INDEX

As Kazakhstan’s authorities prepare to introduce a new penal code, World Coalition members are warning against attempts to broaden the offences punishable by death.

The World Coalition’s Indonesian member organization KontraS has raised the international consequences of Lindsay Sandiford’s high-profile capital case in an opinion article published by the Jakarta Globe newspaper, calling on the country to abolish the death penalty.

Ways to strengthen transregional action led by Asian activists and ideas to combat obstruction from national authorities were among the issues discussed at the third ADPAN consultative meeting.

In Singapore and Malaysia, governments are considering removing mandatory death penalty in some drug and murder cases. A move welcomed by activists on the ground, though they consider it “only a small step in the right direction”.

Four Singapore-based organisations denounce the high risk of miscarriage of justice in recent death sentences handed down on poor immigrants and calls for the abolition of the death penalty in the city-state.

8th September 2011 marks the 5,000th day without executions in South Korea. Houng-oh Kim, a member of the National Assembly and former Speaker, is aiming to introduce a new bill abolishing the death penalty to mark this occasion.

Nabeel Rajab, President of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights, keeps up the fight for two protestors condemned to death despite attempts at intimidation.

After fresh executions, the Taiwan Alliance to End the Death Penalty has been campaigning to save the lives of five condemned prisoners, recalling the government to its commitments to human rights.

Activists in Japan and elsewhere have criticised Justice Minister Keiko Chiba for ordering two men to be hanged in Tokyo on July 28 despite her earlier abolitionist statements.