Subject:
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The use of the death penalty against child offenders.
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:31:37 GMT
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Viewed:
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445 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Tore Eriksson wrote:
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Frank Filz wrote:
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I’m just not sure how we can expect to see democracy in a country like Iraq.
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Well, what is democracy anyway? Even if USA had been located in Europe, it
wouldn’t even qualify to join the EU. Death penalty isn’t worthy a democracy
according to our standards.
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Key quote:
The use of the death penalty against child offenders – people under 18 at the
time of the crime – is clearly prohibited under international law, yet a handful
of countries persist with child executions.
Since January 1990 Amnesty International has documented 35 executions of child
offenders in eight countries– the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Nigeria,
Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, the USA, China and Yemen. The USA carried out 19
executions – more than all other countries combined.
During the same period, several countries raised to 18 the minimum age for
application of the death penalty, in accordance with international law. Yemen
and Zimbabwe raised the minimum age to 18 in 1994, as did China in 1997 and
Pakistan in 2000. A similar move is under way in Iran.
The USA is also the only country which executes “offenders” with mental
problems.
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Don’t know if it’s an urban legend, but I’ve heard that in some US states, you
aren’t even free to make love in certain positions. If that is correct, how
can you claim that you wish to bring “freedom” with your bombs?
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...it as all a matter of winning hearts & minds... within the US electorate!
As an aside, I enjoyed this
rant:
...in an echo of the Tikriti nepotism that characterised Saddam Hussein’s rule,
his nemesis Ahmed Chalabi, a convicted fraudster and the principal puppet in the
US-appointed governing council, has chosen his nephew, a Yale-educated Wall
Street corporate lawyer with no criminal law experience, to try the former
regime prisoners.
No legal justice can come from rampant illegality. The governing council is not
the government of Iraq - and neither is Bremer or his successor, John
Negroponte, the former point man for the Nicaraguan Contras: those slayers of
priests, nuns and literacy teachers in the Reagan era. They are all in Baghdad
as a result of an illegal invasion and occupation.
And, of course, there will be no open trial. How could there be when Saddam
would make every effort to put the west on trial, adducing its former alliance
with him? If he is tried for Halabja, he will remind us that for months after
the chemical attack on the Kurds, the US claimed it had been carried out by the
Iranians; and that he received British ministers, and even weapons, long
afterwards.
Scott A
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