This is written in the UK where the death penalty is no longer practised. It might therefore be wondered why we should continue to campaign for its abolition elsewhere in the world. It is partly because we believe the penalty to be a barbaric one and that applies across the world. We campaign for justice and human rights everywhere not just in our own backyard. We believe the penalty should be abolished in all circumstances and for all crimes.
There are currently 25,508 people on death rows somewhere in the world according to the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty. 2,707 are known to be executed the highest number since 1981. Large numbers are executed in China but the numbers are a state secret. Thousands are executed in a ‘conveyor belt’ of killing there with mobile vans travelling the country to speed up the process. There is a bewildering number of crimes – over 40 – which attract the death sentence.
The top countries carrying out the executions are China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the US. That a notionally civilized country should be in such company is telling.
Christa Pike
The death penalty has made it onto the news in the past few days with the failed execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee. She was twice injected with lethal drugs but survived and has now partially recovered. There has been shock expressed around the world. Members of the Salisbury Group have written to the Governor to ask that her sentence be commuted.
Part of the problem is the difficulty in obtaining reliable drugs since firms and countries are unwilling to supply them. To overcome that problem, the firing squad is being introduced. Which leads to the truly bizarre, shameful and shocking proposal by Pete Hegseth to allow the live streaming of an execution. This is of Nidal Hasan who killed 13 in Texas. It is in a belief it will act as a deterrent.
Deterrence
The continued belief in the penalty is based on its supposed deterrent effect. However, a report released in April by the National Research Council of the National Academies based on a review of more than three decades of research, concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates by a use of the death penalty are fundamentally flawed. The report concluded: “The committee concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates”.
Many of the countries are using it not just to put series criminals to death, but as a form of coercion and intimidation.
Some reasons why it should be abolished
It is degrading and inhumane. What is often forgotten is the effects it has on others including prison staff who have to carry out the task
it is not a deterrent as we have argued
the justice system is imperfect and often flawed. The poor quality of legal representation for the poorest in society often means there is injustice. Mistakes cannot afterwards be put right
it is being used in some countries as a means of coercion and to intimidate those the state disapproves of
It disproportionately affects the poorest and marginalised in society.
Action you can take
Following the shockingly botched attempts to execute Christa Pike on 1st October, please write a letter dated 10th October to Bill Lee, Governor of Tennessee, calling for the commutation of Ms Pike’s death sentence as a first step, followed by the commutation of the sentences of all those on death row and the establishment of an indefinite moratorium on executions.
Contact details: Bill Lee
Governor of Tennessee
State Capitol
600 Dr Martin Luther King Jr Blvd
Nashville
TN 37243
USA.
Governor Lee’s email address is bill.lee@tn.gov but a letter would be preferable as he is more likely to see it.
You might want, as well as expressing your deep concern about what has happened, to recognise as positives the review he has ordered into the protocol and procedures, and the fact that he has paused executions at least until the end of the year – that of Gary Sutton will not now go ahead on 3rd December.
A scarcely believable wish by Pete Hegseth to live stream an execution by firing squad
UPDATE: the execution will no longer be live streamed President Trump announced on 15th. This has followed a sustained and worldwide condemnation of Pete Hegseth’s proposal. 16 October.
The Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, wants to live stream the execution by firing squad of Nidal Hasan who murdered 13 at a medical processing facility in Texas in November 2009. President Trump is reported to have agreed to it. America is already alone among civilised nations in continuing to use the penalty and providing a livestream of the event adds a level of barbarism to it. There is no other nation in the world which live streams such an event.
Public executions take place in Saudi Arabia and the state is seen to be medieval. That the Defense Secretary wishes America to join it seems scarcely believable.
The last public execution took place in the UK in 1868 in Newgate prison. The last in America was much later in 1936 in Kentucky that is only 90 years ago. France surprisingly, was later still and took place in 1939 but caused such outrage it was abolished.
Hegseth claims it is to explain to people there are serious consequences for crimes such as this. Many Americans will be revolted by this spectacle. For a supposedly civilised nation to countenance this is almost unbelievable.
The penalty itself is not a deterrent. There is no significant difference in murder rates between States who still use it and those who don’t. Mistakes cannot be rectified and there have been many acquittals of those convicted of serious crimes which turn out to be mistaken. Offering a livestream adds a layer of barbarity to the process.
Doubts were expressed today (9th) whether it will in fact go ahead.
CORRECTION: We believe Saudi Arabia no longer carries out executions in public. 11 October.
