Death Penalty News

For close to a quarter of a century, death row inmate Hiroko Kazama’s every movement in her 3½ tatami-size cell at the Tokyo Detention House has been watched. When she wakes up, uses the bathroom or creates a piece of art, she does so surveilled by guards who observe her through a ceiling-mounted camera. “Prisoners are never told how or when they are being monitored, which creates a profound sense of fear and uncertainty,” Kazama, 68, said in a statement to The Japan Times. As male guards are not prohibited from surveilling female prisoners, such exposure is particularly distressing for Kazama.

KUALA LUMPUR, May 3 — Singapore’s Court of Appeal will deliver its verdict today on whether the island republic’s Attorney General’s Chambers (AGC) and Prison Authorities committed a serious procedural breach in the investigation process involving a dozen plaintiffs who were convicted of trafficking narcotics and sentenced to death, as well as another for murder. Three of the appellants are Malaysian nationals: Ipoh-born Pannir Selvam Pranthaman, and Johor Baru natives Datchinamurthy Kataiah and Saminathan Selvaraju. Pannir was convicted in 2017 and had his subsequent appeal rejected the following year. Datchinamurthy was convicted in 2015 and had been scheduled to be executed last year. The third Malaysian, Saminathan, was convicted and sentenced to death in 2018.

Ugandan lawmakers on Tuesday approved some of the world’s harshest anti-gay laws, making some crimes punishable by death and imposing up to 20 years in prison for people identifying as LGBT. The new legislation constitutes a further crackdown on LGBT people in a country where same-sex relations were already illegal – punishable by life imprisonment. It targets an array of activities, and includes a ban on promoting and abetting homosexuality as well as conspiracy to engage in homosexuality, Reuters reported. According to the bill, the death penalty can be invoked for cases involving “aggravated homosexuality” – a broad term used in the legislation to describe sex acts committed without consent or under duress, against children, people with mental or physical disabilities, by a “serial offender,” or involving incest.

MEDAN, Indonesia -- Indonesia has been thrown into turmoil following the passage of a controversial new criminal code this week, with critics accusing the government of trying to usher in a new era of authoritarianism. The code is a complete overhaul of the previous version, much of which was based on Dutch law drafted during the colonial period. Indonesia's previous criminal code, known by its Indonesian initials as the KUHP, dates from 1918 and was codified and unified in 1946, following Indonesia's independence the year before. The task of overhauling the law, which included abolishing or rewriting existing articles, as well as adding new ones, was overseen by Edward Omar Sharif Hiariej, the deputy law and human rights minister. But it had been in the works for years, as Indonesia sought to establish its own post-colonial rules and regulations. Here are six things to know about the issues surrounding the new criminal code. What does the new criminal code say? The new code ha...