Washington, D. It is with deep concern that Human Rights Watch has received reports of the imminent execution on December 10, internationally celebrated as Human Rights Day of four women convicted of prostitution in Khartoum. We urge your government to refrain from executing these women because doing so would violate international and U. Under these circumstances, imposing the death penalty on four women on international Human Rights Day would make a mockery of human rights.
We also protest the detention, beating and flogging of another group of women who were demonstrating in Khartoum, in the exercise of their right of free expression. This penalty was carried out at a. We urge you to compensate the arrested women, to repeal the penalty of flogging, and to assure that future peaceful protests proceed undisturbed. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, the sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime, under Section 6 2 of the ICCPR.
What such serious crimes are is further defined in section 1 of the U. In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, capital punishment may be imposed only for the most serious crimes, it being understood that their scope should not go beyond intentional crimes with lethal or other extremely grave consequences.
In section of the Criminal Act, prostitution is a crime, but purchasing the services of a prostitute is not. Therefore it strains logic to conclude that the drafters of the Criminal Act considered prostitution to have the very serious "lethal or other extremely grave consequences" required to impose the death penalty.
Imposing the death penalty for prostitution, a crime for which the death penalty was not prescribed by law at the time of its commission, is a violation of the U. Safeguards, section 2. A press account states that the four were found guilty under the Criminal Act. It is our understanding that the Act had been superseded by the Criminal Act. In section of the Act, prostitution is not a crime punishable by death. The death penalty or life imprisonment is provided only in section , for the related crime of "running a place for prostitution," and then only after three convictions of the crime of running a house of prostitution.
