The writer is a Geneva-based researcher for the Third World Network
A woman paints a mural for Peace and Reconciliation in Colombia. Credit: UNMVC/Jennifer Moreno
GENEVA, Aug 9 2022 (IPS) – For the first time in its contemporary history, Colombia has a left-wing government. The presidency of Gustavo Petro, who took the reins August 8, marks a significant break from the political status quo. He also represents a stiff test for U.S. influence in Latin America.
Colombia is Washington’s most enduring ally in the region, and in recent years their relationship has been built around combatting the nation’s drug cartels. But despite major efforts to curb supply, Colombia remains a top source of cocaine for the United States.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) recently estimated that Colombia’s cocaine harvest hit a record high in 2020. On the back of new coca varieties (the base ingredient for cocaine) and better cultivation techniques, Colombia’s potential output reached 1,228 tonnes in 2020. This was triple the 2010 level and four times greater than in the early 1990s, when Pablo Escobar was at the height of his infamy.
Since launching its controversial ‘war on drugs’ in 1971, successive Republican and Democratic administrations have supplied more than $13 billion in military and economic aid to Colombia. To little avail.
According to a 2021 United States’ Drug Enforcement Agency report, over 90 percent of the cocaine seized in the U.S. originates from Colombia. The U.S. remains the biggest consumer market for Colombian cocaine.
Petro is among those who have denounced the U.S.’s counter-narcotics strategy as counterproductive. In particular, he’s taken aim at US-backed aerial fumigation campaigns to destroy coca fields.
He favours expanding crop substitution programs that provide credit, training and enhanced land rights to rural farmers. For Petro, tackling Colombia’s violent drug trade is bound up with the county’s historic land ownership inequality.
He has also been an ardent critic of Colombia’s free-trade agreement (FTA) with the U.S. for pushing farmers into coca production and for exacerbating Colombia’s over-reliance on fossil fuel and coffee exports.
At the same time, imports from America’s highly subsidized agricultural sector have displaced whole segments of Colombia’s agrarian economy, forcing thousands of farmers into coca production.
Petro’s election campaign called for “smart tariffs” to protect Colombia’s rural farmers from U.S. imports and, by extension, criminal activity. “The free trade agreement signed with the United States handed rural Colombia to the drug traffickers,” he told the Financial Times in May. What’s more, he noted that “agricultural production cannot be increased if we do not renegotiate the FTA.”
An ex-member of the M-19 guerrilla group, Colombia’s new president has vowed to tackle asymmetric trade relations in line with land reform and the drug trade. But he will likely face severe opposition from the armed forces, who themselves fought leftist guerrilla movements during Colombia’s 52-year civil conflict.
Further, the military have a longstanding role in the U.S.-led war on drugs. For his part, Petro has accused Colombia’s top brass of corruption and human rights abuses, even since the Government-Farc peace treaty of 2016.
Elsewhere, the President faces a divided congress and deep hostility from landowning elites. It will require skilful manoeuvring to unite a fractured country around his domestic policies. And even if Petro can generate sufficient national support around his policy aims, he would still need to convince the Biden administration to back-track on the U.S.’s ideological commitment to free trade.
So, what cards can Petro play?
His opening gambit is likely to be a financial argument. While cocaine overdoses claim far fewer lives than opioids, the fiscal costs associated with interceding cocaine into the U.S. are staggering.
Navy and Coast Guard seizures alone cost American taxpayers US$56 billion in 2020, to say nothing of land border expenditures. State funds are also used for cocaine-linked policing, incarcerations and medical treatment.
The current geopolitical landscape may also provide Petro with an unlikely Trump card. Given President Joe Biden’s condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he will be careful avoid pushing Colombia (which he has described as a security “linchpin”) into a closer embrace with Cuba and Venezuela, who are diplomatically aligned with the Kremlin.
To isolate Russia even further, Biden will likely soften America’s stance in renegotiating its FTA with Colombia.
Last month, senior representatives from the Biden administration met with Petro to discuss, among other things, the FTA. While the U.S. has taken tentative steps towards renegotiating the deal, Petro should be wary of a favourable result.
