China challenged over executions

Human rights group Amnesty International has called on China to publicly state how many people it puts to death each year.

In its annual report on the use of the death penalty worldwide, published on Tuesday, Amnesty said the number of people executed by Beijing last year was likely "in the thousands" - estimated to be more than the total in the rest of the world.

"Chinese authorities claim that fewer executions are taking place. If this is true, why won't they tell the world how many people the state put to death?" Claudio Cordone, the Amnesty International interim secretary general, said in a statement.

The 41-page Death Sentences and Executions in 2009report refused to even estimate the toll in China, saying that the organisation believed publicly available statistics "grossly underrepresent" the actual figure.

"No one who is sentenced to death in China receives a fair trial in accordance with international human rights standards," the report said.

In 2008, Amnesty put the minimum figure of people put to death across China at 1,718.

There was no immediate comment on the report from authorities in Beijing. However, last month the country's highest court issued new guidelines stating that the death penalty should be limited to a small number of "extremely serious" cases.

'Political message'

Elsewhere, at least 714 people were executed in 18 countries in 2009, while at least 2,001 people were sentenced to death in 56 states, according to the report.

"The death penalty is cruel and degrading, and an affront to human dignity" Amnesty International report

Execution methods used included hanging, shooting, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection.

Most of the executions happened in Asia, the Middle East and North Africa, with Iran and Iraq accounting for the highest number.

Iran carried out at least 388 executions, while Iraq executed 120 and Saudi Arabia at least 69.

Iran and Saudi Arabia were singled out for executing juveniles, which Amnesty says violates international law.

Amnesty said Iran executed 112 people in the eight weeks between the disputed re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president, in June and his inauguration in August.

"The past year saw capital punishment applied extensively to send political messages, to silence opponents or to promote political agendas in China, Iran and Sudan," Amnesty said.

'No answer'

In Iraq, Amnesty said that the number of death sentences being carried out had spiked as the government attempted to crackdown on biolence in the country.

"It's not an answer to suicide bombing," Cordone said. "As a deterrent it's not going to work."

The US - the only country in the Americas to have used the death sentence - executed 52 people, but the executions were about half the number recorded a decade earlier in 1999, Amnesty said.

The group campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty, saying executions are often passed after unfair trials.

"The death penalty is cruel and degrading, and an affront to human dignity," the report said.

Executions methods used included lethal injection [EPA]

Amnesty says the death sentences are used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities.

Burundi and Togo abolished the death penalty in 2009 bringing to 95 the total of the countries that have abolished the penalty.

Roseann Rife, from Amnesty's Asia-Pacific office in Taiwan, said the statistics were encouraging.

"We're carrying that as our main message that the global trend is moving towards abolition," she told Al Jazeera.

"There're countries round the globe that still maintain the death penalty ... but at the same time we are seeing countries around the globe abolishing the death penalty.

"Indonesia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Mongolia did not execute anyone [last year] and that's the first time in recent times that that has happened."

Limiting executions

Other countries were limiting use of the practice, the report said.

Kenya, which has not carried out an execution since 1987, commuted the death sentences of 4,000 people to imprisonment, the largest such move the rights organisation has seen.

Europe had no executions last year, a first since the Amnesty began keeping records, but Belarus - the only country that continues to use capital punishment - killed two people in March 2010.

"Fewer countries than ever before are carrying out executions. As it did with slavery and apartheid, the world is rejecting this embarrassment to humanity," Cordone said.

Nine further countries have abolished the death penalty for ordinary crimes, while 35 others retain the death penalty but are considered abolitionist in practice as they have not executed anyone in the past 10 years.

That leaves 58 countries that retain the sentence for ordinary crimes.

- It's hard for me to even believe that countries such as China and Iraq still use the death sentence so often, and for ordinary crimes. I think that for most crimes, the death sentence is far too barbaric, especially when it's used unjustly without a proper trial, or as discrimination again certain races or religions. I think the countries that still use this form of sentencing need to abolish it for ordinary crimes at the very least. However, I think that there are certain crimes (ex: rape) that merit it. But allowing it for certain crimes and not other may become a slippery slope, so unless a country could find a way of effectively using it only for the worst crimes, I would rather it be abolished altogether.

Somali pirates hijack eight ships in three days

By Taylor Barnes, Correspondent / March 30, 2010

Pirates captured a Panama-flagged cargo ship just 10 miles from its port on Monday. The ship was last reported being sailed through the Gulf of Aden toward Somalia.

The attack comes after seven ships were hijacked in the Indian ocean this weekend and underscores the persistence of pirates even in the face of increased international patrolling and private security measures undertaken by cargo ships.

The ship was carrying mixed mechanical equipment toward the United Arab Emirates when attacked, according to an EU Naval Force release. The 24 members of the crew are from Yemen, India, Ghana, Sudan, Pakistan, and the Philippines, the Associated Press reports.

