ADPAN Encourages Bangladesh to Reconsider Expanding the Application of the Death Penalty to Rape

November 20, 2020, Statements

In response to campaigns for perpetrators of recent cases of extreme sexual violence to be ‘brought to justice’, the Bangladesh government proposed an amendment to section 9(1) of the Suppression of Violence Against Women and Children Act 2000, which would introduce the death penalty as a punishment for single-perpetrator rape. The crime of rape was previously punishable by death but only in the context of multi-perpetrator rape and where a victim died as a consequence of single-perpetrator rape.

The Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN) shares the outrage expressed by the community in relation to violence against women. We also recognise the need for justice in response to the heinous nature of sexual crimes and their lasting and devastating impact on victim-survivors.

However, we are greatly concerned with the regional response to this issue. We have seen nations give into the ‘temptati[on]’ of imposing ‘draconian punishments’ on those who commit these ‘monstrous acts’.1 We have seen India extend the category of crimes attracting the death penalty to include the rape of children under the age of 12.23 We have seen Pakistan issue an ordinance for the amendment of the Women and Children Repression (Prevention) Act so as to introduce the death penalty for crimes of rape of children and women with aggravating factors,4 and we have also seen Pakistan put forward proposals of chemical castration, televised hangings and making the crime non-compoundable.5 These proposed legislative changes, and those proposed by Bangladesh would be in violations of international standards under the Conventions against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and breach the rights afforded by the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

The imposition of the death penalty will only contribute to further violations of human rights without addressing—the underlying failures and weaknesses of the criminal justice system for sexual offences. We urge the Bangladesh government to consider an approach which is both survivor-centred and responsive to underlying structural and societal concerns.

There is no evidence to support the claim that the death penalty will be an effective deterrent to rape in Bangladesh and the broader region. The likelihood of conviction and punishment has been proven to be a greater deterrent than the severity of the penalty itself. Available data suggests that there is only a 3% conviction rate for cases of violence against women and children in Bangladesh.6In contrary, statistics from countries that have abolished the death penalty show that conviction rates for crimes punishable by death actually rose after the death penalty was abolished7. The discrepancy indicates that there are more impactful means of addressing sexual offences beyond the death penalty.

Imposing the death penalty for perpetrators of rape will not address the main impediments to victim-survivors achieving justice. The introduction of the death penalty will likely further deter victim-survivors from disclosing incidents. Victim-survivors who come forward are already subject to a high degree of shame and scrutiny from their communities, throughout and following the investigation and court process. This is further compounded by the nature of the sexual offences involving associates or in some cases, close associates of the victim survivors, creating additional barriers against reporting of the rape. In other countries, such factors have resulted in a reduced number of successful cases where there is a conviction against the perpetrator.

Introducing the death penalty will only exacerbate this issue, as death penalty cases involve more victim scrutiny through extensive Court processes and attract more media attention. Furthermore, the prospect of being blamed for the offender’s death, especially when it involves an individual known to the victim-survivor would likely act as anadditional barrier for victim-survivors in disclosing incidents.

ADPAN acknowledge the Government of Bangladesh’s commitment to delivering justice to rape victim-survivors but strongly urge the government to address the underlying flaws of existing criminal justice system and not introduce mechanisms that have no impact in deterring future crimes Reforms should revolve around empowering victim-survivors and encouraging the pursuit of criminal prosecution against perpetrators by removing stigma and providing specific legal and medical services for victim-survivors throughout the criminal justice process.

We also urge the government of Bangladesh to consider including all victims, male or female, as well as marital partners, in the definition of rape, prohibiting character evidence and training courts and police to interact with rape victim-survivors more appropriately. ADPAN urges the Government of Bangladesh to take this opportunity to lead the Asia region on this matter and implement meaningful policy changes that will make Bangladesh a safer place for victims-survivors of sexual violence.

Death penalty for rape will not deliver justice. Justice can only be achieved when victim survivors are provided the necessary support and perpetrators are convicted for their crimes.

Bangladesh Hangs Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s Killer Abdul Majed on Sunday(12/4/2020) during the Covid pandemic – see news report below.

Capital punishment in South Asia amidst Covid-19

Professor Pritam Singh

April 12, 2020

The three major South Asian countries – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – may pretend to be very different from each other or might even have some geo-political tensions between them but all three share one obnoxious cultural and social similarity that there is almost a public consensus in the three countries on having capital punishment or death penalty for some crimes in their legal systems.

Last month, four men who were found guilty of the horrific rape crime in Delhi in 2012 were hanged to death in a Delhi prison. It has been recently reported that in Bangladesh, the President of the country has rejected the mercy plea of Abdul Majed who has been sentenced to death for his involvement in a military coup in 1975 in which Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, the founder of Bangladesh, was assassinated. With this last hurdle removed for his hanging, Mr Majed is likely to be executed very soon.