Over the past twenty-five years, an intricate web of government and military bureaucracy has been constructed around U.S.-Colombian counter-narcotics operations. It will be difficult to disentangle.
A group of alleged gang members is presented to the media by police authorities in El Salvador on Jul. 20 as a demonstration of the effectiveness of the war against gangs waged in this Central American country under a state of emergency. But families of detainees and human rights organizations warn that in many cases they have no links to criminal organizations. CREDIT: National Civil Police
SAN SALVADOR, Aug 5 2022 (IPS) – The body of Walter Sandoval shows a number of dark bruises on his arms and knees, as well as lacerations on his left eye and on his head – signs that he suffered some kind of violence before dying in a Salvadoran prison, accused of being a gang member.
The evidence of the beating is clear in photographs that Walter’s father, Saúl Sandoval, showed to IPS.
Walter, 32, was one of those who died in Salvadoran prisons after being detained by the authorities in the massive raids that the government of Nayib Bukele launched at the end of March, under the protection of the decreed state of emergency and the administration’s fight against organized crime and gangs.
The young man, a farmer, died on Apr. 3, in the parking lot of the hospital in Sonsonate, a city in the west of the country where he was transferred, already dying according to the family, from the police station in Ahuachapán, a city in the department of the same name in western El Salvador.
He had been transferred to the police station after his Mar. 30 arrest in the Jardines neighborhood of the municipality of El Refugio, also in the department of Ahuachapán.
“They tortured him in the dungeons of the Ahuachapán police station,” his father told IPS.
He added that his son had been hanging out with friends, getting drunk. A few minutes later, a police patrol picked him up on charges of being a gang member, which the family vehemently told IPS was not true.
“He never received medical assistance, he died in the hospital parking lot,” the father added.
“They tortured him in the dungeons of the Ahuachapán police station. He didn’t receive medical assistance, he died in the hospital parking lot.” — Saúl Sandoval
He says the only explanation he has for why the police detained Walter is because “they wanted to get the day’s quota.” What he meant is that police officers are apparently supposed to arrest a specific number of gang members in exchange for benefits in their assigned workload.
Deaths like Walter’s, if the participation of police is confirmed, are the most violent and arbitrary expression of the human rights violations committed since the government began its plan of massive raids, in what it describes as an all-out war on gangs.
Since late March, the Salvadoran government has maintained a state of emergency that suspended several constitutional guarantees, in response to a sharp rise in homicides committed by gang members between Mar. 25 and 27.
In those three days, at least 87 people were killed by gang members, in a kind of revenge against the government for allegedly breaking an obscure under-the-table agreement with the gangs to keep homicide rates low.
The state of emergency has been in place since Mar. 27, extended each month by the legislature, which is largely dominated by the ruling New Ideas party. Since then, violent deaths have dropped to an average of three a day.
Among the constitutional rights suspended are the rights of association and assembly, although the government said it only applies to criminal groups that are meeting to organize crimes. It also restricts the right to defense and extends the period in which a person may be detained and brought before the courts, which is currently three days.
The government can also wiretap the communications of “terrorist groups”, meaning gangs, although it could already do so under ordinary laws.
After the state of emergency was declared, homicides dropped again to around two or three a day, and there are even days when none are reported.
But some 48,000 people have been arrested and remanded in custody, accused by the authorities of belonging to criminal gangs. And the number is growing day by day.
However, the families of detainees and human rights organizations complain that among those captured are people who had no links to the gangs, known as “maras” in El Salvador, which make up an army of a combined total of around 70,000 members.
On Jun. 2, rights watchdog Amnesty International stated in an official communiqué that “Under the current state of emergency, the Salvadoran authorities have committed massive human rights violations, including thousands of arbitrary detentions and violations of due process, as well as torture and ill-treatment, and at least 18 people have died in state custody.”
But President Bukele, far from being receptive to criticism, dismisses and stigmatizes the work of human rights groups, referring to their representatives as “criminals” and “freeloaders” who are more interested in defending the rights of gang members than those of their victims.