Amnesty holds a webinar to discuss aspects of the death penalty
October 2026
Amnesty International does not agree with the use of the death penalty in any circumstances. Even if the individual or individuals have committed horrific crimes, the use of the penalty merely perpetuates violence by the state. There is no evidence that it acts as a deterrent. A major problem is that mistakes cannot be rectified if the individual has been executed. It is costly and in states like the US it costs millions if not billions of dollars keeping people on death row while the appeals process grinds on.
Intimidation
The webinar looked at another aspect which has probably been overlooked, namely its use as a means of intimidation. In countries like China, Saudi and Iran in particular, the penalty – or the threat of its use – is a form of intimidating people into silence. It often goes in parallel with the use of torture, it was said, to obtain the confession needed for executions to take place.
Iran in particular has seen considerable unrest much predating the February war launched on them by the US and Israel. 36 have been executed and a further 78 remain under sentence of death. It is a ‘tool for intensifying fears’. Some of the accusations against those arrested include the ‘waging war against God’ and the absurd ‘corruption on earth’.
In Saudi the numbers are massive with nearly 100 executed by June this year. It was noted there was not a proper court system which are sometimes run by intelligence officers. Torture is normalised. Intimidation is made worse by executions held in public.
Uganda was mentioned with the possibility of executions for homosexuals.
Amnesty is planning a campaign as the 10th is World Day Against the Death Penalty.
In the previous post we discussed the recent report Dead Letter published by the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, the webinar held by them, and the Channel 4 Despatches programme, which all described in some detail the contortions carried out by successive governments to justify the selling of arms to murderous regimes. Also discussed was the involvement in the legal system in some of the bizarre reasoning employed to fight off claims by human rights groups such as Al Haq and others that what they were doing was contrary to international human rights law.
The shear extent of what can only be described as lying is staggering. Despite copious evidence of death of civilians and the destruction basic infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and mosques, the bombing of water treatment plants and a deliberate policy of ethnic cleansing, successive governments have clung on to arguments such as a lack of evidence, a few incidents do not a pattern make, and the motives of those doing the killing cannot be known. Anything in fact to justify the continuation of arms sales.
Why?
Which prompts the question why? Why are politicians of both main parties so desperately keen to maintain these fictions? Why have they watered down regulations of what can or cannot be sold? Why do they persist in the argument that we have one of the more robust export regimes in the world when patently it is not?
In this essay we want to suggest some reasons. Necessarily, it cannot always be evidenced as efforts are made to conceal anything which might compromise the government or ministers. It is largely speculative therefore. We suggest there are seven major reasons why we have the system we have.
Economic and the need for jobs
The arms industry employs large numbers of people many of whom are in marginal constituencies [it was always argued thus but in view of recent political upheavals, what is or is not a marginal is now somewhat questionable]. There are around 300,000 people employed. Further, it is one of the few sectors in the economy which has seen significant growth. Adopting some kind of moral policy and concerning itself with the rights of those at the receiving end of weaponry, would have a serious effect on these numbers.
Post war effects
After the war, Japan and Germany were unable to develop their arms firms which provided an opportunity for the UK to shine. Whereas those two countries modernised and produced a range of products which steadily ended many UK firms’ ability to compete (cars and electronic goods for example), arms were not among them. Considerable support was provided by the UK government to the industry. However, claims of job creation and economic value are considerably weakened when the degree and scale of ‘corporate welfare’ is taken into account. York University has produced a number of studies showing the net value is nowhere near the headline claims by politicians.
Nevertheless, it is an area where British firms do have a presence on the world stage, despite its questionable economic value.
Close links to the US
It is interesting to reflect on the enormous fuss made at the time of Brexit where ‘take back control’ and ‘regain our sovereignty’ were two of the key messages. Yet we have lost these to the Americans. Witness the F-35 arguments where it is claimed the 15% made in the UK cannot be tracked. They are a key weapon in the destruction of Gaza, bombing of Lebanon and the attack on Iran. The tracking claim is to insult the British people who know full well that goods nowadays are tracked electronically. The reason is not being able to stand up to the Americans and the likely threat to future partnership deals. If our sovereignty was ever lost it has been to the US not Brussels. It is even claimed that the moment the items are manufactured, ownership passes immediately to the US so we cannot embargo their sale to Israel.
