Fritzroy Sterling
NEW YORK, Jul 31 2006 (IPS) – When Stanley Tookie Williams was strapped to a gurney awaiting his execution last December, things did not go as planned. California executioners had trouble finding a suitable vein in which to inject a lethal combination of drugs.
What happened next, medical professionals say, was probably a botched job that ultimately resulted in excessive and unnecessary pain for an additional 12 minutes.
Williams probable inhumane death, which would be in violation of the U.S. constitution, was not the only one, according to doctors groups and rights organisations that have studied executions.
Death row inmates this year have challenged the humaneness of the lethal series of drugs meant to kill them. Courts in California and …
Mel Frykberg
RAMALLAH, Jan 8 2009 (IPS) – An international chorus of condemnation has blasted Israel over its human rights abuses in Gaza. Operation Cast Lead, into its 12th day, has now claimed the lives of over 700 Palestinians.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) demanded safe access Thursday for ICRC officials and Palestinian Red Crescent (PRC) ambulances to evacuate the wounded. It accused Israel of deliberately delaying ambulances.
Rescue teams made several attempts to rescue the wounded and retrieve bodies in several areas of Gaza city but were refused entry by Israel Defence Forces (IDF) soldiers.
On Wednesday, however, after a week s intensive negotiations with Israeli officials, ICRC officials and PRC ambulance teams managed to reach …
Elizabeth Eames Roebling
SANTO DOMINGO, Jan 15 2010 (IPS) – The Dominican Republic, which has historically regarded its Haitian neighbour with suspicion, has turned toward Haiti with a tremendous outpouring of aid and love since a devastating earthquake rocked Port-au-Prince on Tuesday.
A grizzly scene marks the road to mass graves holding hundreds of bodies near Port-au-Prince. Credit: UN Photo/Logan Abassi
All of t…
MOSCOW, Nov 4 2013 (IPS) – Healthcare systems in Eastern Europe and Central Asia remain woefully unable to cope with HIV/AIDS as the region’s raging epidemic – the fastest growing in the world – takes on a new dimension, a senior UN official has told IPS.
Until now the Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA) epidemic had been driven by injection drug use. But data and anecdotal evidence has shown a strong rise in the spread of the disease through heterosexual transmission as well as via men who have sex with men – potentially throwing up a new set of challenges for governments and healthcare ministers.
But, says the UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy on HIV/AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Michel Kazatchkine, until a new approach to treating the diseas…
May 11 2020 – A spectre is haunting the conscientious citizens of Bangladesh—the spectre of the Digital Security Act, 2018 (DSA). By now the law has become synonymous with curtailment of freedom of expression and repression. The recent developments of involuntary disappearance, re-appearance and subsequent detention of several commentators and social activists have raised the alarm if indeed we as a nation are shying away from upholding one of the cardinal principles of the Muktijuddher Chetona (the spirit of the Liberation War) to freely express our views.
A few recent cases will corroborate the above statement. On May 6, businessman Mushtaq Ahmed and …