Walter Sandoval is one of the young men who have died with signs of torture in El Salvador’s prisons under the state of emergency in force in the country since the end of March. The police captured him without any evidence linking him to gangs, said the young man’s family – part of a pattern that has been documented by human rights organizations. CREDIT: Courtesy of the Sandoval family
Silent deaths and torture
The local human rights organization Cristosal has documented nearly 2,500 cases of arrests which, according to the families, have been arbitrary, with no basis for their loved ones to have been detained under the state of emergency.
The organization has also monitored press reports and social networks and has carried out its own research to establish that, as of Jul. 28, some 65 people had died while detained in the country’s prisons or in police cells as part of the massive police raids.
Some of the deceased showed obvious signs of beatings and physical violence, as was the case with Walter and other cases that have been widely reported in the media.
The official reports of these deaths received by family members are vague and confusing, such as that of Julio César Mendoza Ramírez, 25, who died in a hospital in San Salvador, the country’s capital, on Jul. 15.
The official report stated that he had died of pulmonary edema, i.e., his lungs filled with fluid, but also stated that the case was “being studied.”
Suspicions that the deceased were victims of beatings and torture during their imprisonment are not ruled out by their relatives or by human rights organizations.
“The cause of death given to the relatives in the hospital sometimes differs from the legal medical examination, and that leads one to think that something is going on,” lawyer Zaira Navas, of Cristosal, told IPS.
She added: “There are also families who say they were told it was cardiac arrest, but the victims have bruises on their bodies, which is not compatible (with the official version).”
And in the face of doubts and accusations that beatings and torture are taking place under the watchful eye of the State, the authorities simply remain silent and do not carry out autopsies, for example, which would reveal what really happened.
Navas remarked that, even within the state of emergency, “the detentions are arbitrary” because the procedure followed is not legally justified and many people are detained simply because of telephone complaints from neighbors – with which other human rights defenders coincide.
Another problem is that among these 2,500 complaints by families, about 30 percent involve detainees who have chronic diseases or disabilities or were receiving medical or surgical treatment, according to Cristosal’s reports.
The prison staff do not allow family members of the sick detainees to bring their medication, although in a few rare cases they have authorized it.
“We have seen deaths because it is presumed that they have been tortured, beaten, etc., but there have also been deaths of people who have not been given the medication they need to take,” Henri Fino, executive director of the Foundation for Studies on the Application of Law (FESPAD), told IPS.
Regarding the dubious role played by the government’s Institute of Legal Medicine (IML), in charge of conducting the forensic examinations to inform families about the cause of deaths, Fino said that in his opinion it has no credibility.
Especially, he added, now that members of the so-called Military Health Battalion have been stationed since Jul. 4 at several IML offices, presumably to assist in various tasks, including forensic exams, given the shortage of staff.
“What collaboration can they (the military) provide, if they are not experts, and the only reason they are in the IML is to exercise oversight?” Fino said.
Media war
Some of the people who have died in jails or prisons, who were arrested under the state of emergency, were described by the local media as victims of arbitrary, illegal detentions, in contrast with Bukele’s propaganda war claiming that all the detainees are, in fact, gang members.
The press has highlighted the case of Elvin Josué Sánchez, 21, who died on Apr. 18 at the Izalco Prison located near the town of the same name in the department of Sonsonate in western El Salvador.
The media have referred to him as the “young musician”, because he had been learning to play the saxophone, and they have described him as a decent person who was a member of an evangelical church in the area.
But according to neighbors, Sánchez was well-known as an active gang member in his native El Carrizal, in the municipality of Santa Maria Ostuma, in the central department of La Paz.
“They saw him well-armed on farms in the area, along with other gang members, and he told the owners not to show up there anymore, or they would kill them,” a resident of that municipality, who asked not to be identified, told IPS.
Contradictions like this have strengthened local support for Bukele’s insinuations that the independent media are in favor of gang members and against the government’s actions to eradicate violence in the country.
In fact, opinion polls show that a majority of the population of 6.7 million support the president’s measures to crack down on the maras.
