Highly immoral, inhumane and a gross misconduct on the part of the Najib administration under the Barisan Nasional government to continue with executions on prisoners on death row when the Attorney General has not presented recommendations to the Cabinet to amend laws on the mandatory death penalty.
In the wee hours of this morning, 24 May 2017, 2 men had been executed at Sungai Buloh Prison – a Malaysian Chinese and Yong Kar Mun, 48 who was sentenced to death in 2009 for armed robbery.
The double execution this morning comes as a grave shock to Members of Parliament, the Malaysian Bar, Amnesty International, the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (SUHAKAM) and other human rights bodies, but most importantly, the unconsolable grief of the 2 families who had not been notified on the exact date and time of the secretive nature of the executions of these two men.
Time and time again, lawmakers have been questioning the government in the Malaysian Parliament on the status of the abolition of the death penalty in Malaysia and stressing on an immediate moratorium on the death penalty pending possible amendments to laws that warrant the death sentence as a method of punishment and revenge.
On 5th September 2016 a Special Task force had been formed on the abolition of the death penalty attended by MP for Ipoh Barat M. Kulasegaran, SUHAKAM, Amnesty International, The Attorney General’s Chambers, academicians, the Malaysian Bar Council, Home Ministry and also the National Security Council. On 1st March this year, the Cabinet was presented with the findings of a research by Roger Hood and International Centre for Law and Legal Studies (I-CeLLS) by the Attorney General himself whereby the Cabinet had decided and agreed that provisional amendments to Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 by including that discretionary powers be given to courts to mete out the punishment befitting the crime.
In the last Parliament sitting in April, Minister in the Prime Minister’s Department Azalina Othman cemented the fact that a memorandum from the Cabinet together with the proposed amendments to the DDA 1952 will be brought again to the Cabinet for further consideration. Dato Azalina also stressed that the mandatory death penalty has proven that it is NOT a deterrent to crime.
The government has committed countless times over the years, to amend provisions in the law to grant discretionary powers to the courts on drug related offences that carry the mandatory death penalty and yet appears apprehensive in committing to see it through. Why then the chest thump on transforming Malaysia into a nation that upholds and respects human rights when it is not serious on imposing a moratorium on all death row cases, across the board until discussions, meetings and even amendments are made?
While the Attorney General prepares the documents on the amendments of the law on the mandatory death penalty, executions are still going on in Malaysian prisons and in this year alone, Malaysia executed 4 people in 5 months!
The Najib administration has violated international human rights standards and laws in its persistent lack of transparency in carrying out executions.
It appears that the Malaysian government is more keen on executing prisoners than making just, reformist, progressive, positive changes in the law to uphold, promote, protect and defend human rights.
Until and unless Prime Minister Najib Razak pull the brakes and halt ALL executions and impose a moratorium until law reforms have been made to safeguard the sanctity and the spirit of the right to life and human rights in Malaysia, vision TN50 will be merely a hollow meaningless effort to transform Malaysia into a developed, progressive nation.
I call upon the Attorney General, the Prime Minister Najib Razak and the PM’s Department to present the findings on the research to abolish the death penalty in the next Cabinet meeting and in the same vein to propose and to impose a moratorium on ALL death row prisoners until the matter is brought to Parliament, debated and passed.
Highly immoral, inhumane and a gross misconduct on the part of the Najib administration under the Barisan Nasional government to continue with executions on prisoners on death row when the Attorney General has not presented recommendations to the Cabinet to amend laws on the mandatory death penalty.
MANILA, 15 February 2017 — As debate continues in the Philippine House of Representatives over a controversial bill to reintroduce capital punishment in the country, members of Congress from the Philippines were joined by regional counterparts today in calling for the legislation to be scrapped.
Gathering in Quezon City along with civil society organizations and representatives from the Philippine Commission on Human Rights, the lawmakers argued that reintroducing the death penalty, which was most recently abolished in 2006, would mark a significant step backward for the Philippines, going against the country’s international commitments and hitting marginalized groups, especially the poor, hardest.
“This bill is wrong for the Philippines and wrong for the region. All the evidence suggests that reintroducing capital punishment will have no clear effect on crime, while victimizing poor Filipinos. The Philippines has twice abolished the death penalty since the end of the Marcos dictatorship. Let us not revive a policy that has not proven to be any deterrence to crime,” said Akbayan Representative Tom Villarin, who hosted the gathering.
