Death Penalty News

Crimes now punishable by death seem to now include anti-state propaganda and illegal manufacturing, according to reports North Korea is expanding its list of crimes punishable by death, according to reports. Supreme leader Kim Jong Un's regime expanded the list of offenses warranting the death penalty from 11 to 16 via revisions of criminal law, according to Yonhap News Agency.

Two Uighur ex-government officials in China's Xinjiang have been handed death sentences for carrying out "separatist activities", a court said, as Beijing comes under increasing fire for its actions towards minority groups in the region. Shirzat Bawudun, a former head of the Xinjiang department of justice has been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on the charge of "splitting the country", according to a statement released Tuesday on the Xinjiang government website. Bawudun had conspired with a terrorist organisation, taken bribes, and carried out separatist activities, Wang Langtao, vice president of the Xinjiang Higher People's Court, said at a press conference. Bawudun was found guilty of colluding with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) -- listed as a "terrorist" group by the United Nations -- after meeting a key member of the group in 2003, according to state news agency Xinhua. The US removed the group from its list of terror...

Torture, humiliation and coerced confessions are rampant in North Korea's pretrial detention system which treats people as worth "less than an animal", a rights group said Monday in a report on the country's opaque legal processes. US-based Human Rights Watch drew on interviews with dozens of former North Korean detainees and officials to highlight what it called inhuman conditions at detention facilities that often amount to torture. Nuclear-armed North Korea, accused of widespread rights abuses by the United Nations and other critics, is a "closed" country and little is known about its criminal justice system. Mistreatment of detainees - beating with a stick or kicking - was "especially harsh" in the early stages of pretrial detention, interviewees said. "The regulations say there shouldn't be any beatings, but we need confessions during the investigation and early stages of the preliminary examination," a former police officer sai...

May 11 (UPI) -- Capital punishment is still widespread in North Korea, but public executions and other forms of severe punishment could be receding, according to a South Korean report. State-owned think tank Korea Institute for National Unification said Monday in its annual white paper on North Korea human rights there is no evidence the right to life is guaranteed in the Kim Jong Un regime, Yonhap reported. The 2020 white paper, based on testimonies of defectors resettled in the South, cited cases of public executions for North Koreans accused of drug trafficking, murder and even watching South Korean videos. The South Korean research found the cases of the death penalty for drug trafficking as well as watching or disseminating South Korean media has been "increasing in recent years." The paper said political prison camps continue to flourish in the North. These facilities are separate from officially registered prisons in the regime and inflict "arbi...

“States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dealers don’t have a drug problem,” the president claimed, falsely. President Donald Trump is campaigning on criminal justice reform efforts that reduce sentences for nonviolent offenders, while suggesting he’d like the American justice system to work more like ones in authoritarian countries where drug dealers are executed after “fair but quick” trials. If those two things sound hard to square with each other, that’s because they are. But the contrast serves as an especially stark illustration of the incoherency at the core of Trumpism. "Fair and quick trials" Just days after his Super Bowl ad and State of the Union speech highlighted his support for legislation that makes a modest effort to reduce prison sentences at the federal level, Trump on Monday said the best way to further reduce the quantity of fentanyl in the US is to follow China’s lead. “States with a very powerful death penalty on drug dea...

A stark map has revealed the 318 places in North Korea where people have been publicly executed - most commonly for theft or damage to property. Using testimonies from more than 600 defectors the human rights researchers found executions commonly took place on river banks, fields, market places, hills and mountains, sports and school grounds. Of the 715 mentions of charges resulting in an execution it was most commonly related to theft or damage to property, including food and livestock (238 times) followed by violent crime (115 times) and political crimes (73 times). Witnesses also told the Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) - the organisation which undertook the research - that they were often forced to watch the executions. The size of the assembled crowds at each public execution varying in size from hundreds to thousands - with 4 in 5 of those interviewed saying they had witnessed a public execution in their lifetime - the youngest witness to a public exe...

North Korea continues to carry out state killings as a way of intimidating its citizens, campaigners said Tuesday, although the number of executions may be declining in the face of mounting international pressure. Pyongyang has long been accused of using state killings to instill fear among its population, and leader Kim Jong Un has executed top aides in the past -- including his powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek, in 2013. A new report by the Transitional Justice Working Group documented hundreds of public executions over several decades -- the most recent in 2015 -- for charges as trivial as stealing copper or a cow. "The rules on public execution demand that 3 shooters fire 3 rounds each into the body of the condemned person, for a total of 9 bullets," said Seoul-based group, which seeks to highlight what is says are grievous human rights abuses by the North. This was a widely used tactic, especially against the elites, it added, "designed to maximise ...

Chechnya’s leader President Ramzan Kadyrov Chechnya’s leader President Ramzan Kadyrov has defended honour killings of gay men. Speaking to HBO, the Chechen president said that he would defend the rights of families to murder their gay relatives. ‘Honour killings’, or the murder of relatives due to the belief that the victim has brought shame to the family, are illegal in Russia and Chechnya. Kadyrov has ruled the Muslim republic since 2007 after the assassination of his father. In the TV interview, he declared: “If we have such people here, then I’m telling you officially, their relatives won’t let them be, because of our faith, our mentality, customs and traditions. “Even if it’s punishable under the law, we would still condone it.” Kadyrov not only rules over Chechnya, but also runs the Akhmat Fight Club gym and the Akhmat MMA promotion in the Chechen capital of Grozny. The interview with HBO was to promote the country’s sports industry – with num...

NORTH KOREA carries out public executions on river banks and at school grounds and marketplaces for charges such as stealing copper from factory machines, distributing media from South Korea and prostitution, a report issued on Wednesday said. The report, by a Seoul-based non-government group, said the often extra-judicial decisions for public executions are frequently influenced by “bad” family background or a government campaign to discourage certain behaviour. The Transitional Justice Working Group (TJWG) said its report was based on interviews with 375 North Korean defectors from the isolated state over a period of two years. Reuters could not independently verify the testimony of defectors in the report. The TJWG is made up of human rights activists and researchers and is led by Lee Younghwan, who has worked as an advocate for human rights in North Korea. It receives most of its funding from the US-based National Endowment for Democracy, which in turn is funded ...