But even though Sánchez was recognized by neighbors as a gang member, his arrest should have been carried out following proper procedures and protocols, based on reliable information proving his affiliation to a criminal organization.
This is something the police do not usually do in these massive raids where it is impossible for them to have the evidence needed on each of the nearly 48,000 detainees.
Nor did the fact that he had been a gang member merit him being beaten to death, since his human rights should have been respected, said those interviewed by IPS.
Researchers have discovered that a widely used blood test to detect kidney function is off the mark among African populations.
The serum creatinine test measures the amount of creatinine in your blood. According to the National Kidney Foundation, creatinine is: “A waste product that comes from the normal wear and tear on muscles of the body. Creatinine levels in the blood can vary depending on age and body size. A creatinine level greater than 1.2 for women and greater than 1.4 for men may indicate that the kidneys are not working properly. As kidney disease progresses, the level of creatinine in the blood rises.”
But a study by the African Research on Kidney (ARK) Disease Consortium, which sought to find the most accurate way to measure kidney function in African populations, compared the creatinine option with another benchmark test called the measured glomerular filtration rate (mGFR).
Not fit for Africans
ARK researchers found that creatinine-based tests were inaccurate for predicting kidney disease in African populations. They refer to the test’s inability to account for the unique biological characteristics of African populations. The creatinine-based test was shown to be inaccurate for diagnosing kidney disease, and this may be because it does not account for “unique biological characteristics in African populations.”
The ARK Consortium comprises researchers from the:
University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in South Africa
The Medical Research Council/Wits-Agincourt Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) in SA’s Mpumalanga province;
The Malawi Epidemiology and Intervention Research Unit (MEIRU)
The Medical Research Council/Uganda Virus Research Institute and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Uganda Research Unit
The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), UK
The scale of the problem in Africa
Kidney disease is silent in the early stages because many people only develop symptoms when their GFR drops below 30 to 45 millilitres (ml). This means that most people won’t know their GFR is lower than usual. This is why screening people with risk factors for kidney disease remains essential.
The study used population data from Burkina Faso, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, South Africa and Uganda to estimate overall levels of kidney disease. The results suggest that kidney disease prevalence may be substantially higher in Africa than previously thought, increasing from 1 in 30 people to about 1 in 8 people.
Diversity of populations makes it difficult.
Dr June Fabian from Wits noted that the scale of kidney disease in Africa has been challenging to determine.
“The biodiversity of African populations means that what we find that applies in Southern Africa might not apply in West Africa. So, there aren’t a lot of studies that have looked at kidney disease in many African populations. We don’t have a lot of funding to do these studies, so a lot of the studies are often situated in a hospital with many HIV patients. So, they’ll report a high prevalence of chronic kidney disease, but it does not necessarily reflect what’s going on at the community level or in the general population.”
Fabian said population-based studies are required. But these are expensive and need a larger sample group. This is why there isn’t a lot of data from Africa. In addition, different criteria are used to determine the prevalence of kidney disease in other studies, making available data challenging to interpret.
“The point of our study was to try and standardise all of that. Because we did that, I think we can quite reliably say that the prevalence is between six and 12% depending on the country because people have different risk factors in different countries,” she explained.
Kidney function test flaws
Fabian explained how kidney function tests work to diagnose disease.
“If you’ve got diabetes, and you go and see a primary health care nurse to test your kidneys, she’ll pull a tube of blood, send it to the lab, and the lab will measure the creatinine. And based on that, she’ll work out what we think the kidney function is.”
This is done by estimating the glomerular filtration rate (GFR). The GFR is how much blood your kidneys are filtering through per minute. A high GFR means that the kidneys are working very well.
“What we realised when we did this study is that kidney function in African populations is overestimated by using the creatinine test. We are reporting GFRs that are too high because these estimation calculations are based on studies done in high-income settings.”
Before the ARK study, Fabian said the studies were done in countries like the US, Sweden, and Belgium. Very few studies have covered the African population looking critically at how kidney disease affects people.
