Death Penalty News

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.

The most intellectually challenging film I have ever seen about capital punishment. Definitely a must-see. DPN review and YouTube trailer available in our 'Films & Documentaries' section — DPN editor As far as European cinema goes, there are few figures quite admired in critical circles as the inimitable Krzysztof Kieślowski. Known for his Dekalog series of 1989, as well as The Double Life of Veronique and the Three Colours trilogy, Kieślowski embodied everything so extraordinary about the power of European cinema and that of his native Poland in turn.

For the first time, the Vatican has given an entire family one of Catholicism's highest honors. Jozef Ulma, his wife Wiktoria and their seven children were killed by Nazis in 1944 along with eight Jews they were hiding. The Vatican on Sunday beatified an entire family for the first time to honor it for giving shelter to Jews during World War II while Poland was under German occupation. Jozef Ulma, 44, his pregnant wife Wiktoria, 31, and their children, all under 8 years of age, were killed by German police on March 24, 1944, after being betrayed to Nazi authorities for sheltering eight Jewish people in their attic. The eight Jews were also killed.

Poland’s hardline conservative government has opened up a new front in its increasingly fractious relationship with the rest of the EU, after its Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, said he backed a return of the death penalty, which is banned in the bloc. Mr Morawiecki said the country needed a “rethink” of its position, describing the post-Cold War abolition of capital punishment “was a premature innovation of the 1990s”.

A former secretary who worked for the commander of a Nazi concentration camp has been convicted of complicity in the murders of more than 10,500 people. Irmgard Furchner, 97, was taken on as a teenaged shorthand typist at Stutthof and worked there from 1943 to 1945. Furchner, the first woman to be tried for Nazi crimes in decades, was given a two-year suspended jail term. Although she was a civilian worker, the judge agreed she was fully aware of what was going on at the camp. Some 65,000 people are thought to have died in horrendous conditions at Stutthof, including Jewish prisoners, non-Jewish Poles and captured Soviet soldiers. Furchner was found guilty of aiding and abetting the murder of 10,505 people and complicity in the attempted murder of five others. As she was only 18 or 19 at the time, she was tried in a special juvenile court. At Stutthof, located near the modern-day Polish city of Gdansk, a variety of methods was used to murder detainees and thousands died in gas chambers...

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis on Saturday declared as martyrs a Polish couple who were executed by German police during World War II for hiding Jews in their farmhouse. A farmer and beekeeper, Jozef Ulma, and wife Wiktoria in the Polish town of Markowa hid several members of the Jewish community, who were being hunted down during the German occupation of Poland. An informant apparently betrayed them, and the Jews were killed by police in March 1944. The couple were then shot to death along with their six young children, the oldest of whom was 8 years old. Recognition of martyrdom would permit the couple to be beatified, the last formal step before possible sainthood. After beatification, a miracle attributed to their intercession would be necessary for eventual canonization, as the Catholic church's sainthood process is called. According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem, the couple had witnessed the execution of Jews who were seized from their h...

Homosexuality is illegal in the Gulf state and punishment can include imprisonment. Under Sharia law, acts of homosexuality can also be punished by flogging and the death penalty. But Mark Bullingham, the FA’s chief executive who has visited Qatar to better understand the issues, insists they “have been given those assurances that people from the LGBT+ communities will be allowed to go to Qatar and support the [England] team.” In 2019, Forbes listed Qatar as the second-most dangerous place in the world for LGBT+ travellers. RELATED | Qatar World Cup 2022: How the race to host turned into pure corruption and criminality Bullingham added: “We have asked the question as to whether all of our fans will be able to come, particularly those from LGBTQ community, and we received the unequivocal answer that absolutely everybody is welcome to come to Qatar.” Bullingham believes travelling to Qatar has helped him better understand the progress the country has made, saying that the rights of migra...

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — The authoritarian president of Belarus made a dramatic show of defiance Sunday against the massive protests demanding his resignation, toting a rifle and wearing a bulletproof vest as he strode off a helicopter that landed at his residence while demonstrators massed nearby. In the 15th day of the largest and most determined protests ever in independent Belarus, a crowd of about 200,000 rallied against President Alexander Lukashenko in a square in Minsk, the capital. They then marched to another rally and approached the Independence Palace, the president’s working residence. Video from the state news agency Belta showed a government helicopter landing on the grounds and Lukashenko getting off holding what appeared to be a Kalashnikov-type automatic rifle. No ammunition clip was visible in the weapon, suggesting that Lukashenko, who cultivates an aura of machismo, aimed only to make a show of aggression. Protests started Aug. 9 after a presidential el...

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Authorities in Belarus have blocked an array of news media websites reporting on the country shaken by two weeks of protests against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. The Belarusian Association of Journalists said Saturday that more than 20 sites had been blocked, including those of U.S.-funded Radio Liberty and Belsat, a Polish-funded satellite TV channel focusing on Belarus. On Friday, the state publishing house stopped printing top independent newspapers the Narodnaya Volya and Komsomolskaya Pravda, citing equipment malfunction. Protests unprecedented in Belarus for their size and duration broke out after the Aug. 9 presidential election in which official results handed Lukashenko a sixth term in office.  Protesters allege the results were manipulated and are calling for Lukashenko to resign. Police responded harshly in the first days of the protests, arresting some 7,000 people, beating many of them. But the protests have...

EU leaders will hold a special online summit on Wednesday (19 August) backing Belarusian protesters and telling Russia not to interfere, top EU officials said on Monday. European Council president Charles Michel called for the extraordinary video summit as mass protests continued in Belarus against long-time president Alexander Lukashenko, who claimed a landslide victory in an election on 9 August, which the opposition says was rigged. Lukashenko's security forces brutally cracked down on initial protests, which prompted the biggest rally in the country's modern history over the weekend against the strongman. "The people of Belarus have the right to decide on their future and freely elect their leader," said Michel in a tweet announcing the summit of the 27 leaders. "Violence against protesters is unacceptable and cannot be allowed," he added. EU leaders are also expected to send a message to Russia not to meddle in Belarus, as Russian...

MINSK, Belarus (AP) — Tens of thousands of people flooded the heart of the Belarus capital of Minsk on Friday in a show of anger over a brutal police crackdown this week on peaceful protesters that followed a disputed election, and authorities sought to ease rising public fury by freeing at least 2,000 who were jailed after earlier demonstrations. Factory workers marched across the city shouting “Go away!” in a call for authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko to resign after 26 years of iron-fisted rule that was extended in an election Sunday that protesters denounced as rigged. Friday's crowds grew to more than 20,000, filling central Independence Square. About a dozen soldiers guarding the nearby government headquarters lowered their riot shields in what the demonstrators saw as a sign of solidarity, and women rushed to embrace and kiss the guards. As the protesters rallied on the square, Lukashenko dismissed them as puppets manipulated from abroad. During...

Andrzej Duda, Poland’s staunchly homophobic president, has been officially sworn in for a second term following his election win last month. Duda was sworn in this morning (6 August) after he took an oath before the country’s National Assembly, the combined chambers of Poland’s parliament. “Accepting the office of the president of the Republic of Poland at the nation’s will, I solemnly swear that I will keep up my devotion to the provisions of the constitution,” Duda said, according to Poland In. “I will firmly guard the dignity of the nation, sovereignty and security of the country. I swear that the good of the homeland and wellbeing of the citizens will be my first precept.” The president – who hinged his re-election campaign on his harsh opposition to LGBT+ rights – will attend a Catholic mass later today at St John Metropolitan Church in Warsaw, and will take command of the Polish armed forces later today. LGBT+ people in Poland fear for their safety as Andrzej...