An Iranian girl, Atefeh Rajabi, was just 16 years old when she was hanged for “acts incompatible with chastity”. According to reports, she was suffering from mental illness at the time of her “crime” and during her trial. She was not represented in court by a lawyer.
The Supreme Court upheld her sentence before she was publicly hanged in northern Iran in August 2004. The man accused in the same case was sentenced to 100 lashes and released after the sentence was carried out. Iran often claims it does not execute children.
An ugly reality worldwide
The death of Atefeh Rajabi was certainly one of the most shocking cases taken up in the past year by anti-death penalty campaigners. Yet the story of her trial and execution is consistent with the ugly reality of the death penalty throughout the world. There is widespread discrimination in its use, thousands of people are executed each year after unfair trials, and every execution is a brutal violation of the most basic human right - the right to life.
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In 2004 Amnesty International recorded nearly 3,800 executions in 25 countries. At least 7,400 people were sentenced to death in 64 countries. These figures are only the tip of the iceberg though, since many countries carry out executions under a shroud of secrecy.
There is a growing international consensus that the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment. The majority of the world’s countries have now abolished capital punishment in law or practice. Since 1990, more than 40 countries have abolished it for all crimes, including five in 2004 - Bhutan, Greece, Samoa, Senegal and Turkey.
The death penalty in Asia
Despite the global trend towards abolition, 16 countries in our region retain and use the death penalty, while Sri Lanka has reactivated its death penalty system. As well, the Asian region has the lowest rate of support for international agreements that aim to limit and ultimately abolish the death penalty.
Last year China executed at least 3,400 people and passed more than 6,000 death sentences. While a senior Chinese legislator estimated in March 2004 that the government executed “nearly 10,000” people each year, the true figure is impossible to confirm. The death penalty applies to a wide range of offences. Torture and ill-treatment are used to extract confessions and there is often political pressure and interference in the courts.
Vietnam is still ranked among the highest executing countries in the world, with at least 64 executions recorded in 2004, although the true figure is certainly higher. Singapore has executed more than 400 people since 1991, giving it the highest execution rate per head of population in the world.
Last year, India carried out its first execution since 1997, and Indonesia carried out its first in more than three years when it shot three foreign nationals for drug trafficking. There are worrying signs that both countries may execute more people in the coming months.
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Following the murders of a High Court judge and a police officer in November 2004, the Sri Lankan Government announced a return to the death penalty for rape, murder and narcotics dealings. Sri Lanka has not carried out an execution since 1976.
In addition to the widespread use of the death penalty in Asia, there are several emerging challenges - and opportunities - for the international campaign to abolish the death penalty.
China
By any measure, China executes more people than the rest of the world combined. There are serious flaws in a criminal justice system that sends so many people to the execution grounds.
On a more positive note, there is growing debate about the death penalty among China’s academics and legal community, and increasing information exchange with their peers outside the country. Amnesty International’s recent campaigns have helped encourage and inform this debate, exposing the reality of the death penalty in China, the state of human rights and failures in the rule of law. In 2004, Amnesty International members around the world sent information in Chinese to lawyers, academics and government officials across China.
The lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games is an opportunity to press for improvements in human rights in China, including the use of the death penalty. When Beijing was awarded the Games in 2001, Chinese and Olympic officials said human rights in China would improve as a result of hosting the Olympics. The human rights movement, and indeed the international Olympic movement, have three years to call for China to deliver on its promises.
Drugs: addicted to killing?
Governments across Asia are increasingly using the death penalty in response to drug trafficking. They claim that tough measures are needed to combat the drug trade and deter would-be traffickers. The chief of the Indonesian Police, General Da’i Bachtiar, said in August 2004 that the death penalty would “serve as a deterrent” and “show Indonesia’s seriousness in fighting the war on drugs”.
However, there is no convincing evidence that the death penalty deters drug traffickers more effectively than other punishments. Many people facing execution are relatively minor couriers or vulnerable drug addicts, while those who control and profit most from the trade evade arrest and punishment.
Indonesia has joined Malaysia, Singapore and China, which carry out executions each year under anti-drug laws, and there have been increases in drug-related death sentences and executions in Vietnam.
The human rights movement needs to find ways to engage in the debate across the region about responses to the drug trade and, in particular, to convince Asian governments and their people to consider alternatives to the death penalty that adequately address the trade in illicit drugs while respecting fundamental human rights.
Australia’s position
The arrests of several Australians for alleged drug smuggling in Bali, and the recent death sentences given to Australians in Singapore and Vietnam, have brought home to many Australians the reality of the death penalty in Asia.
The Australian Government has consistently asked for clemency for Australian citizens who receive the death penalty. However, Australia’s interest in the death penalty as a human rights issue should go much further than the question of whether Australians are spared execution. It should be encouraging its neighbours to restrict and abolish the death penalty, in line with its own policy and the growing international consensus that the death penalty is a cruel and inhuman punishment.
Australia conducts regular human rights dialogues with China, Vietnam and Iran, three of the world’s leading executioners. But the government has not shown how these dialogues have delivered practical steps to address the disturbing use of the death penalty in these countries.
The 2004 death penalty statistics are a grim reminder that state-sponsored executions continue unabated in neighbouring countries. More recently, new cases of Australians at risk of death sentences bring the inhumanity of the practice even closer to home. Which begs the question: “What, if anything, is Australia’s human rights strategy, and human rights dialogues with countries like China, doing to limit or abolish the death penalty?”