“That is what we wanted to check in this study because a handful of really small studies showed that maybe the way it’s done in Europe doesn’t apply in Africa. This is because we are reading the kidney function as too high. If your GFR is less than 60, your kidneys filter less than 60 ml per minute. If the test pushes everyone up, we are not picking up people with those lower GFRs, which means we’re missing kidney disease.
The “gold standard” refers to the method to measure kidney function that is currently working to diagnose kidney disease in Africa. Fabian said the problem is that it is expensive and impractical because a person must be there for six hours.
“Because African Americans are big and have a lot of muscle, everyone assumes that everyone else in Africa is the same. Everyone thought that African populations have lots of muscle, and the creatinine would be high as they see it in African Americans. We found that people are quite small.”
Fabian explained that another dependent factor is how much meat a person eats.
“If meat is regularly in your everyday diet, your creatinine will increase. In poorer communities, people often don’t have a lot of money and don’t eat much meat. Even in Bushbuck Ridge, women have very low creatinine, and we’re not sure exactly why. But in Malawi, people might eat meat once every two weeks or once a month. That is not the same as high-income settings where people eat meat almost daily.”
These kinds of factors are not considered during studies in high-income settings. Fabian emphasised the importance of doing this work in African populations.
Risk factors of kidney disease
“Your kidney function starts with your mom’s health. For example, if you’ve got a young mum with a pregnancy, who doesn’t get into antenatal care, delivers prematurely and might have diabetes or hypertension herself. All those factors impact your kidneys when you’re in the womb and are developing all the time, up to 36 weeks.”
This means that if you’re born prematurely, at 33 weeks or so, and your mom never got antenatal care or was malnourished during the pregnancy, your kidney function will be impacted from the day you are born.
“If you are stunted, your muscles don’t grow well, and you are malnourished. This carries over and impacts your kidney function later on in life. These are the kinds of things that don’t apply in high-income settings. We also see in poor communities that in adolescence, people go from being underweight, especially girls, to being quite overweight. And if that happens, that also puts you at risk of kidney disease because you’re at risk of becoming diabetic or developing high blood pressure later on in life.”
Too expensive
Tests based on cystatin C worked better than creatinine to indicate poor kidney function. But it is not widely available in Africa.
The cystatin C test, which would be more suitable in Africa, costs around R320. This is three times more expensive than the widely-used but less accurate creatinine, at just R67.
“We know cystatin C is better in Africa, but relatively speaking, it’s a no-go in resource-poor settings,” says Fabian.
The study’s findings suggest that moving from the creatinine test of kidney function to using cystatin C would be preferable. In addition, researchers said that it would also assist in ensuring accessibility and enabling doctors to use them should be a priority for Africa. – Health-e News
KATHMANDU, Aug 4 2022 (IPS) – The largest ever settlement in Canadian legal history, 40 billion Canadian dollars, occurred in 2022, but it didn’t come from a court – it followed a decision by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal. In 2016 the Tribunal affirmed a complaint that the Government of Canada’s child welfare system discriminated against First Nations children. (First Nations are one of three groups of Indigenous people in Canada).
When I heard about that amount and subsequently how the government was negotiating the details of that settlement, I was astounded. Although I’ve had an interest in and reported regularly about human rights in the past three decades, my most intense experience has been here in Nepal, where for a couple of years I worked at the United Nations human rights office.
Nepal’s Human Rights Commission has a long history of having its recommendations virtually ignored by the government of the day. In fact, since 2000, only 12% of the NHRC’s 810 recommendations have been fully implemented. So when I compared the situation in Nepal to the tribunal’s decision and aftermath in Canada, my first question was ‘how’? How could the human rights situation in the two countries be so different that one government was compelled to pay out $40 billion for discrimination while another could virtually ignore recommendations?
First, I have to confess that my understanding of the human rights framework in Canada and Nepal was lacking. As today’s guest, Professor Anne Levesque from the University of Ottawa, explains, Canada, like Nepal, has a federal human rights commission (as well as commissions in its provinces). But Canada also has the tribunal, a quasi-judicial body that hears complaints and can issue orders. Nepal however, lacks a human rights body that has legal teeth.
