HELP (message relay from a prison))

    

Barbed wire and High Walls cannot prevent entrance of Covid-19

                            Barbed wire and High Walls cannot prevent entrance of Covid-19

Prisons Are Doing Mass Testing For COVID-19—And Finding Mass Infection

    First news: Days ago US officials began testing for Covid-19 in every inmate of a federal prison in             California. 4 in 10 have the virus.

.......

And now - Over 70% of tested inmates in federal prisons have COVID-19

WFXL FOX 31-4 hours ago

Over 70% of tested inmates in federal prisons have COVID-19 ... For most people, the virus causes only mild or moderate symptoms, such as ...

More than 1500 federal prisoners now have COVID-19 as ...
USA TODAY-10 hours ago

More than half of inmates at LA prison have tested positive for ...
Fox 4-3 hours ago

COVID-19 infects more than half of inmates at Terminal Island ...

KABC-TV-1 hour ago

How long will it be before announcement on infection rates in Thai prisons?

Banned Iranian director wins Berlin Golden Bear for death penalty film

Mohammad Rasoulof was prevented from attending the festival but won top award for his film There Is No Evil, about capital punishment in Iran

Dissident Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof won the top prize at the Berlin film festival for There Is No Evil, a searingly critical work about the death penalty in Iran.
Rasoulof, 48, is currently banned from leaving Iran and was unable to accept the Golden Bear in person. Accepting the award on his behalf, producer Farzad Pak thanked “the amazing cast and crew who, put their lives in danger to be on this film”.
The film tells four loosely related individual stories about the death penalty in Iran, from the executioner to the families of the victims. Industry magazine Variety called it Rasoulof’s “most openly critical statement yet”.

Rasoulof was sentenced to a year in prison last year for “attacking the security of the state”, and banned from making films for life. Speaking to a news conference via mobile phone, the director said his latest film was about “taking responsibility” under despotism. “You can try to put aside your own responsibility and pass the buck to the government... but [people] can say no,” he said.
The runner-up jury prize went to Eliza Hittman’s teenage abortion drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always, which had been a favourite among critics. Sidney Flanigan plays a 17-year-old from Pennsylvania forced to travel to New York in order to abort an unplanned pregnancy.
 Full  story
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/feb/29/banned-iranian-director-wins-berlin-golden-bear-for-there-is-no-evil

2019 Human Rights Day

Guilty or not, the death penalty is wrong\

                                                                     

1. Murder happens: Cain slew Abel
2. The death penalty is ineffective, it does not deter crime
3. Execution perpetuates the cycle of violence, a further killing does not undo an earlier killing.

Yes, there is a strong argument against the death penalty that is based on failures of the justice system that result in the execution of innocents. But this should never be used to justify the execution of the truly guilty.  The basic abolitionist stand is outlined above. The question of true guilt is a matter for restorative justice which must take its course in a legal system that abjures the death penalty as an aberration of a primitive justice that relied on torture, punishments such as hanging, drawing, quartering, and burned women at the stake.

ADPAN (Anti Death Penalty Asian Network)

                                  

Death Penalty Thailand has been represented in ADPAN since its foundation in 2006. Death Penalty Thailand attended the 3rd Biennial General Meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, on 8th November 2019 as representative of the Union for Civil Liberty of Thailand. While ADPAN may be a small grouping of death penalty activists on the world scene, its area of activity is immense and of premier importance in the struggle for abolition of the death penalty. This little known grouping deserves wider recognition and the following extract from the ADPAN website introduces its aims and background.

"The Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) is a regional network of organizations and individual members committed to working for the abolition of the death penalty in Asia-Pacific.

History

Launched in 2006 on the World Day against the Death Penalty, ADPAN was founded in Hong Kong following a Consultative Meeting organized by Amnesty International. It answered a call from local abolitionists to organise regionally to end the death penalty across Asia and the Pacific.

In 2012, at a Consultative Meeting in Hong Kong, it was decided that ADPAN will be transformed into an independent network, and towards that end a Transition Group was formed.

In 2014, at its first General Meeting in Taipei, Taiwan, Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) members approved ADPAN’s Constitution, and ADPAN’s first Executive Committee was elected.

Why?

• More people are executed in Asia-Pacific than in the rest of the world combined at a time when regionally and in the world, the number of executions is declining.
• 95% of the world’s population lives in countries that retain and use the death penalty.
• 13 countries in the region have carried out executions in the past ten years.
• Failures of justice in trials that end in a death sentence cannot be reversed. Unfair trials in death penalty cases are known and documented across the region.
• The death penalty is not an effective deterrent to combat crime.
• The majority of those that face the death penalty are poor or from the marginalised in society.
• ADPAN maintains that the death penalty violates the right to life and is the ultimate form of cruel inhuman and degrading punishment.

Who We Are

A growing active network with members in 22 Asia-Pacific countries, ADPAN is independent of governments and any political or religious affiliation.

