A global
trend away from the use of the death penalty for drug-related offenses means
countries that do carry out executions are on the extreme fringe, a minority on
the world stage
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| Supporters of Australians on death row in Indonesia Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran light candles during a vigil at Martin Place in Sydney on April 28, 2015. The two were executed by firing squad hours later. (AFP Photo/Saeed Khan) |
Kuala
Lumpur. Chen Chin-Hsien walked up on stage and introduced himself before the
audience: a civil court judge in Taiwan for the past four and a half years, and
before that serving on the bench in juvenile and criminal courts.
“Twenty-one
years ago,” he declared, “I believed firmly in retribution and the death
penalty.”
But
everything changed when, during a public discussion on judicial issues several
years ago, a young woman asked him, “What if some day one of the defendants you
have sentenced to death is found to be wrongfully convicted? What would you
do?”
It was the
first time anyone had brought up the possibility to him, Chen went on in his
speech in Kuala Lumpur last week.
“I looked
at her for a long time and I couldn’t answer her. Eventually I said, ‘I don’t
really know. Maybe quit my job.’”
It was a
possibility that, mercifully, Chen never had to face. One of the rare cases he
heard in which the death penalty was prescribed involved a mentally ill young
man on trial for slitting a child’s throat in an arcade.
Given the
defendant’s mental condition, the panel of three judges, Chen among them, chose
not to hand down the death penalty — and immediately drew condemnation from the
press and society.
“This was
no surprise. But the surprising thing was that we were also attacked so hard by
our fellow judges. No judge supported our verdict. There are not many judges in
Taiwan brave enough to resist such pressure,” Chen said.
He
acknowledged the long tradition of martial justice in Chinese society, but
argued that in the modern age, the death penalty is primitive and cruel.
Tide is
turning
Chen was
speaking at a congress hosted last week by the organization Together Against
the Death Penalty/Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (ECPM) and the Anti-Death
Penalty Asian Network (ADPAN). The ECPM has organized similar congresses on the
abolition of the death penalty, but the Kuala Lumpur event was the first to be
held in Asia, and served to highlight the use of the death penalty in the
region, mostly for drug-related offenses.
Indonesia
was, until 2012, among a growing number of countries exercising a de factor
moratorium on the use of the death penalty. All that changed this year with the
execution of 14 people, 12 of them foreigners, for drug-related offenses,
drawing widespread criticism and riling diplomatic ties.
But the
more than 300 delegates at the ECPM congress also heard about how the problem
was not limited just to Indonesia: Singapore maintains a mandatory death
sentence for drug-trafficking.
Malaysia
also prescribes death for trafficking, but the tide is turning in that country,
says Steven Thiru, the president of the Malaysian Bar Association.
The
association has repeatedly passed resolutions at its annual meetings calling
for the abolition of the death penalty, and while the government has never
acquiesced, the public is increasingly in support of ending capital punishment.
An opinion poll conducted in 2013 by the bar association and the Death Penalty
Project, a leading human rights organization based in the Britain, found that
the majority of the Malaysian public surveyed did not support the mandatory
death penalty for drug trafficking, murder or firearm offenses.
Thiru said
there were no more barriers to abolishing the death penalty in the country. “It
is up to the government and the legislators to drive the conversation forward.
If they lead, the public will follow,” he said.
Debunking
the myth
In the
wider context, the position maintained by law enforcement in Indonesia,
Singapore and Malaysia is increasingly a marginal one. Six Asian countries —
Nepal, Bhutan, Philippines, Cambodia, Timor Leste and Mongolia — have already
abolished the death penalty from their statutes.
Brunei,
Myanmar and South Korea are abolitionists in practice, meaning they still
retain the death penalty in their legislation but have not carried out any
executions for some time.
Only 25
countries in Southeast Asia, the Pacific islands and the Middle East routinely
carry out executions, said Raphaël Chenuil Hazan, the executive director of the
ECPM.
“This trend
debunks the myth that abolishing the death sentence is a Western value,” Hazan
said.
Britain-based
Harm Reduction International goes deeper in its report “The Death Penalty for
Drug Offences: Global Overview 2012.”
The report
identifies 49 countries in the Asia and MENA (Middle East and North Africa)
region as “retentionist,” or having the death penalty on their statutes; of
these, only 13 carry out executions, and only five do so regularly.
Of the 92
retentionist countries and territories worldwide, a third prescribe the death
penalty for drug-related offenses; only one in seven actively execute drug
offenders, and only one in 18 do so with any regularity or in any great number.
That means
that countries that do carry out death sentences are on the extreme fringe, a
minority on the global stage.
Avoiding
the real issues
Rick Lines,
the executive director of HRI, said the decision to carry out death sentences
was not a cultural, social or regional trend, but instead a mere political
choice, which is what he saw happen in Indonesia, which went from two
executions in the last five years to 13 in the last five months.
The fact
that most of those executed were foreigners played to the narrative of drugs as
a foreign threat, which Lines said was merely a way for the authorities to
avoid dealing with developing health or harm reduction policies and therapies
to treat people living with drug abuse domestically.
Julian
McMahon, a lawyer for the late Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the two
Australians executed in Indonesia on April 29, refuted the Indonesian
government’s insistence that the death penalty served as an effective deterrent
against the drug trade.
“The drug
kingpins move drugs by the tons. It’s laughable to think that by executing
these two boys, it will deter consumption or distribution of drugs in
Indonesia. Nobody is talking about the distribution or the making of drugs
already happening inside Indonesia,” he said.
McMahon,
who usually avoids giving out personal stories to the media because they tend
to divert attention from the actual legal work being done by his office, made a
rare exception at the congress in Kuala Lumpur.
“When I
first met those boys in 2006, they were ordinary punk criminals,” he said.
“But they
became poster boys for what the prison reform system could be. They turned the
prison around into a safe learning space.”
He also
shared his story of spending time with Mary Jane Veloso, a Filipina drug mule
who was also slated to be executed with the others, and her two sons, all of
them believing that it was the end.
“She held
her two boys, thinking it would be for the last time. She sang to them, the
boys sang to me, I gave them chocolate,” McMahon said.
When the
shots rang out on the Central Java prison island of Nusakambangan, the grief of
the Veloso family was immense. They were convinced she had been shot, only to
be notified later that she had been granted a last-minute reprieve.
“And to
think she’s going to face all of this again is just inhumane,” McMahon said.
He said
what upset him the most about the Indonesian government’s approach to the issue
was that there was no pretense whatsoever that President Joko Widodo had read
the pleas for clemency: It was simply decided that 64 people must die, even
though many of them, Chan and Sukumaran among them, still had appeals pending.
The
Australians’ appeal hearing was scheduled for May 12; they were shot dead less
than two weeks before their court date.
“There is
no country in the world that deployed more energy, money and diplomats to get
their citizens out of death row than Indonesia. And they do so in the most
praiseworthy way,” McMahon said.
“So imagine
my disappointment when all my legal efforts were met with the simple argument
of trying to interfere with the sovereignty of another country.”
For the
lawyer, the bitter experience of the Chan and Sukumaran case is the exact
scenario that Chen, the Taiwanese judge, has always dreaded.
“Criminal
judgment is not just about retribution, but also about a settlement between
society and the defendant. In the rehabilitation process, society can embrace
this defendant, or the defendant can embrace society again,” Chen said.
“But death
is the ultimate retribution that leaves no chance for this settlement process
to happen.”
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