But is that the whole story, or are there other reasons why the Government of Canada must – and does – pay up when it loses a human rights case while the Government of Nepal basically files away the NHRC’s recommendations for some later date? Nepal, by the way, is not a human rights pariah. It is serving its second consecutive term on the UN Human Rights Council and the NHRC has been given an ‘A’ rating by an independent organization for conforming to international standards.
United States ambassador to Malawi David Young has wowed Malawians after testing street food at a township in Lilongwe.
Young who has been serving as ambassador in Malawi since March this year, tried a local treat called on Mandasi (doughnut) at Area 18 in the Capital City.
A video shared by the United States Embassy Facebook page show Young helping make a few snacks before trying them.
“Based on your feedback and suggestions on what street food I should try, this week I visited Mrs. Margaret Makhuza in Area 18 A to try her delicious mandasi. People in Lilongwe have enjoyed her treats for years – and I can see why. She even let me try my hand at making a few. They are my new favorite treat! Thank you Mai Makhuza,” young was quoted as saying by the US Embassy.
Malawians on social media have since hailed Young for his initiative to connect with Malawians at all levels.
“He’s an African American Ambassador for us. Very interactive and socialite at heart. Thanks for trying our locals,” said one person on the US Embassy Facebook Page.
Another person: “Honestly I love this Ambassador David, the way he associate with the locals is just amazing, he loves Malawi. He is a humble man full of fun. Hope I will meet him one day,” he said.
One person Twitter said: “Koma Ada awa alibho. He has embraced Malawian culture.”
Others, however, were not happy with the ambassador’s act.
He will go home and write a shitty poverty porn book posing as an expert and make money.
Young people take part in a pro-democracy demonstration in Myanmar. Credit: Unsplash/Pyae Sone Htun
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2022 (IPS) – A spike in state-sanctioned executions worldwide – including in Iran, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, and more recently Myanmar – has triggered strong condemnations from the United Nations and several civil rights and human rights organizations.
As Covid-19 restrictions that had previously delayed judicial processes were steadily lifted in many parts of the world, says Amnesty International (AI), judges last year handed down at least 2,052 death sentences in 56 countries—a close to 40% increase over 2020—with big spikes seen in several countries including Bangladesh (at least 181, from at least 113), India (144, from 77) and Pakistan (at least 129, from at least 49).
Other countries enforcing the death penalty, according to AI, include Egypt, Iraq, Somalia, South Sudan, Belarus, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), China, North Korea, Viet Nam and Yemen.
In military regimes, such as Myanmar, the armed forces play a triple role: judge, jury and hangman.
Dr Simon Adams, President of the Center for Victims of Torture, the world’s biggest organization that works with torture survivors and advocates for an end to torture worldwide, told IPS the recent execution of four pro-democracy activists by Myanmar’s military junta represents a sickening return to the “politics of the hangman’s noose”.
Arbitrary detention and torture have also been committed on an industrial scale, he said.
The military regime has detained over 14,000 people and sentenced more than 100 to death since the (February 2021) coup. While many governments around the world have condemned the recent hangings, it is going to take more than words to end atrocities in Myanmar, he pointed out.
“People are crying out for targeted sanctions on the Generals, for an arms embargo, and for Myanmar’s torturers and executioners to be held accountable under international law”, said Dr Adams, who also helped initiate the case at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague, where The Gambia is trying to hold Myanmar accountable for the genocide against the Rohingya.
The London-based Amnesty International (AI) said last May that 2021 “saw a worrying rise in executions and death sentences as some of the world’s most prolific executioners returned to business as usual and courts were unshackled from Covid-19 restrictions.”
Iran accounted for the biggest portion of this rise, executing at least 314 people (up from at least 246 in 2020), its highest execution total since 2017.
This was due in part to a marked increase in drug-related executions—a flagrant violation of international law which prohibits use of the death penalty for crimes other than those involving intentional killing, said AI.
Antony J. Blinken, US Secretary of State, said last week the United States condemns in the strongest terms the Burma military regime’s executions of pro-democracy activists and elected leaders Ko Jimmy, Phyo Zeya Thaw, Hla Myo Aung, and Aung Thura Zaw for the exercise of their fundamental freedoms.