“There’s no way around it: reinstituting the death penalty means another offensive in the Philippines’ war on the poor. When it comes to handing down death sentences, the poor suffer disproportionately because they cannot afford to compete in our pay-to-play legal system,” he added.
His comments were echoed by over a dozen parliamentarians from other Southeast Asian countries, who today issued a joint statement in solidarity with their counterparts in the Philippines.
“As lawmakers from across Southeast Asia, we stand opposed to the reintroduction of capital punishment in the Philippines, and we urge our counterparts in the Philippine Congress to reject the bill currently before them that would legalize the practice. We stand shoulder to shoulder with those Philippine legislators who are fighting this bill and support them in their principled struggle, which is based on strong evidence that this policy is wrong for the country,” the statement reads.
Cambodian MP Mu Sochua, who serves as a Board member of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) and was one of the statement’s signatories, said that the Philippines’ current stance on capital punishment made it a regional leader and that it should not abandon this position.
“In Cambodia, we have been forced to deal with the brutal legacies of state-sanctioned killing, which is why our Constitution—like that of the Philippines—outlawed the death penalty. Abolishing capital punishment was the right choice for the Philippines and for Cambodia. We must move forward as a region, not back,” Mu Sochua said.
House Bill 4727 is currently being debated in the Philippine House of Representatives, following approval by the House Justice Committee on 7 December 2016. The bill would allow for the death penalty to be imposed for 21 heinous crimes, including some forms of murder and rape, as well as treason, plunder, and nine drug offenses. According to the bill, the importation, sale, manufacture, cultivation, and possession of drugs in quantities as low as 10 grams for methamphetamines and marijuana oil are all punishable by death.
Lawmakers noted that, if passed and signed into law, the bill would violate the Philippines international legal obligations under the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which the country ratified in 2007 and commits it to the perpetual abolition of capital punishment within its borders. International standards have also increasingly come to regard the death penalty as a barbaric and outdated form of punishment, legislators said.
“At the most basic level, the death penalty is morally wrong and goes against fundamental human rights, including the right to life and the right not to be subjected to cruel and inhuman treatment,” said Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat.
“On top of that, it would violate our international commitments to revive capital punishment, which could jeopardize our international standing and economic growth. There is simply no compelling reason to revive this form of punishment, and the potential negative repercussions are enormous.”
Related legal concerns led last week to the suspension of hearings on the death penalty in the Senate, which is currently considering its own legislation to reintroduce capital punishment.
Lawmakers urged their colleagues to focus on addressing the root causes of crime and drug use instead of pushing for a revival of the death penalty. They also stressed the need to prioritize reform of key institutions in the criminal justice system, including the police and the judiciary.
“Particularly given the flaws so obvious today in our criminal justice system, it’s clear that the death penalty is not a sustainable path toward building a safer and more prosperous nation,” said Albay Representative Edcel Lagman, who was the principal author of Republic Act No. 9346 prohibiting the imposition of the death penalty back in 2006.
“We should be focused on reforming and strengthening the justice system, combatting corruption, and addressing core economic and social woes that lead to crime and drug use. Reviving capital punishment accomplishes none of those goals.”
Malaysian MP Kasthuri Patto, who joined legislators in Quezon City, stressed that parliamentarians from across the region believe in the cause of death penalty abolition, despite the actions of some of their governments.
“Although several Southeast Asian countries—including mine—have yet to abolish the death penalty, there are strong movements that support the goal of abolition among MPs, statesmen, and civil society in and around this region. As defenders of human rights, we have looked to the Philippines for guidance in this struggle. We hope that your country will continue to provide this important form of moral leadership for the ASEAN region and support the right to life,” she said.
“Laws and policies in every ASEAN country, in relation to human rights and particularly on the abolition of the death penalty, will naturally have a huge forcible and affirmative snowball effect in the region.”
While the Philippines and Cambodia are the only ASEAN member states to have legally abolished capital punishment, three other countries—Laos, Myanmar, and Brunei Darussalam—are considered abolitionist in practice, having not executed anyone in the past 25 years. In addition, ASEAN observer state Timor-Leste has legally abolished the death penalty. Five ASEAN member states—Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam—retain capital punishment.
