Turning outrage into action

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

India has been in a state of rage for more than a week over the gangrape of a young woman in a New Delhi bus she had boarded with a male friend. In the national capital, young people have been staging demonstrations daily and the government is clearly worried.

Gruesome acts of sex crime often provoke angry responses and political parties use the opportunity to their advantage. However, the sense of outrage soon dies down and all is forgotten — until another case brings the issue to the fore again.

The wave of protests in the nerve centre of the central government, which has produced echoes across the country, marks a determined effort by youths to turn the outrage into action. Their demand is that the government must ensure that women are safe in the capital and elsewhere in the country. Repeated use of batons, water cannons and teargas has not deterred them.

The gangrape victim, a 23-year old paramedical student, who was brutalised and thrown out of the bus with her friend. is now in hospital, fighting for survival. Her six tormentors are in custody.

Sex crimes are universal but their incidence varies from country to country. A recent multi-country World Health Organisation study said 15% to 71% women aged 15 to 49 years had reported physical or sexual violence by someone close to them at some point in their lives. Such violence not only violates human rights but also poses major health problems, it added.

India’s record in this area is dismal. A global survey by the Thomson Reuters Trust found it the fourth most dangerous place for women, after Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo and Pakistan.

Crimes against women are on the rise in the country. Last year 228,650 cases were reported, as against 215,585 in 2010. The offences included murder, dowry deaths, rape and molestation. In 22,549 out of the 24,206 rape cases, the offenders were persons known to the victims such as relatives, including parents and grandparents, neighbours, friends or colleagues. Of the victims, 10.6% were aged below 14 years, 19.0% between 14 and 18 years, 54.7% between 18 and 30 years, 15.0% between 30 and 50 years and 0.6% above 50 years.

Many of the crimes against women are attributable to feudal influence. Rape of Dalit and Adivasi women and so-called “honour killing” of girls who marry outside the caste fall in this category.

The urban sex crime rate is above the national average, which suggests women are more unsafe in the modern cities than in backward villages. Delhi accounted for 13.3% of sex crimes reported from 53 cities, and was way above Bangalore which was in second place with 5.6%. A close look at the statistics reveals that cities where hoodlums enjoying political patronage abound are the most violence-prone.

The society, which is highly paternalistic, nurtures a traditional bias in favour of the male child, which manifests itself in the high incidence of female foeticide. Police officials often refuse to entertain complaints of sex abuse. When a complaint is registered, investigation may be shoddy. Even judges of the highest court sometimes betray lack of sensitivity in handling such cases.

Instead of improving, things are getting worse. Conviction rate in sex crimes has dropped from 43% to just above 20% in the last 40 years. The youth fury in Delhi is a sign of exasperation with the failure of the legal and political systems.

Some political leaders have sought to placate the public with calls for the death penalty and castration of sex offenders. Their words lack sincerity. Their own parties have MPs and MLAs involved in cases of sexual offence. As many as 34 candidates who contested the last parliamentary elections were facing charges of crime against women. They included nominees of West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress and Tamil Nadu’s All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, both which are headed by feisty women.

The Kerala government last week set up a panel headed by a senior woman police officer to supervise investigation of crimes against women. Commendable as the step is, it is worthwhile to remember that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Senior leaders of both ruling and opposition parties in the state who figured in cases of sex offences in the past have got away without even facing trial.--Gulf Today, Sharjah, December 25, 2012.

Moratorium on death penalty: national campaign planned

A people’s convention, held at Thiruvananthapuram on Monday, demanded an immediate moratorium on capital punishment.

Well-known writer Paul Zacharia, who inaugurated the convention, examined the political, social and psychological aspects of capital punishment in a broad historical context. He also dwelt on the issue of crime and punishment in the light of new scientific findings.

The convention was organized by a group which has been campaigning against the death penalty and in favour of the rights of prisoners for several years. Its efforts have been responsible for some liberal measures taken by the Kerala government with regard to prisoners’ rights.

