Death Penalty: Catholic, church to oppose death penalty

Pope changes teaching to oppose death penalty in all cases

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India approves death penalty for child rapists

India’s cabinet on Saturday approved the introduction of the death penalty for child rapists after recent cases shocked the country into nationwide protests.

The decision was taken after Prime Minister Narendra Modi called an emergency meeting of his cabinet upon his return from an official visit to Europe. The law is expected to come into effect in six-month-time, once it is signed by the President.

Nationwide protests started earlier this month after police revealed that an eight-year-old Muslim girl had been gang-raped by Hindu men in an Indian-administered part of Kashmir, back in January.

Read more: India approves death penalty for child rapists | Euronews

Juncker dismisses calls to halt Turkey membership talks - by Ivo Oliveira

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker warned Thursday that it would be counterproductive to halt EU membership talks with Turkey.

Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern had said the negotiations were “diplomatic fiction.”

But Juncker told German public broadcaster ARD: “I don’t think it would be helpful if we were to unilaterally end negotiations with Turkey.”

He added that any such decision would need the support of all EU member countries and he doesn’t “see this willingness among all member states at this point in time” to stop the talks.

But the Commission president acknowledged that Turkey has work to do in order to meet membership conditions set by the bloc.

“Turkey cannot be a member of the European Union in its current state, and especially not if it decided, as some have warned, to reinstate the death penalty. That would lead to the immediate breaking off of negotiations,” he warned.

Read more: Juncker dismisses calls to halt Turkey membership talks – POLITI

Turkey - Erdogan tightens grip on the country as arrests now hit 6,000 which Erdogan calls "rooting out the virus"

A "coup" which formalized Erdogan's dictatorship

Turkey has arrested 6,000 people after a failed coup, with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowing to purge state bodies of the "virus" that caused the revolt. 

At a funeral for one of the 290 victims, Mr Erdogan repeated an accusation that US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen was behind the plot.

Mr Gulen strongly denies any involvement.

High-ranking military officers are among those held.

One of Mr Erdogan's top military aides, Colonel Ali Yazici, is among those now in custody, Turkish media reported.

The death toll rose on Sunday to more than 290, a foreign ministry statement said. More than 100 of those killed were involved in the coup, officials said.

"We will continue to cleanse the virus from all state institutions, because this virus has spread. Unfortunately like a cancer, this virus has enveloped the state," Mr Erdogan told mourners at the Fatih mosque in Istanbul.

He had earlier suggested parliament might consider a proposal to restore the death penalty.

Tens of thousands of Turks partied into the small hours of Sunday on the main squares of key cities to celebrate the failure of the coup.

A military coup is always to be condemned, but so is a total disregard for Democracy and violations of Human Rights.

Erdogan must be condemned for releasing a "mob" of his AKP people into the streets to commit acts of violence and vandalism in order to quell a dubious  coup attempt, while during the Taksim demonstrations he used  maximum security measures to disperse pro-democracy demonstrators.

Say no to Erdogan's human rights violations

Unfortunately, no official condemnation of Erdogan's Human Rights violations in his dealing with this so-called "coup" have been heard from either the EU or the US.  

Some additional facts about Erdogan's Turkey

• Between August 2014 and March 2015, 236 people investigated for "insulting the head of state"; 105 indicted; eight formally arrested
• Between July and December 2014 (Recep Tayyip Erdogan's presidency), Turkey filed 477 requests to Twitter for removal of content, over five times more than any other country and an increase of 156% on the first half of the year
• Reporters Without Borders places Turkey 149th of 180 countries in the press freedom index
• During Mr Erdogan's time in office (Prime Minister 2003-14, President from 2014), 63 journalists have been sentenced to a total of 32 years in prison, with collective fines of $128,000
• Article 299 of the Turkish penal code states that anybody who insults the president of the republic can face a prison term of up to four years. This sentence can be increased by a sixth if committed publicly; and a third if committed by press or media

EU-Digest

Excecutions: Outrage Across Ideological Spectrum in Europe Over Flawed Lethal Injection in U.S. - by Steven Erlanger

Europeans largely consider the death penalty a particularly brutal American anachronism, but the prolonged death of Clayton D. Lockett in Oklahoma, after a botched execution by lethal injection, produced more than the usual horror on Wednesday.

The death penalty is banned in the European Union, which has also moved to ban the export of sedatives like sodium thiopental for use in lethal injections. The drug’s producer has stopped making it, and other European companies have sought to prevent their drugs from being used for executions, fearing European Union sanctions. As a result, the authorities in Oklahoma, and officials in other states, have been improvising new mixtures of drugs.

According to the International Commission Against the Death Penalty, based in Switzerland, Belarus is the only European country that still carries out legal executions, usually by a gunshot to the head.

But for some Europeans on Wednesday, even that method of killing seemed humane compared with what Mr. Lockett suffered until his heart stopped, about 43 minutes after the process began. Many here agreed with Madeline Cohen, a lawyer who witnessed the execution, who said that Mr. Lockett had been “tortured to death.”

Read more: Outrage Across Ideological Spectrum in Europe Over Flawed Lethal Injection in U.S. - NYTimes.com

Human Rights: China trims its list of death penalty crimes and exempts over-75s - by Gillian Wong

China banned the death penalty for people over 75 and for a dozen non-violent crimes yesterday in a largely symbolic gesture unlikely to reduce the annual toll of executions. The Communist regime executes more people than any other nation, and critics claim that too many crimes remain punishable by death.

However, experts said the move was unlikely to significantly reduce executions, since people convicted of those crimes in the past have rarely received the maximum penalty and capital punishment can still be used to punish offenses such as corruption in the economic sphere.

"The big obstacle, I think, is corruption. Because there still is a very strong sense that corrupt officials must die among the Chinese population at large," said Joshua Rosenzweig, the research manager for the US-based human rights group, Dui Hua Foundation.

For more: China trims its list of death penalty crimes and exempts over-75s - Scotsman.com News