JAKARTA — Parliamentarians from across ASEAN today expressed alarm at what appears to be an attempt by the administration of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and its allies in the Philippine House of Representatives to railroad through Congress legislation to reintroduce the death penalty in the country.
Members of ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) urged President Duterte and Philippine legislators to immediately desist in their pursuit of a reinstatement of the death penalty, calling on them to respect the Philippines’ international obligations and avoid undermining the country’s much-respected role as a regional leader on human rights protections.
“As citizens of ASEAN, we have looked to the Philippines as a regional leader in the global movement to abolish the death penalty since its decision to do so in 2006,” said APHR Chairperson Charles Santiago, a member of the Malaysian Parliament.
“Thus, it would be an incredible setback to our collective struggle if the Philippines were to take the dramatic step backward of reinstating the death penalty. The move would not only indicate a rejection of hard-fought progress, but would cause other ASEAN nations to question the Philippines’ commitment to the full gamut of international treaties it has signed.”
The Philippines formally abolished capital punishment in 2006 and ratified the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), aiming at the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, in 2007.
“Since 2006, the Philippines’ move to abolish capital punishment has inspired other countries, including Malaysia, Singapore, and Vietnam, to restrict their use of the death penalty, which denotes positive regional progress in the move toward abolition. It would be a tragic blow to this regional leadership role to turn back now,” Santigo said.
On Tuesday, 29 November, the Philippine House Sub-Committee on Judicial Reform voted to approve House Bill No. 1, which would reinstate the death penalty in the Philippines for all heinous crimes. The bill will now proceed to the House Committee on Justice for further debate and approval. The bill’s proponents have indicated that they would like to see it passed by the House before the start of the Christmas recess on 16 December.
Regional parliamentarians urged members of Congress in the Philippines to reject the bill. In addition to violating its international commitments, reinstating the death penalty in the Philippines is unnecessary, APHR said. Parliamentarians noted that there is an academic consensus worldwide, including in Asia, that the death penalty is not an effective means of combating crime.
“We remind Philippine officials that human rights were never a Western concept and that they are rooted in the anti-colonial struggles of developing countries,” said APHR Vice Chair Mu Sochua, a member of the Cambodian National Assembly.
“Human rights are universal, indivisible, inalienable, and inherent to all people, and states are duty-bound to protect them. We fully expect the Philippines to be a crucial partner as we work together towards a more civilized and just ASEAN.”
Tomorrow will be a week since the “secretive” execution of 3 men in Taiping. They had been sentenced the death penalty for a crime that took place in 2005 in Sungai Petani.
The families had been given a letter from the Taiping Prisons Department on Wednesday 23rd March informing them that they may visit their sons on Thursday after 9am and that they will be carrying out the executions in the soonest time. The letter concludes that the families may also discuss on claiming the bodies of the 3 men after the execution for their burials.
The letters had been dated 10th March and according to the families, they had only received them on the 23rd of March, a delay of 13 days. Was this deliberate to deprive the families of help and support from various bodies who may try to halt the executions?
While we do not condone or defend the crimes committed of these 3 men and other offenders, the nature in which the executions had taken place had been extremely shady, “secretive” and hasty. To top it all, questions have been raised if any particular case had become a victim of the miscarriage of justice. It is apparent that the prisons were bent on executing the 3 men come hell or high water.
In a written reply to Puchong MP Gobind Singh dated 29 March 2016 on the number of death row inmates from 2010, their offences, the number of executions carried out and the number of inmates who had been pardoned it was shocking to discover that there had been 12 executions from year 2010 till February 2016, 829 have been charged and given the death penalty for the crimes of murder, drug trafficking, firearms related offences as well kidnaps. 95 had been pardoned by the Agong or the Sultan of any particular state.
From 1998 to 2015, there are 1022 inmates on death row with over 600 Malaysians and the rest are foreigners.
What is the selection process for those who have been scheduled for execution? From discussions with Shamini Darshni from Amnesty International, some inmates have been serving time for over 13 years now and don’t know if their names would be up next to be executed. Who selects who will be up next? No one really knows for sure.