ADPAN members are civil society groups, organizations, networks of organizations, trade unions, lawyers and/or judges associations, consumer groups, professional bodies, academic groups and individual persons from Asia-Pacific: Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Singapore,  Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Tonga and Vietnam.

ADPAN Partners are organizations, groups and/or individual persons, not members of ADPAN, who are also committed to the mission and work of ADPAN from Netherlands, Italy, France, Denmark, the UK, USA, and Spain.

What We Do
ADPAN campaigns and lobbies for an end to the death penalty across the Asia Pacific region. We do this by:

• Joining in actions and lobbying against the death penalty, especially in countries in the Asia-Pacific region.

• Appealing on behalf of individuals facing execution from the region.

• Participating in the annual World Day against the Death Penalty (10 October) and Cities for Life 30 November.

• Issuing news releases, joint open letters, and media statements.

• Producing cross-regional reports and materials challenging the need for the death penalty such as unfair trials.

• Sharing information and activities using social media: Twitter, Facebook, this blog.

• Supporting the establishment of national coalitions against the death penalty.

• Contributing to national and regional strategies in support of abolition.

• Attending conferences to talk about regional developments on the death penalty."

The meeting on the 8th November confirmed the vitality of ADPAN. 24 people attended. The meeting was informal and spirited, Reflected was a tidal change in the Asian region, tentative but full of hope that abolition was possible and in some cases on the way, in contrast to a creeping approval of a return to support of the death penalty among the youth of Europe. (See the 54% of young Belgians approving a restoration of the death penalty, reported in FONDAPOL, (www.fondapol.org,  "Democracies under pressure", May 19, 2019). A tidal wave of change in ASIA in favour of abolition will see a global end to the ancient curse of the death penalty. Perhaps even Belarus will yield!

Current Numbers of Prisoners Condemned to Death

                                                   Thailand.  Death Penalty Statistics.
                                             

                                        Men                                                                251
                                        Women                                                            56 
                                                           Total                           307 

                                Source: Department of Corrections      12 September 2019

A Voice from the Past

"To prevent the abolition of the death penalty, to seek to demonstrate its goodness, is to defend it...
From the moment I could feel, I have been horrified by this penalty. From the moment I could judge, I judged it to be completely immoral. I will never be known for my utilitarian solutions, but if there is one thing I know about utility, it is the complete uselessness of capital punishment."

José Martí, November 1871

Death Penalty Statistics; Update

                                                                           
Total prison population of Thailand: 382,895 (M 332,751: F 50,144)  2019 - 04 - 01


Condemned to death 558 (M 471: F 87)
- on drug charges 321 (M 241:  F 80)
- on other charges 228 (M 221:  F 7)
- on security issues 9 (M 9)

It is noteworthy that the majority of women are condemned to death for the opportunistic crime of drug dealing, very few for crimes of violence
For the first time, there is a category of death penalty for security issues. No explanation is provided.
In recent days there has been news of the dismantlement of a floating "seastead", located just outside the 12 mile sea limit of Thailand's territorial waters. The two owners, a male US national, and a Thai female, have fled and, to the astonishment of the world press an announcement by theThai navy claims that they are subject to a death penalty on a securiy issue.

"If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it were done quickly" Macbeth

In a news item referring to the Lukman case on September 18 of last year, subject of an earlier posting on this website, Prime Minister Mahathir, obviously speaking fom the viewpoint of his earlier intention to totally abolish the death penalty, expressed a readiness to review the case. Words blowing in the wind, in the about turn recently reported and subject of the previous posting.
"Kuala Lumpur: Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir has indicated that the government should review the case of a man who had been sentenced to death for having medicinal cannabis oil.

Dr Mahathir said: " I think we should review that," when asked about the case of Muhammad Lukman, a 29-year-old father of one who was sentenced to death for possessing, processing and distributing medical marijuana (cannabis oil).
He was arrested in 2015 for the possession of 3.1 litres of cannabis oil, 279 grams of compressed cannabis and 1.4kg of substance containing tetrahydrocan nabininaol (THC). Muhammad Lukman was given the death sentence by the Shah Alam High Court on Aug 30preme light.” The Star/2018/09/18

However, Prime Minister Mahathir, while retaining Malaysia's attachment to the death penalty, you can invoke “General comment No. 36 (2018) on Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, on the right to life”. 
The document urges strict observance conditions in international law on imposing executions, emphasising that the "right to life" is the supreme right from which no derogation is permitted by situations of armed conflict or other public emergencies. The consequence is that in states which have not yet abolished the death penalty, "it must not be applied except for the most serious crimes, and then only in the most exceptional cases and under the strictest limits."

Voila! No need to go through a delay prone constitutional change Apply this criterion to the Lukman case, prohibiting his execution and ordering his release. Leave it to the dogs of war who have forced retention of the death penalty on you to invalidate the triple legal bond in the above quotation from the authoritative comment on your binding international UN ICCPR treaty.
 "But screw your courage to the sticking place, and we'll not fail"  Lady Macbeth