a United Nations resolution opposing the death penalty, Human Rights Watch said today. On November 17, 120 UN member states voted in favor of a resolution in the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly reiterating a call for a moratorium on the use of capital punishment. In December, the General Assembly plenary is expected to adopt the resolution, which shows the world’s rejection of this inherently cruel and irrevocable form of punishment.

Only 39 countries voted against the resolution. The 11 from the Asia-Pacific region were: Afghanistan, Brunei Darussalam, China, India, Japan, the Maldives, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, and Tonga.

“It’s no surprise the governments that voted against a death penalty moratorium include some of the most serious rights violators in the world,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The fact that 11 Asian and Pacific governments voted against the UN resolution, including many that still carry out executions, shows how far the region needs to go to develop justice systems that respect human rights.”

The countries voting in favor of the moratorium should urgently take necessary steps towards abolition of the death penalty, and should press the 39 countries that voted against the measure to place a moratorium on executions. Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances because of its inherent cruelty.

The UN member states’ call for a moratorium effectively neutralizes an amendment to the resolution that Singapore introduced on behalf of 33 countries – including many in Asia – that asserts the “sovereign right of all countries to develop their own legal systems, including determining appropriate legal penalties.”

The resolution went further than previous versions. For the first time, women were acknowledged as a group who are subject to the discriminatory application of the death penalty. Disadvantaged and minority groups were again recognized as disproportionately represented among death row inmates. The resolution raised concerns about the use of the death penalty against children, in particular the need to restrict the death penalty’s use when an individuals’ age cannot be determined.

Previous resolutions called for governments to be transparent about the death penalty by publishing information about the age, race, sex, and nationality of people on death row, including the numbers of people sentenced, awaiting executions, and those whose sentences were commuted on appeal. Asian governments that still use capital punishment have shown little transparency regarding death penalty statistics, Human Rights Watch said.

The seven General Assembly resolutions calling for a moratorium on executions adopted since 2007 demonstrate a growing global consensus against the death penalty. However, many people in Asia are still being put to death. At the end of 2019, at least 26,604 people were languishing on death row around the world. By the end of 2019, Pakistan had one of the world’s largest known death row populations. Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka also have swelling numbers of inmates on death row, while in Singapore there are reportedly 50 people on death row who have exhausted all appeals. In many of these countries, the death penalty is mandatory for a range of offenses, including non-violent drug offenses, despite calls from the UN special rapporteurs on summary executions and on torture that “executions for drug crimes amount to a violation of international law and are unlawful killings.”

It is largely accepted that China is the world’s largest executioner followed by Iran. Dui Hua, a nongovernmental organization that tracks China’s death penalty statistics, estimates that 84,000 executions occurred in China between 2002 to 2018, though the numbers appear to be declining significantly since a 2007 decision allowing the Supreme People’s Court to review all death sentences. The exact numbers of death sentences carried out in China are unknown and remain a state secret. It has not been possible to get accurate figures from North Korea, Vietnam, and Laos. Human Rights Watch has documented public executions in North Korea, especially in political prison camps (kwanliso). Despite executions being considered a state secret in Vietnam, the Ministry of Public Security reported in early 2017 that authorities executed 429 persons between 2013 and 2016.

Malaysia, which voted in favor of the moratorium, holds approximately 1,324 people on death row. In October 2018, the Malaysian government imposed a moratorium on executions and announced its intention to abolish the death penalty. In March 2019, however, it backtracked, announcing that it would maintain the death penalty but would merely end the mandatory application of the punishment. While the moratorium on executions appears to remain in place, the Malaysian government has yet to take steps to end the use of the mandatory death penalty.

Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam were among the 24 countries that abstained from voting. Indonesia, which has not executed anyone since 2016, has approximately 274 people awaiting execution, including 60 people who have been on death row for 10 years. At least 80 death sentences were handed down in 2019, a significant increase from the 48 handed down in 2018.

More than 15 Asia-Pacific countries voted in favor of the resolution. These included Sri Lanka and the Philippines, despite their moving in the opposite direction. Last year, the Sri Lankan government threatened to end its 43-year de facto moratorium, which the courts rejected. Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly threatened to reinstate the death penalty.

In its December 2007 resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty, the UN General Assembly stated that “there is no conclusive evidence of the death penalty’s deterrent value and that any miscarriage or failure of justice in the death penalty’s implementation is irreversible and irreparable.”

“The shocking number of people sitting on death row in Asia make the region an aberration in the global move towards abolition of the death penalty,” Robertson said. “UN member states that supported the moratorium should band together to put concerted pressure on countries to get rid of the death penalty and commute all death sentences.”

Saudi justice reform falls short as the death penalty is still inflicted on minors

Source: Asia News.it (30 October 2020)

http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Saudi-justice-reform-falls-short-as-the-death-penalty-is-still-inflicted-on-minors-51453.html

Riyadh (AsiaNews) – Saudi prosecutors continue to seek the death penalty in cases involving minors even though the practice was cancelled for crimes committed before the age of 18, Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports.

According to the human rights advocacy group, Saudi prosecutors recently called for the execution of eight people, accused of offences of opinion and protest-related crimes. In one case the accused was only nine at the time of the alleged crime.

Last April, King Salman issued a royal decree ending death sentences for crimes committed by minors, imposing instead a maximum sentence of 10 years in a juvenile detention facility. However, the decree has not yet taken effect, and rights groups warn that the death penalty is still in place.

Under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which Saudi Arabia has signed, the death penalty is outlawed for crimes committed by minors.

Overall, the Wahhabi kingdom has one of the worst human rights records in the world with violations committed mainly by its police and security forces.

Human Rights Watch recently obtained and analysed the charge sheets for two group trials that included the eight men in 2019.

Some of the crimes listed were allegedly committed when the defendants were aged 14 to 17. One of them, now 18, is charged for a nonviolent crime he allegedly committed when he was 9. All eight men have been in pretrial detention for up to two years.

“Saudi spin doctors are marketing judicial reforms as progress,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. But the reality is very different since “prosecutors appear to blatantly ignore them and carry on as usual”.

For Page, “If Saudi Arabia is serious about reforming its criminal justice system, it should start by banning the death penalty against alleged child offenders in all cases.”

In the case of the eight on trial, the prosecutor, who responds directly to the monarch, has levelled charges that do not resemble recognisable crimes, such as “seeking to destabilise the social fabric by participating in protests and funeral processions,” “chanting slogans hostile to the regime,” and “seeking to incite discord and division.”

All of the accused are from Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, where most of the country’s persecuted Shia minority live.

What is more, the new decree does not apply to qisas (retributive justice offences, usually for murder) or hudud crimes, serious crimes defined under the country’s interpretation of Islamic law that carry specific penalties.

Sources told HRW that two of the defendants, al-Nimr and al-Faraj, were denied legal counsel and tortured during questioning at the start of their detention.

Last year, Saudi Arabia executed 37 people in a mass execution. One of them was a minor at the time.