Source: Human Rights Watch
(Beirut) – Local media in Kuwait
are reporting that at least two prisoners, both Egyptian, will be
executed on live television at 7:30 a.m. on June 18, 2013. It will be
Kuwait’s second round of executions since it ended its de facto moratorium on use of the death penalty in April.
Local activists told Human Rights Watch that one of the men was
convicted of murder and the other of kidnap and rape. They said that
three other foreigners, two Bengali men convicted of rape and murder, a
Pakistani man convicted of drug dealing, and a Kuwaiti woman convicted
of arson may be facing imminent execution.
“This new round of executions indicates that Kuwait is moving in
exactly the wrong direction regarding the death penalty,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East director at
Human Rights Watch. “The government should cancel the executions
immediately and reinstate the moratorium that had been in place since
2007.”
Human Rights Watch opposes the death penalty in all circumstances as an
inherently irreversible, inhumane punishment. A majority of countries
in the world have abolished the practice. On December 18, 2007, the
United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution by a wide margin
calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.