Lives cut short - the ugly reality of the death penalty

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?”