Uruguay backs army rule inquiries

28 June 2011 Last updated at 00:59 GMT Relatives of Uruguayans who went missing during military rule demonstrate every year in Montevideo Officials in Uruguay say the country's President, Jose Mujica, will remove obstacles that have prevented courts from investigating alleged human rights abuses committed under military rule.

A government official said Mr Mujica would sign a decree later this week.

This will enable the courts to look into more than 80 cases previously blocked under an amnesty law.

Some 200 people were kidnapped and killed by the security forces during the 1973-1985 period of military rule.

An amnesty law providing a broad level of protection for members of the military and police was passed in 1985.

It is still in force, despite numerous challenges. In May, an attempt to annul it in congress narrowly failed.

The law has been ruled unconstitutional in the Supreme Court, but it has survived two national referendums, in 1989 and 2009.

'Ethical' decision

Under one of the amnesty law's provisions, the president could decide whether investigations into cases of alleged abuses should be allowed to proceed.

During the presidencies that followed military rule, many cases were blocked.

Now President Mujica - a former left-wing militant who himself was imprisoned and tortured under military rule - will revoke these decisions.

The presidential secretary, Alberto Breccia, said this was being done for "ethical" reasons, but also to comply with a recent ruling from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.

Earlier this year, the court instructed Uruguay to guarantee that the amnesty law did not prove an obstacle in one such human rights investigation.

Mr Breccia also said that Uruguay had obligations under various international human rights treaties it had ratified.

In a statement, the president's office stressed that it would be up to the courts "to determine how each case will continue, and whether or not to take the files out of the archive".

It also explained why the president was not issuing the decree immediately.

This was to give time to any relatives who might - for their own reasons - no longer want cases re-opened to make representations to this effect.

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Swiss vote backs assisted suicide

15 May 2011 Last updated at 18:34 GMT Exit is Zurich's biggest assisted suicide organisation Voters in Zurich, Switzerland, have rejected proposed bans on assisted suicide and "suicide tourism".

Some 85% of the 278,000 votes cast opposed the ban on assisted suicide and 78% opposed outlawing it for foreigners, Zurich authorities said.

About 200 people commit assisted suicide each year in Zurich, including many foreign visitors.

It has been legal in Switzerland since 1941 if performed by a non-physician with no vested interest in the death.

Assistance can be provided only in a passive way, such as by providing drugs. Active assistance - helping a person to take or administer a product - is prohibited.

'Last resort'

While opinion polls indicated that most Swiss were in favour of assisted suicide, they had also suggested that many were against what has become known as suicide tourism.

Many citizens from Germany, France and other nations come to die in Switzerland because the practice remains illegal abroad.

One local organisation, Dignitas, says it has helped more than 1,000 foreigners to take their own lives.

Another group, Exit, will only help those who are permanently resident in the country - saying the process takes time, and much counselling for both patients and relatives.

Assistance can be provided only in a passive way, such as by providing drugs

Its vice-president, Bernhard Sutter, said the result showed Swiss voters believed in "self-determination at the end of life".

The referendum had offered a proposal to limit suicide tourism, by imposing a residency requirement of at least one year in the Zurich area in order to qualify for the service.

It was backed by two conservative political parties, the Evangelical People's Party and the Federal Democratic Union.

But the major parties of the left and right, including the Swiss People's Party and the Social Democratic Party, had called on their supporters to vote against both motions.

The BBC's Imogen Foulkes, in Geneva, says the size of the vote against a ban on assisted suicide reflects the widely held belief among the Swiss that is their individual right to decide when and how to die.

Their rejection of the proposal to limit assisted suicide to those living in Zurich shows that concerns about suicide tourism carry less weight with voters than their conviction that the right to die is universal, our correspondent says.

But the debate in Switzerland will continue, she adds. Polls show voters do want clearer national legislation setting out conditions under which assisted suicide is permitted.

The Swiss government is planning to revise the country's federal laws on assisted suicide.

It has said it is looking to make sure it was used only as a last resort by the terminally ill, and to limit suicide tourism.

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