The convention decided to mount a national campaign on the issue of capital punishment.

It is appropriate that the initiative for a national campaign on the issue should originate in Kerala since a part of the state has had the unique historic experience of managing without the death penalty for several years.

The Maharaja of Travancore had abolished the death penalty by a proclamation shortly before India became independent. The death penalty came back to the region with the introduction of the Constitution of India.

Studies have shown that there was no spurt in crime in Travancore during the period when there was no capital punishment. This disproves the widely canvassed argument that the death penalty is necessary as a deterrent against serious crimes.

A film by R.P. Amudan, a Chennai-based film-maker, titled “Thudarum Neethikkolaikal” (Continuing judicial killings) was screened during the convention.

More than 130 countries have abolished the death penalty. Many of them have dropped it from the penal code while some are not taking recourse to it even though the law provides for it.

India, China and the United States are among the countries which are sticking to capital punishment, bucking the worldwide trend. Sixteen of the 50 states of the US have abolished the death penalty but that country still accounts for a large number of judicial killings.

Campaigner against capital punishment warns of ‘culture of death’

ANNETTE FUENTES
New America Media

Editor's Note: Sister Helen Prejean (photo on right), known for her crusade against the death penalty and her book "Dead Man Walking," warns that the "culture of death" is still celebrated despite waning support for the death penalty in states around the country.

Sister Helen Prejean says it took her 40 years to “wake up” to the social injustices around her in New Orleans, but maybe it would have happened faster “if I had grown up in California.”

With the mesmerizing cadence of a preacher and the down-home humor of her Louisiana upbringing, Prejean spoke at the Diablo Valley Peace and Justice Center in Walnut Creek on March 30. A nun of the order St. Joseph of Medaille, the 60-year-old described awakening to her calling: a crusade against capital punishment. “Enlightenment is a gift,” she said to a packed auditorium. “It’s always a surprise. You never know when it comes and you can’t make it happen.”

Prejean is one of the most visible public figures in the movement to ban the death penalty, owed in great measure to her first book, “Dead Man Walking,” and its 1995 Hollywood film adaptation starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn. Sarandon won an Oscar for her portrayal of the nun. Prejean won wider celebrity. She uses it in her ceaseless campaign to raise consciousness about capital punishment.

Her own consciousness about the criminal justice system began in the early 1980s as nuns brought back stories of liberation theology from their work with the poor in Latin America. Prejean began to work with the poor in her own backyard, in St. Thomas public housing projects, which abutted the convent property. “That’s where all the violence happens,” she explained.

When someone asked her to be a pen pal to a Louisiana State Penitentiary inmate, Prejean said, “Sure. I was an English major. I can write pretty letters.” The inmate was Patrick Sonnier, a confessed murderer, and Prejean began a two-year journey into the heart of darkness of death row where she formed a friendship with Sonnier and became a fervid opponent of capital punishment.

“The first time I visited him, I’m scared, I’m so out of my element. I thought, ‘He murdered somebody!’ I could hear his leg irons dragging across the floor. That was the first sound I hear from him. Then I heard a Cajun accent,” she recalled. “I thought his face would mirror that he had murdered someone. But he was smiling and said, ‘Thank you for visiting me.’”

Prejean visited Sonnier in the role of spiritual advisor until his execution by electrocution in 1984. Since then, she has accompanied five others to their deaths, an act motivated by her belief that all humans are deserving of compassion. “In the web of life, if we can say about some human beings that they are disposable and cut them out of the web of life,” she said, “we have to turn a switch inside ourselves to say, ‘You are not human like us.’”

Official support for the death penalty has been waning in states around the country, Prejean noted, with New Mexico the latest to ban it. But she wagged her finger at California. “You have 600 people on death row. You have got to figure this out. How does this happen?” she said. “Is it connected to any system you have? Why 600? It’s all about changing consciousness.”

