Social policy

The brutal killing of an eight-year-old girl has caused public outrage, prompting politicians to call for harsher punishment, including the reinstatement of the death penalty for such offenders.

A court in China sentenced 10 people to death, mostly for drug-related crimes, in front of thousands of people in a stadium before being sent for execution, the British Guardian newspaper writes.

They were executed immediately after the verdicts were handed down in Luffen Prefecture in southern Guangdong province (Canton), 160 km from Hong Kong, state media reported.

The countries that abolished the death penalty have reached 170. 87% of the death sentences are carried out in four countries. They are Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. These figures were released on Tuesday by the United Nations on the World Day against the Death Penalty - Oct. 10.

Japan executed two convicted murderers on July 13, the justice ministry said, ignoring calls from international rights groups to end capital punishment.

The hangings of Masakatsu Nishikawa and Koichi Sumida bring to 19 the total number of executions since conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe came to power in late 2012.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel on May 9 ruled out any participation on German soil in a potential Turkish referendum on bringing back the death penalty in the country.

Will our problems with Europe grow, or will a decrease to a manageable level be achieved? 

If Europe is an "alliance of the crusaders," then it is an enemy of Turkey well in advance; there is no solution to the issues. Why Europe supported the rule of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) until 2011; that is another matter. 

A reinstatement of capital punishment appears to be in the pipeline in Turkey. Although it looks like Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahçeli opened the door for it, it was actually President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who initially gave the signal that capital punishment would be included in the government's constitutional draft. 

Jordan executed 11 men convicted of murder by hanging on Dec. 21, the interior ministry said, as it ended an informal eight-year moratorium on the death penalty.

"Eleven criminals convicted in different cases of murder were executed at dawn," the official Petra news agency quoted a ministry spokesman as saying.

Yordan Hristoskov has been appointed caretaker Deputy Prime Minister in charge of social policy and caretaker Minister of Labor and Social Policy.

Professor Yordan Hristoskov is part of the Macroeconomics department of the Institute of Economics at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences.