SWD 11

Akmal Shaikh, executed 2009 China

“You’ll record a hit song in China that will usher in world peace!” Memorial to human rights and capital punishment victim Akmal Shaikh, a Briton executed in China, Dec. 29, 2009

Art: 2010
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil on paper
Framed 34 in. H x 25 W

Shaikh was a Pakistani-born Briton and Muslim by background. Mentally  unstable or ill, and in Warsaw, Poland, 2007, he was duped into carrying drugs into China. A businessman and wannabe singer, he was told he would be recording a "hit song which would usher in world peace." He was arrested in China, prosecuted for drug trafficking, convicted and executed December 29, 2009.  I first read of him in a NY Times article several months prior to his execution; I read a second article a day or two before he was executed.

~

The Chinese repeatedly refused to recognize his psychiatric illness and refused psychiatric interviews for him prior to, during, and after trials & appeals.

~

Two cousins from London were given permission to see him the morning of day he was executed; they informed him that he was going to be executed. They were denied permission to attend his burial afterwards.

~
From an article by Jane Macartney, China Correspondent, and Sophie Yu in Beijing, pub. in The Times (UK), Dec. 29, 2009: “Shaikh, 53, who was sentenced to death after being arrested in possession of 4kg (8.8lb) of heroin in 2007, learnt that his execution was scheduled for today only when he was told by his cousins Soohail and Nasir Shaikh.

The two brothers had traveled to the western city of Urumqi, where Shaikh was first detained, to meet their cousin at a secure hospital, and make last-minute pleas for clemency on the ground that he was mentally ill.”
~
In the drawing, upper right, someone in a British red phone booth. Drawn from a photo of Segan taken by his then girlfriend on the Isle of Skye, Scotland, 1985. Segan has told audiences of a well-known expression, “there but for the grace of God,” meaning that could have been any of us in his shoes. See the url, below, of an op-ed Segan penned, My Drug Lessons, published in the Christian Science Monitor, 2001.
~
Shaik was survived by five children. In England he was survived by his first wife, a Hindu who converted to Islam, their 2 sons and a daughter. In Poland he was survived by his second wife, a Polish woman, and their two children.

~
Quote from an article bu Peter Simpson, pub. in The Daily Mail, online, UK, Dec. 31, 2009:

His body was placed in the rough, unmarked grave in an icy Chinese cemetery hours after his death in prison. Relatives of the 53-year-old father of five were refused permission to attend the Muslim burial in which an imam read a prayer in front of court officials and grave-diggers.”

~
Quote from another article in The Times online:

“Mr Shaikh believed he was travelling to China to record a hit single that would be a singing sensation and usher in world peace. He had been living homeless in Poland when he was approached by two men who duped him into taking the drugs into China, supporters said.

Sally Rowen, legal director of Reprieve's death penalty team, said: "The death of Akmal Shaikh is a sad indictment of today's world, and particularly of China's legal system.

"Akmal was a gentle man who suffered from a tormenting illness. He slipped through the cracks of society and was betrayed and deliberately killed by one of the most powerful nations on earth. We at Reprieve are sickened by what we have seen during our work on this case."

The last European citizen known to have been executed in China was an Italian pilot shot by firing squad in 1951.”

~
Quote from an article by John Patterson, in The Nation online:

The Nation online, pub. Dec 21, 2009:

Brutal execution reveals China as a backward tyrant

"China executes Briton despite pleas", News, December 30.

“The barbaric execution of Akmal Shaikh, who was, it is becoming increasingly clear, mentally ill, shows in stark clarity to the entire world the truly unsophisticated and nasty nature of this country, as it is exposed in both tooth and claw.”

“The United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, Philip Alston, a respected international law scholar and human rights practitioner, was scathing in his comments as he revealed the ludicrous nature of this pitiful sham that the Chinese continue to crow was a fair trail. That the initial trial lasted a mere 30 minutes, and at the appeal, requests to submit evidence as to Shaikh's alleged mental illness were continually refused.”
~
International Campaign to End the Death Penalty

~
"My Drug Lessons," by Akiva Kenny Segan, pub. May 21, 2001, Christian Science Monitor

SWD 11 Akmal Shaikh bkgrnd, statement by Spanish photographer in
Warsaw, Poland

“In Re:  Akmal Shaikh

Declaration of Luis Belmonte Diaz, Photographer

My name is Luis Belmonte Diaz. I am a Spanish photographer based in Warsaw, Poland.

I am not sure whether it is too late to help Akmal by now, but I just heard about his situation in China through the media.  I am traveling and will not be back in Poland until tomorrow (December 29), but I am willing to make this statement via email since the timing is so urgent.

When he was in Poland, I was following him for more than a year with my camera.

During all the time I was following him he told me a lot of things about his life in the UK, his family there, his family in Poland, and how he arrived, first to Lublin and then to Warsaw. 

He was living in very stressful circumstances – he seemed stuck in Poland, without money, and without any way of making a living.  It seemed clear to me that he was mentally ill.  He told me all kinds of crazy things.  I was not sure what to believe and what not to believe.

He told me how recorded his song in a local radio studio.  He was obsessed with the fact that this song was somehow going to achieve great things. 

I still remember the day when I received his last SMS saying he was going to Kyrgyzstan.

The foregoing is a true and accurate account of what I know about the matter and does not exhaust the sum of what I know.

December 28, 2009.

[Authorized by email as signature unavailable]
_____________________________________

Luis Belmonte Diaz