Anti-Semitic and anti-Israel claims
Any or all criticism of Israel and its actions are deemed anti-Semitic. These claims seem to have struck fear into the heart of the British political establishment. They were a powerful force in the removal of Jeremy Corbyn. Sir Keir Starmer worked hard to ‘rip out anti-Semitism by its roots’ as he put it. The nature of the anti-Semitism under Corbyn is difficult to bottom out. A lengthy BBC report delves into it in some detail and some of the evidence seem tenuous to say the least. It does appear that the party was slow to take disciplinary action where there were incidents but Corbyn’s stance against anti-Semitism seemed clear. Inevitably, as in any organisation, there are going to be individuals who are anti-Semitic.
What is important is the perception but it does seem clear that the policy of claiming that any or all criticisms of Israel has taken root. It has been effective and has percolated into the BBC and other parts of the media. We reported on the Centre for Media Monitoring’s report into BBC reporting in an earlier post. They describe the double standards, muffling of Palestinian voices and language issues amounting to severe bias. For example, they frequently reported that Hamas seized ‘hostages’ whereas Israelis took ‘prisoners’. Both were hostages and both were kept incommunicado and badly treated. The word ‘prisoner’ suggested some kind of judicial process had taken place. Evidence of an Apartheid state has almost never been mentioned by BBC commentators despite the copious evidence produced by Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and Israeli human rights groups.
Slowly, things seem to be changing however and the recent statement and actions by Ed Miliband the Foreign Secretary are a welcome if belated sign. Israel is losing the moral high ground and is fast becoming an international pariah. Witness the huge walkout of delegates at the UN when Benjamin Netanyahu rose to speak.
MPs easily manipulated
That around 150 members of parliament are members of their party’s Friends of Israel groups is shocking. In a previous post we discuss how easy Israel seems to find engaging impressionable and naïve newbie MPs to their point of view with cleverly crafted visits to Israel and other financial support.
Any question of curbing sales of arms has to overcome this quiet army of closet supporters of the regime. The question has to be asked: how can an MP properly act dispassionately in deciding what is in Britain’s and Palestinian’s or even Israel’s best interested if they are members of what is believed to be the best funded parliamentary lobby group? Both Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy were staunch members and so is Andy Burnham the new prime minister.
Further, when one or other of these MPs are interviewed, their membership is only rarely mentioned by interviewers.
The Revolving Door
This is the deeply corrupting matter of senior military staff, senior civil servants and ex-ministers, heading off to take up lucrative directorships or consultancies with arms companies. Both Transparency International and CAAT have criticised this. CAAT terms it ‘open office’ corruption.
The numbers are quite staggering. No less than 604 individuals moved from ministry or military roles into arms firms between January 2017 to June 2022. Quite apart from the undue influence taking place, it has led to poor scrutiny, delivery failure and massive budget overruns. The suspicion is that with a promise of a lucrative post retirement appointment, awkward or challenging questions are not asked. Proper scrutiny is not carried out. Neither are questions asked about moral or humanitarian issues arising from the use of the weapons. The now abolished ACOBA controls were widely condemned as toothless.
Racism
Underpinning much of the attitudes and biased media reporting is racism. Arabs and Palestinians are regarded as untrustworthy and uncivilised (algebra?). This appears in claims of Britain being overrun by Moslems and London becoming ‘Londonistan’ subject to Sharia Law: Islamophobia in other words.
Whereas anti-Semitism receives a great deal of coverage (rightly) and necessary police action, anti-Palestinian attitudes do not get the same attention. British politicians like the local MP, Danny Kruger, can quite casually claim that ‘all the deaths in Gaza are the fault of Hamas‘. It is difficult to believe this blanket statement of blame would be applied to an attack on another racial group. There, cries of ‘indiscriminate’ would be heard. The different treatment of Palestinian deaths in comparison with Israeli has been a feature of criticisms of media coverage.
Security
A frequent reason which crops up is security. This argument seems to hinge around the role Israel plays as a source of information about the Middle East. Israel has a fearsome reputation in the field of intelligence and western powers including the UK are keen to avail themselves of it.
Conclusions
To many, the continuing and obdurate policy of successive British governments has been baffling. In the face of mounting evidence, the continued support for arms sales seems insupportable and unconscionable. In this essay, we attempted an explanation based on a variety of factors we have discussed. Essentially they are about money, jobs dependant on the sales, corruption and a willingness of the political elite to follow the Israeli line. Fear of the anti-Semitism tag is also a factor.
It hasn’t just been Israel: a similar pathology has been witnessed in the Yemen conflict. There, unqualified support for the Saudi bombing of multiple civilian targets was seen. Arms are still being supplied to UAE despite strong evidence that they are passed on to the RSF in Sudan.