IN PICTURES: Somali pirates

Pirate attacks have continued to climb despite the presence of three dozen warships off the Somali coast. The area of ocean where ships are vulnerable to pirate attack is too vast to effectively patrol.

Somali pirates have taken in tens of billions in ransom over the past few years through hijackings, and on Sunday demanded $3 million for a North Korea-flagged ship taken last month, Voice of America reports.

Commercial cargo ships are increasingly taking to arming themselves with private security, The Christian Science Monitor reported last week. Private security guards shot a Somali pirate dead last week, which was the first recorded instance of its kind. US and French navies have shot and killed Somali pirates before, but the increasingly violent response to piracy may spiral.

“This could be the beginning of a violent period,” E.J. Hogendoorn, head of the Horn of Africa program at the International Crisis Group’s office in Nairobi, told the Monitor. “If [the pirates] see guys with shiny barrels pointing at them, they might fire first.”

But as the Monitor reported, some innovative firms are developing non-lethal measures to deter pirates, such as a 300-meter rope that tangles propellers and a laser that causes temporary blindness.

Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991, when then-President Siad Barre was overthrown. Piracy has been a persistent problem since, given that near-anarchic Somalia, which is also battling an Islamist insurgency, is not able to control its territory and seizing ships is a lucrative venture.

Somali pirates have widened their range to the farthest it has ever been, operating as far down as Mozambique in southern Africa and near the coast of India, Reuters reported. "The entire Indian Ocean is becoming a problem of piracy," Admiral Mark Fitzgerald, who commands the US naval forces in Europe and Africa, said at a London forum last week.

In addition to piracy attacks for ransom, the US last week warned ships traveling off the coast of Yemen of the risk of Al Qaeda attacks, Reuters adds. The instability in Yemen causes US ships to potentially face attacks similar to the suicide bombing that killed 17 soldiers in 2000 on board the USS warship Cole.

- The situation with the Somali pirates seems to be worsening all the time. Seven ships in one weekend? That is completely out of control. Since the patrol ships don't seem to be making any difference, I support the ships that are taking the initiative to arm themselves; sometimes it's necessary to take things into your own hands. However, I agree that this could open the door for a very messy time if armed fights begin taking place between pirates and crewmen more and more often. The measures that are being taken, though (ie. the ropes and the lasers) aren't strong enough in my opinion to keep pirates at bay. I think that more countries need to make an effort to send patrol ships with good weaponry to this area to control the pirate situation. In my opinion, pirates are simply thieves and commercial and patrol ships should be able to use whatever force necessary to protect their property and belongings, as any civilian would do to someone invading their home.

Catholics find ties to the church tested by crisis

By VANESSA GERA (AP)

WARSAW, Poland — An Austrian priest avoids mention of Pope Benedict XVI in his Masses. A Philadelphia woman stops going to confession, saying she now sees priests as more flawed than herself. British protesters call for the pontiff to resign.

As the faithful fill churches this Holy Week, many Roman Catholics around the world are finding their relationship to the church painfully tested by new revelations of clerical abuse and suggestions Benedict himself may have helped cover up cases in Germany and the U.S.

There are fears that for those whose commitment is already wavering, the scandal could be the final blow, and a growing chorus is clamoring for the church to embrace full transparency, take a hard line against pedophiles, and reconsider the rule of priestly celibacy.

"There's too many victims, and too much lying from the church about what really happened," said Martin Sherlock, a Catholic newspaper vendor in Dublin, Ireland.

Experts say the church is facing a crisis of historic proportions.

"This is the type of problem that arises really once in a century, I think, and it might even be more significant," said Paul Collins, an Australian church historian and former priest.

Collins, 69, said the abuse controversy was not mentioned by the priest in his own church near Canberra on Palm Sunday, but that the congregation discussed it afterward outside.

"People are outraged really, they're furious with the complete failure of the church's leadership and their view would be that we are led by incompetent people," Collins said.

That view was echoed by many Catholics interviewed around the world by The Associated Press in recent days, although the pope also had defenders.

One of them was John Ryan, a retired glue factory worker, who said he was impressed by the letter Benedict wrote to the Irish faithful last week in which he chastised Irish bishops.

"I was talking to my parish priest last weekend, and we were reading the pope's letter, and he told me: This pope is the most intelligent pope we've had in the last thousand years," said Ryan, 66, after a Mass in Dublin. "I couldn't disagree with that. I don't really think we could do better than with Benedict. I know they're supposed to be infallible, but I'd say most Catholics today would accept that nobody's perfect — not even the pope."

In staunchly Catholic Poland, the homeland of the late Pope John Paul II and a place where churches are packed even on work days, the top church authority called the pope the target of an "unprecedented media attack."

Allegations that Benedict concealed abuse "are totally groundless and it is hard to understand them in any other way than as a direct attack on the person and dignity of the pope," Henryk Muszynski, the Primate of Poland and Archbishop of Gniezno, said Sunday.

But across the Atlantic, Jasmine Co said her faith in the church was badly shaken.