In November last year, a roundtable discussion had been held in the Malaysian Parliament by Parliamentarians for Global Action for the Abolition of the Death Penalty on initiatives, commitments and particularly reforms on the state of inmates on death row and the abolition of the mandatory death penalty.
It was co-hosted by YB Mohd Nazri Aziz as the Chair of the PGA National Group and also YB Nancy Shukri Minister Minister of Law in the Prime Minister’s Department along with Luc Vandebon EU Ambassador to Malaysia, Justice Dato Mah Weng Kwai, MPs from Malaysia, namely YB Kulasegaran, YB Shamsul Iskandar, myself and international MPs as well.
The main outcome of the meeting was that:
(i) the Malaysian government pledged to introduce a bill aiming to abolish the mandatory death penalty for all offences and a review of the existing death row cases.
(ii) the Malaysian Government instate an official moratorium on executions pending the assessment of the report on effectiveness of the death penalty;
(iii) the Malaysian Government ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, in particular its Second Optional Protocol and to remove the reservation to the Convention on the Rights of the Child allowing for capital punishment for children to properly reflect the position of the law under the Child Act of 2001.
Under Malaysian law, the death penalty is mandatory for treason (Article 12A, Penal Code), murder (Article 302, Penal Code), firearms offences (Articles 57(1) Articles 3 and 3A of the Firearms (Increased Penalties) Act) and drug-trafficking (Article 39B, Dangerous Drugs Act).
Crimes that are punishable with discretionary death penalty, is some offences linked to treason (Article 121, Penal Code), mutiny (Article 132, Penal Code), giving false evidence to procure conviction of a capital offence (Article 194, Penal Code), abetment of suicide (Article 305, Penal Code), offences resulting in death or with intent to kill (Articles 307(2), 364 and 376(4), Penal Code), gang-robbery with murder (Article 396, Penal Code) and trafficking in firearms (Article 7(1), Firearms Act).
When there is a possibility of judicial blunders how can one ensure just and right sentences have been rendered to the accused?
The Malaysian government should walk the talk that there shall be no executions until the bill to abolish the “mandatory” death penalty is tabled in the Dewan Rakyat.
Attorney General and the Malaysian government should not play Russian Roulette with the lives of inmates on death row by arbitrary, “secretive” and hasty executions and should immediately impose a moratorium on executions of all crimes.
JAKARTA — Lawmakers from across Southeast Asia joined with governments, civil society groups and others around the world in calling on Indonesia to immediately halt plans to carry out further executions and to reconsider a moratorium on the death penalty with a view to abolishing it.
In January, Indonesia put six convicts to death, including five foreigners, and 64 others have exhausted their appeals and will be executed soon, the authorities say. The recent executions have prompted objections and appeals for restraint from governments and human rights groups across the globe.
ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) sincerely hopes that Indonesian President Joko Widodo is giving serious consideration to the strong and consistent calls for careful deliberation of his government’s decision to resume executions.
“This is not about whether Indonesia has the right to carry out executions under its legal system; it’s a questions of how President Joko Widodo is choosing to isolate himself and his government from the international community and Indonesian civil society on this issue,” said Charles Santiago, Chairperson of APHR and Malaysian Member of Parliament.
“There is no benefit from rushing forward with these state-sponsored killings and APHR implores the President to call a temporary halt to the executions to allow for inclusive debate and careful consideration of the implications. We all know that judicial processes are not flawless. You cannot take back a wrongful execution.”
According to reports, at least 10 individuals, including nationals from France, Australia, the Philippines, Brazil, Ghana and Nigeria, are at imminent risk of execution. Three death row prisoners were transferred by the authorities to Nusakambangan Island on March 4, the location of the scheduled executions but, APHR understands, the authorities have not yet given the inmates and their legal representatives the 72-hour notice of execution as required by law.
APHR is deeply concerned for the lives of these inmates and urgently calls on the Indonesian government to establish a moratorium on all executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty and to commute all death sentences to terms of imprisonment.
“There really is no convincing evidence at all that the death penalty works to deter people from particular crimes more than other forms of punishment. As the leader of one of ASEAN’s more progressive nations, President Joko Widodo should call for a national pause to reconsider the very compelling arguments against the death penalty,” said Kraisak Choonhavan, Vice Chair of APHR.
