Death Penalty News

Jakarta, Dec 14 (IANS) Indonesian Minister of Law Supratman Andi Agtas has said that President Prabowo Subianto would grant amnesty to several categories of prisoners, including drug users and prisoners with long-term illnesses. According to Supratman, the move aims to reduce overcapacity in correctional facilities while addressing humanitarian concerns, Xinhua news agency reported. Prisoners suffering from chronic illnesses like HIV/AIDS and individuals with mental disorders are among those eligible.

Uganda’s constitutional court on Wednesday upheld an anti-gay law that allows the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality.”  President Yoweri Museveni signed the bill into law in May last year. The law is supported by many in the East African country but widely condemned by rights activists and others abroad.

Global outcry over Museveni’s assent to draconian new anti-gay law, condemned as a ‘permission slip for hate and dehumanisation’ Uganda’s president, Yoweri Museveni, has signed into law the world’s harshest anti-LGBT bill, which allows the death penalty for homosexual acts. The move immediately drew widespread international outrage as well as condemnation from many Ugandans. Early on Monday, the speaker of the Ugandan parliament, Anita Among, released a statement on social media confirming Museveni had assented to the law first passed by MPs in March. It imposes the death penalty or life imprisonment for certain same-sex acts, up to 20 years in prison for “recruitment, promotion and funding” of same-sex “activities”, and anyone convicted of “attempted aggravated homosexuality” faces a 14-year sentence.

The German Baptist Church in Pforzheim has been the centre of controversy since it was discovered that they believe that gay people deserve the death penalty. Other churches distance themselves from the statements and call for criminal charges. “We believe that homosexuality is a sin and a shame that God punishes with the death penalty”, the website of the Baptists in Pforzheim reads. The believers base this view on several Bible texts, such as Leviticus 20,13, Romans 1,31, 2 Peter 2,6, and Jude 7. In a letter to Pforzheimer Zeitung, pastor Anselm Urban explains that Leviticus clearly says that men who lie together should be put to death. He points out that the illness of AIDS proves that God condemns gay people, as it is “almost exclusively transmitted by sodomites.” 

In the latest of the DPRU's Q&A series with death penalty experts from around the world, Michael H. Fox, an anti-death penalty advocate in Japan, tells DPRU Research Officer Jocelyn Hutton about his current work and about how the death penalty disproportionately affects foreign nationals in Japan. Can you tell us a little bit about the work that you do in relation to the death penalty? Much of my work is researching, writing and speaking about the death penalty in Japan, in order to advocate for individuals' cases and in an effort to educate the public. I run the Japan Innocence and Death Penalty Information Centre which monitors every death penalty case in Japan. We also assist numerous defence teams fighting both wrongful convictions and the death penalty in general. My work in Japan also led me into the bowels of the American criminal justice system, and I have visited and supported many death row prisoners there - all of whom have now thankfully had their sentences red...

A minister who preaches that homosexuality merits the death penalty railed against Pride Month at the Arlington City Council meeting in Texas this week, saying the Bible teaches “we should hate pride, not celebrate it.” “God’s already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft, rape, bestiality, and homosexuality are crimes worthy of capital punishment,” Jonathan Shelley, pastor of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth, said at the council meeting Tuesday. The council was taking public comments on whether to proclaim June as Pride Month. It has issued such proclamations for the past several years, TV station KERA reports. Arlington is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, and Shelley said he has church members from Arlington and does business there. “I don’t understand why we celebrate what used to be a crime not long ago,” Shelley said at the meeting, in an appearance captured on video and shared on social media. He cited passages in the Bible condemning gay sex and noted that the Te...

The Governor of Jigawa State, Muhammad Badaru, has assented to a bill stipulating stiffer punishment for rapists. The new Violence Against Persons Prohibition Law stipulates the death penalty for rape convicts who infect their victims with HIV/AIDS. PREMIUM TIMES had reported how the state House of Assembly passed the bill last Wednesday and transmitted it to the governor for assent. While assenting to the bill, Wednesday, Mr Badaru commended the state’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, Musa Aliyu, and the state’s Council of Ulamas for their collaboration leading to the passage of the bill. The governor said he assented to the bill after consultation with the Council of Ulamas who assured him that no section of the law is in conflict with Islam and the culture of the people of Jigawa State. The law, expected to be gazetted soon, also stipulates that the Sharia law will take precedence if any matter in the new law contradicts Islamic teachings. The chairman, Jigawa council...

