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This blog is the work of an educated civilian, not of an expert in the fields discussed.

Tuesday, October 03, 2017

UN Anti-Death Penalty Resolution & It's Discontents

ETA: Supreme Court vacates 11CA injunction (arising from lethal protocol issues) with three justices publicly dissenting. [There is some debate how one should count the six, so it is not clear Kagan agreed one way or the other.] Neither side explains their competing votes regarding someone's life being deprived.  This is unjust and violates open government. Plus, it is an opaque way to oversee lower courts, here selectively (somehow) told they are wrong. A serious non-capital case also should not be so treated.
US votes against UN resolution condemning gay sex death penalty, joining Iraq and Saudi Arabia: America one of 13 countries on Human Rights Council to oppose historic vote.

This Is Why The US Voted Against A UN Resolution Condemning The Death Penalty For LGBT People: It wasn't just about the provision protecting LGBT people from being killed via the death penalty. The US just really likes the death penalty.
Above is the headlines for two articles on a UN Human Rights Council Resolution that the second article summarizes in the article:
Would encourage member states to apply a moratorium to the use of the death penalty, noting in its preamble the way that it can be unfairly applied to women, the disabled, along racial divides, and against people engaged in "consensual same-sex relations.
The resolution is a 14 part affair that is carefully scripted in UN-ese with words like recalling, reaffirming, taking note, mindful etc. used in different cases.  The resolution is broad in scope, covering things like access to consular assistance for foreign nationals, various discriminatory applications, condemning usage for things like blasphemy etc. It leaves open states that still have the death penalty a chance to sign on, but clearly finds it overall problematic.

It's understandable that the U.S. did not sign on though I really don't think it had to do that. And, various provisions of the resolution allows articles that suggest the U.S. is gratuitously not signing on something that is promoted as a first to include LGBT relationships (see the Buzzfeed article).  The Obama Administration didn't have to deal with that last point, but abstained, officially noting the death penalty was legal.  An unfortunate stance, if one that to me does seem less gratutious.

The first headline* also follows a common understanding: the U.S. is an outlier in respect to the death penalty, having unpleasant company along with a few miscreants including some conservative Muslim country.  But, we do later find out that full list of noes: "The 13 states to oppose the resolution were Botswana, Burundi, Egypt, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, China, India, Iraq, Japan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the US and the United Arab Emirates."  Well, China is a usual miscreant fellow traveler.  India is somewhat interesting.  But, Japan?  Huh.

Japan from my experience is not given much attention when discussing the death penalty and the general assumption I bet is that it along with Western Europe does not have one (or uses it sparingly). This would be false. Over one hundred people were executed since 1990, in a nation with less than 40% of the U.S. population. Now, even factoring in the population difference, that is significantly less than the U.S. in that time span.  Nonetheless, it is a significant number that would particularly stand out if you look at the numbers of execution outside of the South.  India executed around twenty people in that time period, thirteen in 1995.

Japan probably deserves more attention in this area. Overall, I think the coverage of this resolution is somewhat misleading and incomplete in certain articles.  This is not surprising but underlines that news should be taken with a grain of salt, especially headline/tweet summaries.

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* The second article notes at one point: "The US was one of the 13 votes against, alongside Iraq, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, a point that led LGBT groups in particular to immediately respond, calling out the US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley in particular for her stance." Nikki Haley is an Indian-American.  But, who are the rest of the 13? 

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