IMPACT

By Country

As a nation, Australia’s focus on abolishing the death penalty centres on the neighbouring Asia-Pacific region, and includes directly calling upon countries with whom we have close and friendly relations. 

Asia and the death penalty

Asia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s population and more than 90 per cent of the world’s executions. Of these executions, thousands are estimated to be carried out in China each year, with lethal injection emerging as the dominant method of execution in the past decade. More lethal injections are carried out each year in Asia than in all other continents combined. There is perhaps more potential now than ever before for death penalty diplomacy to change this status quo.

Our impact by country

Singapore

  • We amplify advocacy efforts to challenge executions, such as in the 2022 execution of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam, an intellectually disabled man, and the spate of executions in 2023 for small quantities of drugs.

  • Working with the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights defenders.

Bangladesh

  • We raise awareness among key policy stakeholders of the impact of the expansion of the death penalty and state-sanctioned killing mechanisms, and about the persecution of human rights defenders.

  • CPJP is supporting the work of human rights defenders who are collecting and collating information on alleged human rights violations in Bangladesh. Available data on extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances from 2009 to 2022 can be found here.

Thailand

  • For the first time in Australian history, an amicus curiae brief was submitted to a court considering a death sentence appeal, which was co-signed by CPJP and the co-chairs of the Australian Parliamentarians Against the Death Penalty. This brought to life Australia's Strategy for Abolition of the Death Penalty and has created a precedent for future intervention by the Australian Government, where it could be beneficial to an individual’s legal position and to the issues. In this specific case, the three co-defendants were exonerated of the charges and released.

  • We spoke with governments about the role of law enforcement in information sharing in death-eligible cases, highlighting the paucity of evidence in the above case and the aspects of the case that led us to conclude it was a wrongful conviction.

Afghanistan

  • CPJP evacuated 85 individuals from Afghanistan who were at risk of execution / extrajudicial killing, and supported a further 65 with urgent logistical and operational support to ensure they remain secure.

  • Our work has been given positive momentum by Parliamentarians in various countries in the Asia-Pacific region who have helped to facilitate the issuance of humanitarian and refugee visas to at-risk individuals.

Philippines

  • We continue to work collaboratively to challenge the death penalty and its proposed reintroduction in the Philippines.

  • We are supporting local organisations in their efforts to seek accountability for extrajudicial killings.

Malaysia

  • With the Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network (ADPAN), CPJP supported local activists in successfully campaigning to abolish the mandatory death penalty in Malaysia in early 2023. We are now supporting local lawyers representing people on death row who are seeking resentencing, following this change.

  • Also, in collaboration with ADPAN, CPJP has assisted with training criminal lawyers in Malaysia in relation to their capital defence casework. 

  • CPJP supports ADPAN in its advocacy for Malaysian foreign nationals executed in Singapore, including in the case of the execution of Nagaenthran Dharmalingam.

Indonesia

  • We continue to support local partner KontraS with the production of a lawyers' guide to death penalty legal assistance.

  • In collaboration with KontraS, we are assisting in training lawyers who wish to gain insight and knowledge about capital defence casework. 

Vietnam

  • We were called upon by DFAT to make a submission on the death penalty in Vietnam as part of the annual Australian Human Rights Consultation that fed into the Government's Human Rights Dialogue with Vietnam.

  • CPJP is active in advocacy at the ASEAN level on intersections between the use of the death penalty and other human rights issues, such as human trafficking and discrimination against individuals of minority ethnic groups.