The public approaches this from having witnessed terrible scenes on the news despite the banning of independent news media into Gaza and the steady murder or assassination of journalists by the IDF. (More have been killed than in any other comparable conflict). Many feel deeply that this isn’t right and the UK should have no part of it.
These views find few favours in Westminster for the reasons we have suggested. Their answer is to erect ever more contorted arguments in support of an indefensible position. This is more than speculative as the Despatches programme revealed. They showed that great efforts were made by the Foreign Office to conceal details and not to leave a paper record. It is a cover for political cowardice, greed and some perverse thinking around supporting Israel and the arms industry generally.
The ultimate tragedy is that it won’t. Supporting a thuggish regime to carry on a programme of violence and ethnic cleansing creating along the way an entire new generation of young people bent on revenge, merely postpones the ultimate reckoning. Israel is a superpower in the region and giving them more and more weapons is merely to pour petrol on a fire. Years of bombing Yemen and a massive death toll has solved nothing.
British involvement in this activity destroys any hope born of the post war Universal Declaration with its claims of ‘never again’. Our role should be to support moderation, dialogue and actively to support the creation of a viable Palestinian state (which the UK is now committed to). Our political class is profoundly letting the nation down. It represents a massive political failure for a range of unworthy reasons.
We are pleased to attach the latest report thanks to group member Lesley for the work in putting it together. Few items of good news this month and Iran continues with its atrocious level of executions. To note as usual that China is thought to execute more of its citizens than the rest of the world combined but details are state secret.
Pip: If you’ve ever wondered how a government squares “we stand for democracy and the rule of law” with “also, here are some more weapons” — welland2 has been to a festival that asked exactly that question.
Mara: This episode covers talks from the Festival of Humanism: UK foreign policy in the Gulf, and a debate between an Israeli and a Palestinian that was so in demand it had to be repeated in a bigger hall. Let’s start with what those festival talks said about conflict, hypocrisy, and who gets a seat at the table.
Festival Talks On Conflict
Pip: The through-line across both festival sessions is a single uncomfortable question: when Western governments talk about human rights and the rule of law, are they describing a principle or a brand?
Mara: Dr David Wearing’s talk at the Festival of Humanism set that up directly. The post captures his framing of Britain’s governing class this way: he made “the distinction between ‘we’ meaning them and ‘we’ meaning the population at large.”
Pip: That distinction does a lot of work. It means the arms sales, the training of security forces, the quiet financial entanglement with Gulf monarchies — none of that was put to a public vote. It happened in the gap between those two “we”s.
Mara: Wearing traced the history back to oil — Britain establishing protectorates around the Arabian peninsula primarily to secure supply — and argued the logic never really changed. The post notes he pointed out that “we would find it difficult to support our arms industry without the sales to the Gulf states.” The economic interdependence runs deeper than arms: legal services, accountancy, sovereign wealth funding the UK deficit.
Pip: The self-deception angle is what lands hardest. He describes RAF personnel actively involved in supporting Saudi forces during Yemen, while a senior army figure talked about the “rules based international order maintaining peace and prosperity.” That’s not a gap between rhetoric and reality — that’s a chasm.
Mara: The post calls it “an almost baffling lack of awareness.” And Wearing connects it explicitly to a colonial mindset — one that made it easy to view the region as backward, which in turn made it easier to look past the death penalty, the imprisonment of journalists and activists, the denial of women’s rights.
Pip: His book AngloArabia is flagged for anyone who wants the full argument in print.
Mara: The second session — the Israeli-Palestinian debate — and drew such a crowd it had to be repeated the following day in a larger hall. A British-Israeli software engineer and a British-Palestinian paediatrician spoke together, and the post deliberately doesn’t attribute individual points to individual speakers. The point being that some of the positions would surprise you about who held them.
Pip: One of those positions: “the conflict was about land — religion was very much a secondary factor.” Another: “armed resistance has made life more difficult for those it seeks to support.” Neither of those is a fringe view from outside — they came from inside the room, from people with direct stakes.
Mara: The post closes on a note that connects back to Wearing’s argument: outside interference — the Gulf dynamics, the arms flows — is “a factor in the perpetuation of violence.” The two sessions sat together, and they did.
Pip: And if the governing class won’t have the conversation, apparently a humanist festival in Bournemouth will.