The 56-year-old nurse, who recently moved to the U.S. from the Philippines, said she has stopped confessing her sins to priests, and is turning to God directly.

"I don't believe in confession to the priest because I don't know if that priest is more of a sinner than I am," Co said after attending a Palm Sunday service in central Philadelphia.

On Sunday in London, about 50 protesters staged a demonstration calling on the pope to resign — something that hasn't happened in 700 years.

The criticism is also coming from pulpits.

Udo Fischer, an Austrian priest known for his liberal views, avoids mentioning Benedict and other church leaders by name during his Masses — at least until he sees stronger signals of remorse from the Holy See.

"We always stress that this is the church of Jesus Christ — that of the Lord Jesus and not that of the Lord Pope," Fischer said after a Palm Sunday service in his parish in Paudorf, a village near Vienna.

Parishioners young and old squeezed into pews in Fischer's modern and airy church clutching bunches of pussy willows blessed by the priest.

Traditionally Catholic Austria, shaken by clergy abuse claims in past years and again in recent weeks, risks a drop in already dwindling support for the church if no concrete action is taken to prevent further abuse and cover-ups, says Regina Polak of the University of Vienna's Institute for Practical Theology.

"The situation is very fragile right now," Polak said. "The potential for frustration is high."

In Spain, a heavily Catholic country where secular lifestyles are eroding church attendance, a coalition of more than 100 liberal-minded lay and clergy-based groups called the Vatican's handling of the scandal "irresponsible and insufficient," saying it failed to "put itself firmly on the side of the victims."

In Norway, Oslo's Bishop Bernt Eidsvig told Catholics in a letter last week that "the culture of silence that certain bishops advised is a betrayal."

Perhaps most ominous is the threat to the pope's own authority.

David Gibson, author of "The Rule of Benedict," a biography of the pope, said the criticism focusing on Benedict puts the "the mystique of the papal office" in peril.

"And above all, it diminishes his credibility, his ability to convince people of his message, to have people listen to him. It distances many Catholics, I think, even further from the institutional hierarchical church," said Gibson.

Even as Easter Week began, anxiety was heard in many places, with people struggling to draw a line between the crimes of some priests and their own deep attachment to communities and the beliefs that sustain them.

"At this point in my life I wouldn't leave the church for somebody else's sins," said Linda Faust, 56, after a Mass in Greendale, Wisconsin — the state where the late Rev. Lawrence Murphy was accused of molesting some 200 boys at a school for the deaf. Benedict, at the time Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, is linked to a decision in the 1990s not to defrock Murphy.

Instead, Faust said that she and her husband pray for the child victims, the abusive priests and the archbishops who let them transfer to other parishes.

A key focus for those seeking church reform is celibacy — a tradition dating to Christianity's early days but only made mandatory in the 11th century. Both Collins in Australia and Bishop Geoffrey Siundu, a former Catholic priest in Kenya, said the rule should go.

Siundu now heads the Ecumenical Catholic Church of Christ in Kenya, said the celibacy rule has driven 30 other ex-priests to join his church.

Kathrin Radelmayer, 24, attended Mass in Munich, where Ratzinger's handling of a case when he was archbishop there has been questioned. She said she was sticking with the church even though many of her friends and relatives are distancing themselves now.

"It is such a shock for the church, but the church has withstood a lot in its 2,000 years and I think that it will survive this as well," Radelmayer said.

Marina Buendia, a 22-year-old nurse from Madrid, went to St. Peter's Square in Rome with a friend for the Pope's Palm Sunday Mass. She defended the church.

"The news of these cases has come to the Vatican far too late for the Vatican to be held responsible," she said. "I think that the Vatican has accepted the problem, which is a step in the right direction. We are both very religious and feel a very strong personal bond with the pope, which would never be affected by such scandals. As young Catholics, we feel welcome and included by the church."

At a Mass in Minneapolis, Teresa Schweitzer, a 45-year-old English teacher, said the handling of abuse cases compounds her disenchantment over other matters, including women denied leadership roles. But she drew comfort from the many Catholic priests and activists she has seen helping the poor and pursuing social justice.

"I've had a lot of disappointments over the years, and I'm hanging by a thread," Schweitzer said. "I keep coming back for the community — the way we support each other in so many ways. Do you give up on that? Or do you stay in it and fight for justice? I think that's where a lot of us are at now."

- I have mixed opinions about this issue. On one hand, the priest who molested those boys is absolutely disgusting and should have faced much harsher consequences than a transfer; the decision to stop him from being defrocked was a huge mistake. He is an embarrassment to the Catholic church and should no longer have anything to do with it. However, I feel that the Pope is facing injustice in this situation. I don't think that he helped to cover up the scheme; on the contrary, I think he's moving to help fix the problem and I admire the strength of his faith, allowing him to ignore these allegations. However, I think the church needs to take action very quickly to make it clear that they do not think this behaviour is tolerable, and to prevent future scandals like this from happening.