'South Korea should lead abolition of death penalty in Asia-Pacific'

South Korea has an unprecedented record when it comes to the death penalty, allowing a political prisoner on death row to become its president.

Late President Kim Dae-jung, who was in office from 1998 to 2003, was sentenced to death in 1980, on treason charges.

With a campaign by the international community and human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, Kim was able to leave the country for the United States 2 years later.

The last execution in Korea took place in 1997 and while the country still has the death penalty, it has been categorized as abolitionist in practice.

Now, South Korea should take the next step to abolish its death penalty and lead the human rights movement said Chiara Sangiorgio, the advisor on the abolition of the death penalty at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, in an interview with The Korea Herald on Tuesday.

"South Korea has not carried out executions for more than 20 years. I think the moment is ripe for steps to be taken to abolish the death penalty here," she said. Sangiorgio was also the lead author of the annual Amnesty report on the death penalty. The organization released the 2016-2017 report on April 12.

According to the latest report compiling data until the end of last year, South Korea has not delivered a death sentence for the past 2 years.

"Unfortunately, we did see one case in February, but we can see it is becoming a rare occurrence here," she said.

"Many countries around South Korea practice executions in horrific ways, from North Korea to China and Japan. So the country stands out in the region from this point of view. It is a human rights issue which the government and the administrators here should take ownership of."

China was once again the world's leading executioner, with the figures expected to reach into the thousands. Japan carried out 4 executions in secrecy, and North Korea is also infamous for their public executions.

Regarding the communist regime, the watchdog found a report which claims that a ban on public executions has been placed.

"We see it as a significant step, which shows how the world's stance is changing towards the death penalty."

But she explained they face challenges with limited access to information in North Korea.

"We know there are executions. And we are concerned about the unfair trial proceedings as it seems to be the way through which the punishment is imposed, without the right to appeal," she said. "But it would be difficult make a judgment for North Korea until we have full access to the statistics there."

As of the end of 2017, South Korea had 61 men under the sentence of death. And while there has been legislative efforts to abolish the death sentence, the public sentiment appears to oppose doing away with the death penalty.

According to 2015 data from Korea Legislation Research Institute, 65.2 % of the respondents opposed the abolition of the death penalty, while 34.2 % agreed. In another poll in 2017, 79.4 % of 1,000 respondents supported maintaining the death penalty.

Since 1999, 7 revision proposal bills have been tabled at the National Assembly where they have been left pending for several years.

Sangiorgio noted it is not enough for the authorities to just say they cannot abolish the death penalty due to public opinion, as it is a question of leading the country for improving human rights.

"How polls are devised, what the respondents know, and when the polls are conducted can all affect the result," she said. "Studies have shown that when the public is informed of what the death penalty is and what alternatives there are, their supporting opinions will change," she explained.

"It is important to understand that abolishing the death penalty is not asking for impunity for crime, but that it is discussing about cruel punishment that needs to be repealed."

Taking the example of Mongolia, which abolished the death penalty over a period of 6 years, Sangiorgio said South Korea can also initiate the process step by step.

"The government can start by formalizing the status quo of where the country is at in terms of the death penalty, and have a strong pronouncement by leadership. It should also take international commitment," she said.

Amnesty International called for the South Korean government to immediately establish an official moratorium on executions, and urged it to vote in favor of the draft resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty, which will be considered at the 73rd session of the UN General Assembly at the end of this year.

"South Korea is put in a unique place and timing. And the country's leadership should take the opportunity to improve its human rights record and become the next country to abolish the death penalty," Sangiorgio said.

Source: Korea Herald, April 27, 2018

⚑ | Report an error, an omission, a typo; suggest a story or a new angle to an existing story; submit a piece, a comment; recommend a resource; contact the webmaster, contact us: deathpenaltynews@gmail.com.

Opposed to Capital Punishment? Help us keep this blog up and running! DONATE!

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde

USA | What happens in the final weeks before an execution? These reporters were inside the room.

The journalists behind ‘The Last 12 Weeks’ earned extraordinary access to a death penalty defense team—and faced difficult ethical choices Many defense lawyers are naturally cagey. They work in a pressure cooker, protecting their clients’ rights while fighting for the best possible outcome. And arguably, the stakes can’t get any higher than trying to save a client’s life. So no, defense lawyers don’t usually invite journalists into strategy meetings. But that’s what happened when Marshall Project reporter Maurice Chammah and Serial Productions senior producer Alvin Melathe spent the final few months before a Texas execution embedded with a capital defense team.

North Korea | 'I was only 9': North Korean defector recalls childhood memory of public execution

Kim Eun-joo was 9 years old when her teacher stopped their lesson and told the class to follow her outside. The children were marched to a public execution ground in North Korea. “I would cry even when our family dog died,” Kim said in a recent interview with The Korea Times. “But the first time I watched humans killing a human, I had no words for what I was feeling. It was the most brutal scene I have ever seen, in any movie or in real life.” The memory has stayed with her ever since. Now a human rights advocate after defecting from North Korea, Kim recently brought that childhood scene to the 9th World Congress Against the Death Penalty in Paris, where North Korea’s use of public executions and capital punishment was officially placed on the agenda for the first time.

