WWF celebrates saving of Himalayan forest and not so Common Leopard

Lahore, Pakistan: An initiative by Pakistan’s Supreme Court and a media and legal campaign has ended a proposed large tourism development in one of the best remaining representative areas of Himalayan forest in the Punjab.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court this month not only formalised the new government’s recent dissolution of the New Murree Development Project (NMDP), but ruled out any similar projects for the area in future.

“We are very happy with this outcome and want to thank the other groups that fought it with us and the judges who took the initiative to have it examined,” said Hammad Naqi Khan, WWF-Pakistan director for freshwater, climate and toxics.

“This project has been a threat to this relatively pristine area which has been a reserve for more than a century and to the water reservoirs supplying Islamabad and Rawalpindi since 2004.”

The new Punjab government dissolved the New Murree Development Authority in June, following Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry used his authority in September 2005 to halt the project pending a judicial review of the proposal to turn the 1,663 hectare Patriata Reserved Forest near Murree in Rawalpindi District into a ‘tourist city of international standards’..

WWF became a party to the case and, with other local individuals launched a well-supported media and public campaign against the government-backed proposal and the authority formed to carry out the development.

The envisioned the construction of hotels, restaurants, golf courses, shopping centres etc. right in the middle of a healthy reserve forest which is important habitat for the (now very uncommon in the area) Common Leopard as well as 14 other mammal species, 200 plant species, 146 bird species including rare pheasants and the Paradise Flycatcher, .22 reptiles and six amphibians.

“Most significantly however, this area was a key part of one of the best remaining Himalayan temperate forest areas in Punjab” said Khan. “The forest guaranteed better quality water with lower levels of sediments and pollutants for Simlay and Mangla reservoirs.

“The environmental and economic significance of the forests for a country like Pakistan with a looming water crisis and an agriculture intensive developing economy far outweighed the benefits of what started out as mostly real estate speculation.

“We are also encouraged that the court and ultimately government looked sensitively and sensibly at the issues.”

Ex-President Convicted of Death Squad Killings

April 9th, 2009 Dear supporters, As I'm sure you have seen in recent news, the former president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, was found guilty by the Peruvian Supreme Court on charges involving serious human rights violations. After years of evading justice, Fujimori is finally being held accountable for some of his crimes. For a decade, from 1990 to 2000, the Fujimori government used bribery, extortion, and intimidation to concentrate power in the presidency, subverting the democratic process and eliminating checks on government abuses. In the trial, Fujimori was convicted of the killings of 25 people in two massacres in 1991 and 1992, carried out by a specialized squad of military intelligence officers. Human Rights Watch Senior Researcher Maria McFarland was in the courtroom for the ruling's announcement. In 2005, Human Rights Watch released a report that documented Fujimori's abuses and presented evidence linking him to the perpetrators, helping build a case against him. We are proud that our report contributed to this important verdict. The court's ruling is important because it demonstrates the crucial role an independent national tribunal can play in addressing past human rights abuses, even against a former head of state. The landmark decision is part of a global trend of increasing accountability for former heads of state and other high-level abusers. Human Rights Watch is playing a leading role in seeing this change through, with the help of our supporters. And make no mistake – it is your support that enables us to expose the truth and apply pressure, bringing about the kind of deep rooted change that promotes global justice. Sincerely, Kenneth Roth Executive Director Peru: Fujimori Verdict a Rights Victory Q & A: Trial of Former President Alberto Fujimori of Peru Peru's former President Alberto Fujimori enters a courtroom at the Special Police Headquarters in Lima. January 23, 2008.

32 Years on Death Row

This week, the Supreme Court refused to hear William L Thompson's claim that his execution after more than 30 years on death row would violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Normally when the Court declines to hear a case it does so without comment, but this case sparked lively debate.

Justice Clarence Thomas ridiculed the idea that a prisoner who challenges his death sentence can then complain about the length of time he has spent on death row. Justices Stephen Breyer and John Paul Stevens, however, took Thompson's claim far more seriously. Breyer noted that the delay was hardly all Thompson's fault. The judge at his trial had excluded certain mitigating evidence, which the Supreme Court later ruled was unconstitutional, resulting in a new sentencing hearing 13 years after the crime. Stevens pointed out the "dehumanizing effects" of the conditions under which Thompson has been confined for more than half of his life and argued that such a prolonged delay diminishes any possible benefit society may receive from carrying out a death sentence.

While Justices Breyer and Stevens are decidedly in the minority on the US Supreme Court, other courts have recognized that extended periods under sentence of death can be unacceptably cruel. In 1989, the United States asked the United Kingdom to extradite Jens Soering, a West German facing murder charges and a possible death sentence in the state of Virginia. The United Kingdom agreed, but the European Court of Human Rights blocked the extradition.

Noting that the average condemned prisoner in Virginia spent six to eight years on death row in "extreme conditions," the Court ruled that extraditing Soering to Virginia would violate the European Convention on Human Rights, which provides that no one should be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. (After Virginia authorities agreed not to seek the death penalty, Soering was extradited and convicted of murder, and received two life sentences).

Similarly, in 1993 the Judicial Committee of the British Privy Council - at that time the final court of appeal for some Caribbean nations -- considered the case of Earl Pratt and Ivan Morgan, who had been under sentence of death in Jamaica for 14 years. The Committee concluded that confinement on death row for more than five years presumptively constituted "inhuman or degrading punishment or other treatment" prohibited by the Jamaican Constitution.

These rulings are consistent with psychology and with common sense. As the Judicial Committee said in the Pratt and Morgan case, "The statement of these bare facts is sufficient to bring home to the mind of any person of normal sensitivity and compassion the agony of mind that these men must have suffered as they have alternated between hope and despair in the 14 years that they have been in prison facing the gallows." Even without the threat of impending execution, it is well known that prolonged solitary confinement can inflict great suffering; indeed, the US Supreme Court has identified it as one of the techniques of "physical and mental torture" that have been used by governments to coerce confessions.

The suffering can be particularly unbearable for the many prisoners who have brain damage, mental illness, or mental retardation. One federal judge wrote that putting such prisoners in isolated confinement "is the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe." Thompson shows signs of brain damage, and as a child consistently scored in the mid-70s on IQ tests.

In the United States today, the average condemned prisoner awaits execution for nearly 13 years - far longer than the delays found to be intolerably cruel in the Soering and Pratt and Morgan cases. Some might argue that the solution is to reduce appellate review of death sentences, but that cure would be worse than the disease. More than 30 percent of death sentences imposed between 1973 and 2000 have been overturned, and 130 persons have been released from death row after they were found to be innocent of the crimes for which they had been sentenced to die. Cutting back on judicial review would increase the risk of executing an innocent person - a risk no civilized society should tolerate.

Justice Stevens has served on the Supreme Court since 1975 - that is, for the entirety of the modern death penalty era in the United States, during which more than 1,150 persons have been put to death. From that vantage point he has come to see, as he wrote this week, "the fundamental inhumanity and unworkability of the death penalty as it is administered in the United States." The Thompson case, like so many others, shows how right he is.