The Great Tehran Penitentiary also known as Fashafuyeh Prison was built in 2015 primarily for holding suspects and inmates convicted of drug-related offenses. But the judiciary has unlawfully used it in the past years to incarcerate activists and dissidents. With an official capacity of 15,000 inmates, the prison, located in Tehran Province’s Fashafouyeh district, 20 miles southeast of Tehran, is the largest detention facility in the country. Accounts of former prisoners have reported on torture and inhumane conditions including overcrowding, unsanitary living spaces, inadequate food , intolerable heat with severely limited water resources and the denial of medical care for inmates. A recent report by Iran’s state-run Etemad online describes the inhumane living conditions inside the Great Tehran Penitentiary as follows. This prison holds 13,950 inmates on charges of corruption, theft, alcoholic drinks, fraud, smuggling, forging, transfer of other people’s property a...

He said criticizing a religious leader's anti-gay statements is "an attack on the state." The president of Turkey said that a prominent cleric was “absolutely right” to say that homosexuality “brings illnesses.” This past Friday, the head of the Turkish government’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) Ali Erbas used a Ramadan address to denounce homosexuality, which he said “brings illnesses and corrupts generations.” RELATED |  Turkey uses tear gas to break up gay pride gathering While he did not specifically mention the current global pandemic, Erbas said that homosexuality “causes” HIV, which is not true. “Come and let’s fight together to protect people from such evil,” he said. His comments drew criticism from the Ankara Bar Association, which said that they “came from ages ago” and would encourage hate crimes. They also accused the Diyanet of ignoring child abuse in religious institutions. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, yesterd...

Twenty-one-year-old Shamim Pretty has found shelter in a Kampala safe house for the past three years. Shamim Pretty is not her real name. She told VOA when she was 16 years old, her mother kicked her out of their home after learning that her daughter was transgender. Her mother also called the police. “When they took me to the police, my mother was there waiting for me,” said Pretty. “They really mistreated me. There was an officer who was very homophobic. He got hold of me and beat me up.” A group called Icebreakers Uganda provides help to members of the country’s LGBT community. The term LGBT is short for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender. Icebreakers Uganda set up the Kampala safe house in 2012. That was the year before Ugandan lawmakers voted to increase the punishment for homosexuality from life in prison to death. Under pressure from Western governments, Uganda overturned the Anti-Homosexuality Act in 2014. But gay sex remains illegal and members o...

In an effort to help curb Uganda’s HIV transmission rates, Africa’s leading HIV experts have issued a joint statement urging the government to end the criminalisation of homosexuality.  The International AIDS Society (IAS) Governing Council Africa regional representatives which include, Serge Paul Eholié from Côte d’Ivoire, Keletso Makofane from Harvard University, James G. Hakim from Zimbabwe and Kenneth Ngure from Kenya issued the joint statement following reports of the so-called “Kill the Gays” Bill. “Uganda is facing a serious threat to human rights and the HIV response with the announcement of plans to introduce legislation that will impose the death penalty on people found to have had sex with a member of their own sex or to have ‘promoted’ homosexuality,” the joint statement says. “The bill is an expansion of a previous one that was passed five years ago and subsequently invalidated on a technicality. The latest bill would extend penalties to ‘promotion’ of h...

An anti-gay preacher has been banned from entering most of Europe, Dutch officials have confirmed.  Steven Anderson, from Arizona, US, has previously called for the execution of gay people by stoning and said it was ‘good news’ that 49 victims died in the Orlando nightclub mass shooting.  LGBTI campaigners, Dutch MPs and Amsterdam’s mayor, Femke Halsema, called on the government to block the preacher’s entry ahead of his European tour, which included events in Ireland and Sweden.  Dutch security minister Mark Harbers announced he had taken steps to stop Anderson entering the Schengen Area, comprising 26 European countries, for a planned visit to The Netherlands on May 23.  In a statement issued to Dutch parliament on Wednesday, Harbers said: ‘There is no place in a democratic nation like ours for discrimination, incitement to hatred or intolerance and violence on any grounds. ‘Civil liberties are not a license for intolerant behaviour that limits t...

Matt Powell, a young, Christian preacher, argues the government should obey the Bible and start executing gays. Powell recently appeared on the Skylar Fiction Show to explain his conservative Christian views. Once the program begins Powell immediately suggests that gays should be executed by the government just as the Bible dictates, declaring: … as far as homosexuality goes, you know, I believe the Bible puts the death penalty on it. Powell added: I believe it’s disgusting. And incidentally, every scientific test has come back and said that homosexuals are 50 more times likely to get AIDS… we got this AIDS thing spreading… it’s a fact that this is the case. A skeptical Skylar Fiction first rejected Powell’s false claim concerning AIDS, and then asked if Powell was trolling him, noting that his views were so extreme they resembled “the Westboro Baptist Church.” An incredulous Fiction asked: You don’t believe that gay people should be stoned to death, do ...