Death Penalty report 2012

Last month, Amnesty International published its yearly report on the death penalty. If we exclude the figures of executions carried out in China ^(*), the number of (confirmed) executions is 682, which stays virtually unchanged from 2011 (676).

Once again, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the USA were the five biggest executioners in the world, next to them 16 other countries executed the death penalty last year.

"Although the global trend towards abolition remained strong, 2012 saw a disappointing resumption of executions in a number of countries, notably Gambia, India, Japan and Pakistan."

Dear society

source: deredactie.be

Dear Society: teach your sons not to harass, rather than teaching your daughter how to dress. (a sign held at the rally for the Indian gang rape victim)

More:

• Is being attractive provocative now? (Wim, January 4, 2011)
• "Indian gang rape suspects risk death penalty" (Dutch only: deredactie.be, January 3, 2013)
• Trial opens of New Delhi rape suspects (Asia News, January 3, 2013)
• Verdachten verkrachting India pleiten onschuldig (Dutch only: deredactie.be, February 2, 2013)

Connecticut 17th US state to abolish death penalty

Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut signed a bill into law on Wednesday 25th of April 2012 that abolishes the death penalty. (CNN)

The death penalty is replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole. (NBC)

Taboo on homosexuality

• Youth activists in James Town, Accra, Ghana, try to stop a marriage between two women (JHR, March 11)

• Students attacked after hanging out at a holebi party in Leuven, Belgium (Vandaag.be, February 25)

• Four men arrested for killing Ihsane Jarfi when he left a holebibar in Liège, Belgium (De Morgen, May 4)

• Despite tough anti-gay bill of 2009, which proposed the death penalty for sexual minorities, Uganda’s gays see some progress in public opinion war (Washington Post, March 20)

More:

• Gay rights in Uganda (PBS, February 24)
• 'Hang them': Uganda paper publishes photos of gays (NWOR)

17th of May, international day against homophobia:

• Homophobia Day 2012
• Dag tegen homofobie (Franky's blog, in Dutch)
• Vimeo
• Shortfilm 'Homophobia' by  Gregor Schmidinger (Vangardist)

Update:

• The Poltics of Being Gay (Farah Momen at JHR Ghana on June 6, 2012)
• “Pedophiles or other sexual deviants are not welcome in Ghana.” (Noah Wernikowski at JHR Ghana on June 18, 2012)
• Nigerian lawmakers have approved a bill banning same-sex marriage, setting jail terms of up to 14 years for offenders. (BBC on May 30, 2013)

Death Penalty report 2011

Yesterday, Amnesty International published its yearly report on the death penalty. If we don't include the executions in China, 2011 counts 676 people executed, that is almost 150 more than in 2010 (527):

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Human Rights Action Center

In other news...

Taken from SF Weekly

For weeks now I am intensely following the uprisings in the Middle East and of course we get flooded with the nuclear situation in Japan. Sometimes I forget that there is also other news.

Here is a short list of some items that have intrigued me over the past days, but time was too short to elaborate on these:

Did you know...

Picture taken from
Susan Loone her blog.

that the death penalty wasn't taken out of Belgian criminal law until August 1, 1996?