Human Rights tableau, France
The current issue of the monthly death penalty report is now available thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it. A number of countries are featured including, as ever, the USA, and Japan which has executed several people recently.
You may want to join a small group by writing one of the urgent actions featured in this report. We have several members who do this in the privacy of their own hom
Attached is the monthly death penalty report for mid June/July 2019 compiled by group member Lesley. It covers a number of countries and in addition to the usual suspects, includes Sri Lanka which is planning to start executing it citizens again.
Note that China is not included which is believed to execute more of its citizens than the rest of the world put together but the details are a state secret.
The US is the only country in the Americas which still has the death penalty.
There is an opportunity to join Amnesty members for a protest outside the American Embassy on the continued use of the penalty. They will be gathering signatures for a petition and, to illustrate the barbarity of the practice, you can also tweet a picture of yourself sitting in our mock electric chair.
Meeting at 1:30 in the small park opposite the US Embassy on 30 June.
Attached is the latest monthly death penalty report thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling it. It is a little longer than usual as there seems to be a lot of activity on the DP front. Please note that there is no reporting from China which executes more of its citizens than the rest of the world combined but the details are a state secret.
In our links at the bottom of the site page, we have just added Human Rights Connected https://humanrightsconnected.org/ a Washington DC based organisation
The most recent death penalty report on the use of the death penalty around the world is now available thanks to group member Lesley for compiling it.
Attached is the monthly death penalty report prepared by group member Lesley. It features Turkey, Iran, Brunei, USA and Taiwan among other countries.
In our last post two days ago, we highlighted the Dispatches programme which described in graphic detail the role our weapons supplies were having in Yemen. The Saudis, using jets supplied by us, were creating suffering on an almost unimaginable scale with tens of thousands of deaths, a cholera outbreak and starvation of its people.
Today, 4 April 2019, the US Congress has voted 247 to 155 to end military aid to Saudi Arabia. Further votes are planned to stop weapons supplies as well. It is expected that President Trump will veto the actions but nevertheless, it sends a strong message of what Americans think of this terrible regime and its countries continuing military support for it.
This puts the UK in a tricky position. A chief ally stepping back leaves this country somewhat exposed. We shall have to see over the coming days what feeble excuses are trotted out to justify our support and role in the killing.
Sources: The Nation, Washington Post, the Guardian
On Monday 1 April 2019, Channel 4’s Dispatches programme showed some terrible scenes from the war in Yemen and the death and destruction which is taking place. The war has resulted in considerable misery for thousands of civilians and the programme reported that around 55,000 children under 5 have died from malnutrition as a result.
They focused on a bus which containing school children which was bombed in a market place killing 40. They were able to find a young survivor who had suffered shrapnel wounds but was lucky to have escaped with his life. He was understandably still traumatised.
Britain – as we have noted in this blog many times before – is a key supplier of weapons and the main supplier is BAE Systems who sell the Typhoon fighter jet. It is these jets, along with those supplied by the Americans, which are used to bomb Yemen and in particular, schools, mosques and hospitals.
In addition to supplying jets and munitions, the programme revealed that 6,000 BAE staff were working there involved in the crucial business of keeping the jets flying. They managed to excuse their activities by claiming that because they do not actually handle the weapons – the final 5% as someone put it – therefore they were not mercenaries. They also reported that British military personnel (which we know to be from the RAF) were also involved.
A great deal of time was spent interviewing various individuals concerning the ethics of supplying weapons – especially jets and their rockets – which are used by the Royal Saudi Air Force to cause such misery.
One person interviewed was former Air vice-Marshall Sean Bell who argued that if we were not involved it could be a whole lot worse. This seemed to be based on the notion that we were in some way moderating the Saudi activities which seemed a weak argument especially in the light of the rest of the programme. He said ‘dancing with the devil is sometimes worth it’ because of the influence it gives us, not just with the Saudis but also in the Middle East generally. Our involvement and dependence on Saudi arms sales was featured in a Channel 4 news item with Bell. A Twitter feed on this topic can be found at @c4dispatches.
The British government has also been engaged in some dubious thinking based also on the notion of influence. The Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt MP said in the House of Commons:
Because of our commercial relations with Saudi Arabia we are actively monitoring their compliance with International Human Rights law and we have a lot of contact with them […] We raise concerns with them if we think things are going wrong. Clip from the Dispatches programme
This concept of maintaining contact so that we can exert influence took a knock in the programme because it was revealed we have in fact next to no influence. Former US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that attempts to hold back the Saudis seemed ineffectual since their attitude was to ‘act quickly and ask questions later.’
Further damage to the notion of influence was evidence from an American official sent to investigate after the school atrocity. It seems our personnel were ‘not where it mattered’ [in the control room that is] but that there was a separate floor where the operations were actually being directed. More damagingly, most of the strikes are not in fact controlled from Riyadh but are what are called ‘dynamic strikes’ conducted by SRAF pilots without reference to the control room. They do not have in their cockpits the vital information about which targets are safe to be hit.
Conclusions
Britain’s involvement in this war is calamitous for the country itself and our influence and reputation. We can hardly complain about Russia’s activities in Syria when we are only one remove from doing the same in Yemen. Because sale of arms to Saudi Arabia is so important and lucrative, we are not in a position to end it without significant damage to our balance of payments. The only beneficiary of this trade are the shareholders of BAE Systems and other arms firms and dealers. The losers are of course the 60,000 dead in Yemen.
In addition to the use of our weapons in this terrible war, is the fact that we have given support to this regime, a regime which systematically uses torture and has closed down any form of dissent and freedom of speech. Again the arguments are about our ‘influence’ which seems to be all but invisible. Members of the royal family are regularly rolled out to visit and add a veneer of respectability to the Saudi royals.
When Mohammad bin Salman assumed power the talk was of a reforming monarch. This disintegrated following the Khashoggi murder and more arrests of human rights activists.
The final word should perhaps go to Andrew Mitchell MP, interviewed on the programme, who said:
History will judge it as an appalling failure of British foreign policy
Attached is the monthly death penalty report prepared with thanks by group member Lesley. It covers Egypt; Pakistan, India, Belarus and the USA. Note, as always, that China does not feature as its death penalty statistics are a state secret. They are believed to execute more people than the rest of the world combined.
January – February report (Word)
The groups latest death penalty report is available here thanks to group member Lesley for the work in compiling it. As always, we have to note that China is the worlds largest executioner but the statistics are a state secret.