“These reprehensible acts of violence further exemplify the regime’s complete disregard for human rights and the rule of law.’
Since the February 2021 coup, he pointed out, the regime has perpetuated violence against its own people, killing more than 2,100, displacing more than 700,000, and detaining thousands of innocent people, including members of civil society and journalists.
The regime’s sham trials and these executions are blatant attempts to extinguish democracy; these actions will never suppress the spirit of the brave people of Burma, (Myanmar), he added.
“The United States joins the people of Burma in their pursuit of freedom and democracy and calls on the regime to respect the democratic aspirations of the people who have shown they do not want to live one more day under the tyranny of military rule,” Blinken declared.
Condemning the execution of the four democracy activists by the military regime in Myanmar, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said last week: “I am dismayed that despite appeals from across the world, the military conducted these executions with no regard for human rights. This cruel and regressive step is an extension of the military’s ongoing repressive campaign against its own people.”
“These executions – the first in Myanmar in decades – are cruel violations of the rights to life, liberty and security of a person, and fair trial guarantees. For the military to widen its killing will only deepen its entanglement in the crisis it has itself created,” she warned.
The High Commissioner also called for the immediate release of all political prisoners and others arbitrarily detained, and urged the country to reinstate its de-facto moratorium on the use of the death penalty, as a step towards eventual abolition.
Meanwhile, in a statement released August 2, Liz Throssell, a Spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva said : “We deplore the hanging today of two men in Singapore and are deeply troubled by the planned execution of two others on 5 August.
The two, a Malaysian and a Singaporean, were hanged at Changi Prison this morning after they were convicted in May 2015 of drug trafficking and their appeals subsequently rejected.
Two other men, Abdul Rahim bin Shapiee and his co-accused Ong Seow Ping, are currently expected to be executed on Friday after Bin Shapiee’s family was notified of his fate on 29 July.
They were both convicted in 2018 of possession of drugs for the purpose of trafficking and their sentences upheld on appeal. In the past, co-accused persons have almost always been executed on the same day.
“We urge the Singapore authorities to halt all scheduled executions, including those of Abdul Rahim bin Shapiee and Ong Seow Ping. We also call on the Government of Singapore to end the use of mandatory death sentences for drug offences, commute all death sentences to a sentence of imprisonment and immediately put in place a moratorium on all executions, with a view to abolishing the death penalty”, the statement said.
“The death penalty is inconsistent with the right to life and the right to be free from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and there is growing consensus for its universal abolition. More than 170 States have so far abolished or introduced a moratorium on the death penalty either in law or in practice,” she noted.
Agnes Callamard, AI Secretary-General, said that “China, North Korea and Viet Nam continued to shroud their use of the death penalty behind layers of secrecy, but, as ever, the little we saw is cause for great alarm.” The known number of women executed also rose from nine to 14, while the Iranian authorities continued their abhorrent assault on children’s rights by executing three people who were under the age of 18 at the time of the crime, contrary to their obligations under international law.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia more than doubled its number of executions, a grim trend that continued in 2022 with the execution of 81 people in a single day in March, according to AI
As well as the rise in executions seen in Saudi Arabia (65, from 27 in 2020), significant increases on 2020 were seen in Somalia (at least 21, from at least 11) South Sudan (at least 9, from at least 2) and Yemen (at least 14, from at least 5). Belarus (at least 1), Japan (3) and UAE (at least 1) also carried out executions, having not done so in 2020.
Significant increases in death sentences compared to 2020 were recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (at least 81, from at least 20), Egypt (at least 356, from at least 264), Iraq (at least 91, from at least 27), Myanmar (at least 86, from at least 1), Viet Nam (at least 119 from at least 54), and Yemen (at least 298, from at least 269), AI said.
In several countries in 2021, AI said, the death penalty was deployed as an instrument of state repression against minorities and protestors, with governments showing an utter disregard for safeguards and restrictions on the death penalty established under international human rights law and standards.