Mara: The same logic — who gets heard, who gets excluded — runs straight into the questions the group is raising closer to home.
Pip: Two festival sessions, one through-line: the distance between what governments say they stand for and what the money actually does.
Mara: And the argument that ordinary voters are largely excluded from that gap. Worth watching what the group surfaces next.
A new feature on the site which will appear from time to time, is podcasts. The first is below. Note they are produced by AI but from texts written and researched by us not using any AI. It is an amalgamation of more than one text post. Feedback is welcome. We hope you enjoy listening! If you are not used to these, click on the heading and you will see a sound bar with the text displayed below it.
Pip: Nearly three decades behind bars, nine execution dates, three last meals — and the first thing Richard Glossip does on the outside is go to an Italian restaurant. There's something both devastating and deeply human about that.
Mara: welland2 has been covering the territory where criminal justice, human rights, and detention conditions intersect — and this episode moves through wrongful conviction and release, then into what imprisonment can look like at its most extreme.
Pip: Let's start with Richard Glossip and what it means to walk out after all of that.
Richard Glossip: Nine Dates, One Release
Pip: The Glossip case sits at the intersection of wrongful conviction, prosecutorial misconduct, and the death penalty — and his release in May 2026 raises the question of what justice even looks like after nearly thirty years on death row.
Mara: The interview with The Intercept captures the disorientation of that transition directly. Glossip says: "I tried never to let myself become institutionalized… But I mean it's hard. You go through all these horrible things and all these different dates … and last meals and everything. And then it doesn't look like this day will ever get here. But you always hope that it will."
Pip: That's someone who kept himself psychologically intact across nine execution dates — which is an almost incomprehensible act of endurance — and is now readjusting to sleeping without prison noise and eating pasta in a neighborhood restaurant.
Mara: The Supreme Court vacated his conviction in February 2025, finding prosecutors allowed a key witness to lie in court and withheld crucial information from the defense. Oklahoma County District Judge Natalie Mai ordered his release on a five-hundred-thousand-dollar bond, stating the court hopes "a new trial, free of error, will provide all interested parties, and the citizens of Oklahoma, the closure they deserve."
Pip: The Attorney General who previously confessed error in the prosecution has now said his office won't seek the death penalty in any retrial. That's a significant shift in posture from the state.
Mara: Glossip himself seems to be holding that carefully. He says: "Once you're out here and you see all the things that was taken away from you — and all the times they almost took everything away from me, my life and everything — you see all of it now… And it kind of still makes me angry at times because none of this should have ever happened."
Pip: Anger seems like the precise and correct response.
Mara: He also describes being recognized in public — a barber refused payment, telling him it was "an honor" to cut his hair. And he's reunited with his wife Lea, whom he first corresponded with and later married while incarcerated.
Pip: His closing note in the interview is striking — he says he's going to trust the process and "just enjoy life." After everything, that reads less like naivety and more like a deliberate choice.
Mara: The retrial date hasn't been set. The case that put him on death row — alleged involvement in a 1997 murder-for-hire — still has to be resolved. The release is real, but it isn't the end.
Pip: Which raises a harder question about what systems produce these situations in the first place — and what happens when those systems operate without any oversight at all.
CECOT: When the Prison Is the Punishment
Mara: The post on CECOT — El Salvador's Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — documents what Channel 5 filmed when Richard Madeley was granted access: cells of a hundred men, steel racks three tiers high, lights on twenty-four hours a day, no reading materials, no contact with family or lawyers.
Pip: Madeley's own summary lands the dilemma squarely: "It's obvious that CECOT breaches human rights as we currently understand. It's a shocking, extreme corner of humanity, but El Salvadorians were writhing under the thumb of psychotic, psychopathic sadists. I wonder if sacrificing civil liberties for the common good is something others would ever be prepared to embrace."
Mara: The post doesn't resolve that question — it holds it open. San Salvador's murder rate was around sixteen a day before President Bukele's crackdown. That rate has dropped dramatically. The post notes the prison has a capacity for forty thousand, and that trials happen on screen with up to a hundred defendants at a time.
Pip: The question of what detention is actually for doesn't get easier the closer you look.
Mara: From Glossip rebuilding a life outside to the conditions inside CECOT — both stories are really asking what accountability and punishment are supposed to achieve.
Pip: And whether the systems designed to deliver justice are capable of honest answers to that. More from Salisbury and South Wiltshire next time.
Pip: Amnesty Salisbury keeps showing up — in the rain, at the park, in the footnotes of trade agreements nobody else is reading.
