Camil Stoenescu's blog

China execută mai mulți oameni decât restul lumii la un loc, conform ultimului raport al Amnesty International. Lucru firesc, dacă ne gândim că inclusiv traficul de droguri e pasibil de pedeapsa capitală în Republica Populară Chineză. În toată această vreme, Statele Unite – cea mai cunoscută țară din acest punct de vedere – nu se poate mândri „decât” cu 52 de execuții în 2009, număr ce pălește în fața celor peste 388 ale Iranului, de exemplu.

Iar Amnesty International le plânge de milă, desigur, în numele progresului și al drepturilor omului șamd:

Amnesty International has been campaigning for the total abolition of the death penalty since 1977. The organization believes that the death penalty violates the right to life and is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. It opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception regardless of the nature of the crime, the characteristics of the offender, or the method used by the state to kill the prisoner.

Amnesty International believes that the death penalty legitimizes an irreversible act of violence by the state. Research demonstrates that the death penalty is often applied in a discriminatory manner, being used disproportionately against the poor, minorities and members of racial, ethnic and religious communities. The death penalty is often imposed after a grossly unfair trial. But even when trials respect international standards of fairness, the risk of executing the innocent can never be fully eliminated – the death penalty will inevitably claim innocent victims, as has been persistently demonstrated.

While the death penalty runs the risk of irrevocable error, it has not been proven to have any special deterrent effect. It denies the possibility of rehabilitation. It promotes simplistic responses to complex human problems, rather than pursuing constructive solutions. It consumes resources that could be better used to work against violent crime and assist those affected by it. It is a symptom of a culture of violence, not a solution to it. It is an affront to human dignity.

The world witnessed further progress towards ending judicial killings by states in 2009. For the first time since Amnesty International started keeping records, not a single execution was carried out in all of Europe, while important steps were taken to turn the United Nations General Assembly resolutions calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions into reality. 
Two more countries, Burundi and Togo, abolished the death penalty in 2009, bringing the number of countries that have removed capital punishment entirely from their laws to 95. The world is in reach of 100 countries declaring their refusal to put people to death. 
In the Americas, the United States of America (USA) was the only nation to carry out executions in 2009. 
In sub-Saharan Africa only two countries executed prisoners: Botswana and Sudan. 
In Asia, there were no executions in Afghanistan, Indonesia, Mongolia and Pakistan in 2009, the first execution-free year in those countries in recent times.

These successes follow decisions by the UN General Assembly in 2007 and 2008 to call for a global moratorium on executions as a first step to total abolition. Amnesty International hopes and believes that the UN General Assembly resolutions – the first of their kind – will continue to be a major influence in persuading countries to abandon their use of capital punishment. A similar resolution will be considered at the Third Committee of the UN General Assembly in late 2010. 
But even as world opinion and practice shift inexorably towards abolition, the extensive and politicized use of the death penalty continues in countries including China, Iran and Sudan. In 2009, as in previous years, the majority of the world’s executions occurred in two regions: Asia and the Middle East and North Africa. 
The continuing executions of juvenile offenders – those under 18 years of age at the time of the crime – continued in two countries: Iran and Saudi Arabia. These executions were in violation of international law.
Secrecy surrounds the use of the death penalty in countries such as China, Belarus, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea and Viet Nam. Such secrecy is indefensible. If capital punishment is a legitimate act of government as these nations claim, there is no reason for its use to be hidden from the public and international scrutiny.[…]

De aici.

Ultimele declarații ale secretarului de stat Hillary Clinton o demonstrează cu prisosință:

The US revealed the size of its nuclear arsenal last night in an unprecedented attempt to galvanise efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, announced the declassification of one of the Pentagon’s most closely guarded secrets at the opening day of a critical international meeting on global disarmament.

The Pentagon’s figures show that the US stockpile consists of 5,113 nuclear warheads and “several thousand” more retired warheads that await dismantling. The figures reveal an 84 per cent reduction from the historic peak of 31,225 warheads in 1967 at the height of the Cold War.

Faptul că strategia appeasement-ului s-a dovedit mereu una falimentară în istorie nu le spune nimic factorilor de decizie de la Washington. Mă întreb de ce nu-și dezafectează complet arsenalul nuclear, într-un gest de bunăvoință adresat Iranului, care astfel va fi pe deplin convins de bunele intenții americane. Sau eventual pot invita niște „experți civili” iranieni să le inspecteze tehnologiile nucleare, într-un util schimb de experiență interculturală.

Tentativele împăciuitoare vor fi interpretate de către Iran așa cum se cuvine – ca semn de slăbiciune – iar acesta își va continua programul nuclear, cu sau fără aprobarea Vestului. Iar politica externă americană, în „era Obama”, va cădea tot mai mult în derizoriu.

Pentru a aniversa așa cum se cuvine 31 de ani de la Revoluția Islamică, Guvernul iranian interzice Gmail, relatează Wall Street Journal:

Iran’s telecommunications agency announced what it described as a permanent suspension of Google Inc.’s email services, saying instead that a national email service for Iranian citizens would soon be rolled out. It wasn’t clear late Wednesday what effect the order had on Google’s email services in Iran.

Google didn’t have an immediate comment about the announcement.

Police have also confiscated satellite dishes from residential roof tops, according to opposition Web sites. Some pedestrians have been quoted on opposition Web sites saying that their mobile phones were searched and, in some cases, taken by police patrolling areas of the capital where protests have erupted in the past.

Săptămâna aceasta iranienii sărbătoresc 31 de ani de când au renunțat să mai încerce să fie ca occidentalii decadenți și s-au întors în Evul Mediu. Șahul cel rău, sprijinit de englezi și americani, a plecat, teocrația cea bună s-a instaurat.

Unde este Iranul acum? Cam pe aici. Eventual puteți arunca un ochi aici și aici.