19 July 1943 | Auschwitz's Largest Public Hanging: 12 Polish Prisoners Executed in Escape Reprisal

OSWIECIM, Poland — The SS carried out the largest public hanging in Auschwitz history on July 19, 1943, executing 12 Polish prisoners before other inmates as collective punishment for escapes and civilian contacts. The victims, all from the camp’s surveyors’ labor unit, were hanged on gallows built in front of the camp kitchen during an Auschwitz I roll call. The SS orchestrated this reprisal following prisoner escapes from the surveyors’ detail and unauthorized communication between inmates and civilians. Camp authorities used the recent escapes as a pretext to impose collective punishment.

Texas: The inmates who refused to die quietly and had to be gassed out of their cells before execution

Former crime reporter Michelle Lyons, who witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, reveals the desperate acts of death row prisoners who refused to accept their fate After spending years or often decades locked up in a tiny cell for 23 hours a day, most Death Row inmates go willingly to their executions. However, some refuse to die quietly - with officers forced to gas them out of cells, strap up their heads and even give chase across prison grounds. Michelle Lyons, who has witnessed nearly 300 executions in Texas, US, exclusively tells Sun Online how certain inmates "fight like hell" in their last moments. On most occasions, Michelle watched from the witness area, with the killers already on the gurney - the stretcher where they'd be given a lethal injection. Seven prisoners once tried to escape from the Row in Huntsville - with one shoving magazines and newspapers under his clothes to help him roll over razor-wire fences. Others have had to b...

Former Florida cop to be executed on same day as 80-year-old Pasco man

In an unprecedented move in the modern history of capital punishment, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday cleared the way for 2 executions to occur on the same day. DeSantis reset the execution of James Duckett, whose execution earlier this year was stayed amid efforts to secure DNA testing and analysis of evidence in his case. Duckett’s execution was reset for July 28. That is the same day previously set for the execution of Dominick Occhicone. Court records indicate that Duckett’s execution is scheduled for noon. Occhicone’s is set to follow at 6 p.m.

Japan: Capital punishment for a minor

Death chamber at Tokyo Detention Center The Supreme Court's recent decision to uphold the death sentence given in a lay judge trial to a 24-year-old man for murders he committed when he was a minor raises questions about the lay judge trial system and capital punishment. These include whether the lay judges correctly understood the spirit of the Juvenile Law in sentencing the defendant to death. It was the 1st death sentence handed down on a minor in a lay judge trial. The murders took place in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 when Yutaro Chiba was 18 - meaning he fell under the purview of the Juvenile Law. Chiba was convicted of entering his ex-girlfriend's house and stabbing to death the girl's sister and a female friend of the girl with a butcher knife, seriously injuring a male friend of the sister and abducting the girl. Prosecutors said Chiba killed the victims because they were trying to separate him and his former girlfriend. Since Chiba pleaded n...

Idaho | Death row prisoners sue over state's new firing squad

BOISE (Idaho Statesman) – Days after Idaho made the switch to a firing squad for executions, two Idaho death row prisoners next in line to be put to death sued the state prison system, saying its director withheld information about how she settled on the specifics for carrying out the method. Attorneys for prisoners Thomas Creech and Gerald Pizzuto filed suit this week in state district court against Idaho Department of Correction Director Bree Derrick. In the filing, they called her approval of an updated standard operating procedure for the firing squad and lethal injection as a backup method “arbitrary, capricious, or an abuse of discretion and in excess of the statutory authority of the agency.”

Florida executes Dennis Sochor

Man, 74, becomes oldest inmate executed in Florida in state’s 10th lethal injection this year Florida put to death one of its oldest prisoners in its history on Tuesday, a 74-year-old convicted murderer who was 1 of 3 older inmates scheduled for execution within the span of a month in the nation’s busiest death penalty state. Dennis Sochor was pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m. following a 3-drug injection at Florida State Prison near Starke, the office of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said. He was convicted of killing a woman on Jan. 1, 1982, just hours after meeting her at a New Year’s Eve party.

Oldest inmate set to be executed in Florida will face strict spending limit for final meal

An entire category of food is also off-limits for final meal requests in Florida Florida is currently preparing to execute its oldest inmate later today (July 14), a 74-year-old convicted murderer who has been on death row since the 1980s—but his final meal will be limited by a strict budget. Dennis Sochor is scheduled to be put to death later today, making history as the oldest inmate to ever be executed in the state. The criminal, who has been on death row for nearly 40 years, will be administered the lethal three-drug injection, with the process due to begin at around 6pm.

Florida | Former warden recalls botched electrocution that left him battling PTSD for 13 years and turned him into an abolitionist

Ron McAndrew anticipated it would be just another standard execution. He had been assigned to carry out the death of Cuban refugee Pedro Medina via electric chair within the confines of Florida State Prison. Fifteen years had passed since Medina's conviction for the murder of 52-year-old Dorothy James, and McAndrew's responsibility was to oversee the administration of lethal electrical currents to his brain. Having already supervised two previous executions using the identical procedure and raised in a community that strongly supported capital punishment, he expected a swift conclusion with justice delivered.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog