Source: Human Rigths Watch http://m.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/mar/04/yemen-stop-child-executions-human-rights
Yemen has executed at least 15
young male and female offenders, all aged under 18 when they committed the
offences, in the last five years, Human Rights Watch has said, urging the
government to halt such executions.
The New-York-based group also
called on the president, Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to reverse the execution
orders of three juveniles on death row, whose appeals have been exhausted.
“Sending child offenders
before firing squads is hardly the way for Yemen to show that it respects human
rights,” said Priyanka Motaparthy, children’s rights researcher at HRW.
In a 30-page report, HRW cited the
case of Hind al-Barti, executed by a government firing squad in Sana’a on
murder charges. The group said the young woman’s birth certificate showed she
was 15 at the time of the alleged murder.
Barti told HRW in March 2012 that
she had made a false confession after police officers beat her and threatened
her with rape. Government authorities only gave her family a few hours’ notice
before her execution.
“There is strong evidence
that Hind al-Barti was just a girl when she was accused of murder, yet she was
sentenced – and received – the ultimate punishment,” said Motaparthy.
“The Yemeni government should
have reduced her sentence if there was any reason to believe she was under 18
at the time of the crime.”
HRW said several other juvenile
offenders it interviewed said they had faced threats, physical abuse and
torture in custody, which they said led them to make false confessions.
Yemen’s human rights minister
Hooria Mashhour said Yemeni law prohibited the execution of offenders under the
age of 18, but that people often lacked birth certificates to prove their age.
“Problems happen during
procedures, during trials, where they treat the young offender as a fully
responsible adult,” said Mashhour, when asked about the HRW report.
“When rulings are issued and
we, as ministry of human rights, intervene, the judiciary consider our action
as interference by the executive branch in their work.”
Hadi, who took office a year ago
after popular protests forced the former president Ali Abdullah Saleh to quit,
is trying to reassert government authority in a nation that was lawless,
chaotic and impoverished even before the political upheaval.
An official of a Yemeni group, the
Seyaj Organisation for Childhood Protection, said it had managed to get the
execution of an alleged child offender halted on Wednesday at the last minute
after contacting Hadi. The juvenile, Mohammed Abdulkarim Hazaa, was not among
the three named by HRW as on death row.