Mara: That's the thread running through welland2's recent posts: rights under pressure, from ECHR reforms to death row to a sustainability fair in a local park. Let's start with where the pressure is heaviest — the slow dismantling of civil liberties.
Rights eroding in plain sight
Pip: The headline concern here is a pattern, not a single event — each new policy framed as a border measure or a public-order fix, but adding up to something larger when you step back.
Mara: The post "Steady Erosion of Rights Continues" puts it directly: "It is not even true to say 'by stealth' as it is done in plain sight."
Pip: That's the part that should unsettle people. The argument isn't that rights are being quietly stolen — it's that they're being removed openly, and we've stopped noticing.
Mara: The context is the ECHR declaration giving European governments more power to deport migrants, even where there's a risk of mistreatment on return. Yvette Cooper called it permission for countries to "take action on illegal immigration." Amnesty International's response was that it risks creating a "hierarchy of people" — those protected under Article 3 against torture, and those who are not.
Pip: And the post notes that the UK sells arms to countries that practice torture while turning away people fleeing it. That tension doesn't get much airtime.
Mara: The post also flags the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 and the Public Order Act 2023 as part of the same drift — limits on protest, expanding police powers, and now pressure on jury trials. Local MPs John Glen and Danny Kruger are recorded by They Work for You as voting against equality and human rights legislation.
Mara: Then there's the vigil — post number 128, held in the rain, documented in "A Damp Vigil." Around twenty people attended. Omer Bartov's book is quoted there, asking how Israel, founded the same year as the genocide convention, now conducts what he calls a genocidal undertaking with near-total impunity.
Pip: And the minutes and newsletter post pulls these threads together — immigration, the death penalty, the state of rights in the UK — for anyone who wants the fuller picture.
Mara: The Oklahoma piece is the counterweight. Richard Glossip, after twenty-seven years on death row and three last meals, walked out of jail after a judge ordered his release ahead of retrial. The prosecution had withheld evidence about its key witness's mental health. As the post puts it: had he been executed on any of those three occasions, it could not be undone.
Pip: The good news from Oklahoma is real. It's just that it took nearly three decades to arrive. On to the trade deal that skipped the values entirely.
A trade deal without the values
Pip: The Gulf States agreement is being sold as a win for British business — but the post "Government Signs Trade Deal" asks what got left out of the small print.
Mara: Sir Keir told his biographer "There is no version of my life that does not largely revolve around me being a human rights lawyer." The post's response is pointed: being a lawyer is not the same as having principles and acting on them.
Pip: The TUC called it a "values free agreement." The UAE's record — the kafala system tying workers to single employers, mass trials, solitary confinement, allegations of arming Sudan's RSF — none of it made it into the text.
Mara: Which sets up exactly what the Salisbury group was raising at the park.
Sustainability is also about the clothes you wear
Pip: "People in the Park" is the annual Salisbury Transition City event — seventy-five exhibitors, sustainability focus — and the local Amnesty group brought a different angle to it.
Mara: The post describes the group highlighting Amnesty International's report "Stitched Up," which details abuses in the global jeans industry: "health hazards, physical and sexual abuse of the mainly female workforce, wage theft and the denial of union and collective bargaining rights."
Pip: The response was muted. The post's honest read is that people associate sustainability with the environment, not with the supply chain behind a pair of jeans.
Mara: Around a quarter of the cotton comes from Xinjiang, where forced labour is documented and the region is closed to outside observers. The post's conclusion: retailers can claim humanitarian credentials on their websites while the exploitation continues.
Pip: Rights in the courtroom, rights at the border, rights in the fabric of your jeans — it's the same argument in different registers.
Mara: And the vigil keeps going. Next episode, we'll see what else is accumulating.
We are pleased to attach the latest report for mid-April to mid-May thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling it. It contains details of the penalty around the world including a massive number of executions in Iran and how Saudi has executed large numbers in recent years. Singapore is mentioned with its policy of executing individuals involved in the drugs trade. Florida continues to feature with the Governor signing warrants for executions.
Israel’s proposals to re-introduce the penalty and to hold public trials for those held following the 7th October massacre is discussed and the responses to the change from countries around the world. Israel seems to be sliding ever backwards with its genocide, apartheid, violence and now the reintroduction of the death penalty last used on Adolph Eichmann.
As ever, we have to note that China is thought to be the world’s largest executioner but details are a state secret. There is a disturbing report from Australia however with some details but there is a warning about its content.
