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Malaysia backtracks on death penalty

Screenshot from "Apprentice" by Boo Junfeng (2016)
"Shocking, unprincipled and embarrassing"

Malaysia's government says the death penalty will no longer be mandatory for some offences in a backdown on earlier plans to abolish capital punishment.

Malaysia's government backtracked on abolishing capital punishment, saying instead that the death penalty would no longer be mandatory for some offences.

Deputy Law Minister Hanipa Maidin made the announcement in parliament on Wednesday but didn't give any reasons for the change.

He was quoted by the country's Bernama news agency as saying the death penalty would not be mandatory for 11 offences, but courts would have discretion to impose such sentences for those crimes.

Rights groups slammed the reversal and urged it to reconsider.

"Moral cowardice"


N. Surendran, adviser to rights group Lawyers for Liberty, said it was a "complete U-turn" from the government's October announcement that it planned to abolish the death penalty for most of three dozen applicable offences.

The total abolition plan had been widely praised internationally and he said the sudden reversal was "shocking, unprincipled and embarrassing".

He said it appeared to be motivated by fear of a political backlash and slammed the government for "moral cowardice".

"In short, the government sacrificed principle on the altar of political expediency," he said in a statement.

The Malaysian Coalition Against the Death Penalty echoed the call for the government to review its decision.

The group voiced concern that there are no protections for the vulnerable and no sentencing guidelines for the court to consider in deciding whether to hand down a death sentence.

"So long as the death penalty exists within our system, there is no guarantee that an innocent or vulnerable person will not be wrongly sentenced and executed," it said.

The two groups also urged the government to maintain its current moratorium on all executions and review the case of every prisoner on death row.

Source: The Associated Press, March 14, 2019


After months of promising to abolish the death penalty, Malaysia’s government now makes U-turn


Noose
Human rights groups are outraged after a Malaysian official said this week that the government has decided not to completely abolish the death penalty.

Instead, Mohamed Hanipa Maidin, a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s Department, told Parliament that the government will leave it up to the courts to decide whether an offender will hang.

This comes just months after Malaysia’s law minister Liew Vui Keong announced in November that there were plans to abolish the death penalty for 32 offences under eight acts of law.

Examples of these offences include murder, kidnapping, gun use, drug trafficking, and involvement in the creation or shipping of weapons of mass destruction.

It was said then that offences previously warranting the death penalty would be replaced with a minimum of 30 years in jail.

At the time, the decision sparked heated public debate, and a large-scale poll showed that most Malaysians did not support the repeal.

In October last year, Liew had said that the government would ensure an appropriate penalty for offences, but added that death penalty was “overly hard” on offenders of crimes like drug-trafficking.

The backtracking of Malaysia’s decision could mean that the fate of fugitive policeman Sirul Azhar Umar is now up in the air. 

Sirul had fled to Australia just before being sentenced to death for the murder of Mongolian model Altantuya Shaariibuu.

According to Reuters, Sirul has been held at an Australian immigration detention center since 2015, and has failed to obtain asylum in Australia.

Under Australian law, Sirul cannot be deported if he faces the death penalty.

A decision “clearly motivated by the fear of a political backlash”


In a statement, rights group Lawyers for Liberty said the backtracking of the abolition was “shocking, unprincipled and embarrassing“.

“This is all the more so as the decision for total abolition had made international news and was praised throughout the region and the world,” it said.

Signed off by N Surendran, the advisor for the group, the statement added that the latest decision was “clearly motivated by the fear of a political backlash”.

“We also understand that certain component parties and certain prominent Harapan leaders had preferred to keep the death penalty, resulting in this U-turn.

“In short, the government sacrificed principle on the altar of political expediency,” Surendran wrote.

Another group called The Malaysian Coalition Against the Death Penalty also released a statement saying it was “deeply disappointed” with the government’s decision.

It added that while discretionary sentencing was “a small step forward”, the group was still concerned that “at the moment, there is still no developed jurisprudence, protection for the vulnerable and sentencing guideline for which the court should consider in exercising its discretion whether to hand down a death sentence”.

Source: businessinsider.my, Jessica Lin, March 14, 2019


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

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