Prosecutors and their frequent bias in favor of seeking the death penalty are part of the system that needs changing, Prejean asserted. “After prosecutors say they’re going after murder one, they put on the blinders and say, ‘We’re going after the death penalty.’” In Louisiana, that attitude is part of a “culture of death,” she said, that prosecutors seem to celebrate. “Louisiana is so bad,” Prejean said. “They give each other this little award—the Louisiana Prick award. It shows a pelican flying with a hypodermic needle in its beak.”

To overturn the “culture of death” fostered by capital punishment, Prejean calls for simple, vocal activism by ordinary people. “People are not so enthusiastic about the death penalty as they used to be,” she said, noting that among Catholics, support has dropped significantly to 49 percent. “The more voices raised and the more dialogue, legislators will start to listen. Especially the voices of young people. They love to be loved by young people.”

Amnesty urges India to abolish death penalty

As about 400 people are languishing in Indian prisons on death row, rights body Amnesty International on Friday appealed to the government to immediately impose a moratorium on executions as an interim step towards abolishing death penalty.

The Amnesty International said at least 140 persons were sentenced to death in the last two years while about 400 were still in jails on death row.

In its report 'Lethal Lottery: The Death Penalty in India', the rights body alleged that the administration of death penalty in the country is "manifestly flawed and fraught with error".

"It is shocking that most death sentences handed down in India are based on circumstantial evidence alone. Over the 700 cases examined, more than 100 were found to have resulted in acquittals by Supreme Court.

"...These are perhaps the most blatant examples of arbitrary and deadly potential of the criminal justice system," the report claimed.

The rights body said they feared the Indian leaders lacked the "political courage and human rights leadership" to abolish death penalty.

"Public opinion often supports retention of the death penalty based on the erroneous view that it deters violent crime. It is therefore up to the nation's leadership to explain the futility of retaining executions on this basis," it said.

India votes against UN Committee resolution for moratorium on death penalty

NOT UNEXPECTEDLY, in the UN General Assembly's Third Committee, India on Thursday voted against a resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions. The Committee, however, adopted the resolution, which was sponsored by 87 states, with 99 members voting in favour, 52 against and 33 abstaining.

The resolution, which drew support from countries in all regions, is expected to be endorsed by the General Assembly at its plenary session in December.

Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and the Maldives voted with India against the resolution.

Explaining the reasons for voting against the resolution, an Indian delegate said, “It is the sovereign right of the countries to determine their own legal system.” He pointed out that courts in India imposed the death penalty only in the rarest of rare cases in which the crime was so heinous that it shocked the conscience of an entire nation.

He added, ''Further death sentences in India must be confirmed by a superior court and an accused has the right to appeal to a High Court or the Supreme Court as also to file a mercy petition before the Governor of the State concerned or the President of India.''

Amnesty International, which had campaigned globally in support of the resolution, described it as a “major step towards the abolition of the death penalty worldwide". AI Secretary General Irene Khan called upon all countries to establish a moratorium on executions “as soon as the General Assembly endorses the resolution”.

In 1971 and 1977 the General Assembly had adopted resolutions which simply said it was "desirable" for states to abolish the death penalty. This year’s resolution goes further, calling on states that still maintain the death penalty "to establish a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty".

It also urges these states "to respect international standards that provide safeguards guaranteeing the protection of the rights of those facing the death penalty" and "progressively restrict the use of the death penalty and reduce the number of offences for which it may be imposed."

It further requests the UN Secretary-General to report to the General Assembly in 2008 on the implementation of the resolution.

Although the resolution is not legally binding on states, it carries considerable moral and political weight, as it was adopted by the UN's principal organ in which all members of the organization participate.

So far, 133 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Only 25 countries actually carried out executions in 2006. Data gathered by AI showed a decline in the number of executions to 1,591 from 2,148 in the previous year. Of the known executions, 91% were reported from China, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Sudan and the United States.

Human rights defenders oppose the death penalty because it negates the right to life. It is not so much punishment as a form of social revenge, which originated in primitive society.