Given the widespread cultural acceptance of the death penalty in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, raising objection to capital punishment may seem unacceptable but with the exceptional circumstances of the Covid-19 when human beings are being killed in thousands all over the world, it is worth considering whether these legal killings have any meaning. Should human beings be killing other human beings whether through wars, border conflicts, terrorist actions, ‘encounter’ killings, sectarian massacres, armed insurgencies and counterinsurgencies, lynchings or death penalties when the whole of humanity is collectively under threat from this terrible virus? All these different forms of human beings killing other human beings seem to lose all significance in the context of the coronavirus threat.

Those who favour retention of death penalty consider that this acts as a deterrence against heinous crimes. Bringing a legal change as was done in India after that horrific rape in 2012 to make the rape crime punishable by capital punishment has not acted as a deterrence against rape crime in India. According to one estimate, women are still raped in India at the rate of one every twenty minutes. The historical experience from all over the world shows that capital punishment has nowhere acted as a deterrence against any activity which is made punishable by the death penalty. It does not make any difference whether the execution takes place through hanging as done in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh or a lethal injection in jail as one of the methods used in the US or beheading in Saudi Arabia, to take a few examples.

Life imprisonment is a better course of action than the death penalty for those rare crimes for which capital punishment still exists in the legal system. Life imprisonment keeps the possibility open for repentance by the guilty and perhaps to gain better understanding of the nature of their crime. This may result in developing more informed ways to deal with that crime. There are examples in history where hardened criminals during their incarceration repent for what they have done and go through total transformation. Capital punishment puts an end to this possibility. Jailing for life allows the possibility for reformation.

It is also worth keeping in mind that there are examples where it emerges after the execution that the person executed did not deserve to be executed. The recent ongoing revelations about the activities of the Kashmir police official Davinder Singh raise serious doubts about whether Afzal Guru, who was executed in 2013 really was guilty of what he was accused of. There have been doubts also about whether Kehar Singh’s role in Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984 by her security guards Beant Singh and Satwant Singh was such that it deserved the death penalty.READ MORE: Confirmed coronavirus cases in Pakistan reach 5,374

Execution is an irreversible act. Life imprisonment opens the possibility of reversing the judgement if later evidence is found that the basis of the earlier judgement was flawed. There is the famous Birmingham Six case in the UK where six men, all Roman Catholics from Northern Ireland, were sentenced in 1975 to life imprisonment for what was claimed by the prosecution as their participation in Birmingham pub bombings in 1974 which had resulted in 21 deaths. The prosecution had claimed that the bombings by the six men were organised by the Irish Republican Army, the paramilitary organisation that had been carrying an armed campaign to end British rule in Northern Ireland and to unite both parts of Ireland to create a united independent Ireland. The Court of Appeal in 1991 quashed their conviction and all six were set free. Had they been executed in 1975 instead of imprisoning them, a terrible act of injustice would have taken place. The six men were later awarded compensation ranging from £840,000 to £1.2 million for all the suffering they had gone through for having been falsely implicated and imprisoned for 17 years.

Another consideration, apart from the fact that capital punishment has never acted as a deterrence for acts such as rape and murder, is the effect on those who have to administer it. In this context, a friend of mine has brought to my notice the work of the famous British barrister, novelist and playwright John Mortimer. Mortimer had acquired special fame in dealing with divorce cases and he recalled one case he had dealt with in which it came to light that the male party, whose sexual predilections were unspeakably gross, was a part-time hangman. Mortimer reflecting on this case had remarked that if the system of capital punishment relied on monsters like that administering it, there must be something wrong with the system. John Mortimer was a lifelong opponent of capital punishment. Apart from the hangmen, all others who are involved in the act of execution suffer everlasting psychological damages with harmful and multiplier implications for everyone in their lives.

The death sentence leads to complacency in society by cloaking over the underlying responsibilities that society has for dealing with the causes that lead to serious crimes.

According to Amnesty International, which campaigns worldwide for abolishing the death penalty, at the end of 2018, 106 countries had abolished the death penalty in law for all crimes, and 142 countries constituting more than two-thirds of all the countries in the world, had abolished the death penalty in law or practice. Of the 56 countries that still retain the death penalty law, an overwhelming majority are from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Among the developed countries, only USA and Japan have the death penalty, and even there the public opinion is moving in the direction of opposition to death penalty. It is time that India, Pakistan and Bangladesh also move in this direction of doing away with the death penalty. As we are passing through an exceptional period of loss of lives due to the coronavirus pandemic, the heightened importance of saving lives and not ending them may trigger a cultural change in these three South Asian countries in favour of abolishing the death penalty law.

The writer is Visiting Scholar, Wolfson College, University of Oxford, UK.

Those who favour retention of death penalty consider that this acts as a deterrence against heinous crimes. – The Nation, 12/4/2020

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