International
Colombia to allow assisted medical suicide: court
AFP
Colombia on Thursday became the first Latin American country to authorize assisted medical suicide for patients under a doctor’s supervision, according to a constitutional court decision.
The country’s highest court ruled that a doctor can help a seriously ill patient take their own life by consuming a lethal drug, without risking going to jail.
Colombia already allows euthanasia — where a doctor is the one to administer a life-ending drug to a patient.
“The doctor who helps someone with intense suffering or serious illness and who freely decides to dispose of their own life, acts within the constitutional framework,” read Thursday’s court ruling that passed by six votes to three.
Colombia decriminalized euthanasia in 1997, and in July 2021 a high court expanded this “right to dignified death” to those not suffering from a terminal illness.
Fewer than 200 people have opted for euthanasia in Colombia since 1997, according to official data.
It is the first and only Latin American country to have taken this step and one of just a few in the world, and did so despite being mostly Roman Catholic.
The church categorically opposes both euthanasia and assisted suicide.
– ‘Intense’ suffering –
According to the Right to Die with Dignity foundation (DMD), the difference between euthanasia and assisted suicide “is basically who administers the drug.”
“In the case of euthanasia, it is health personnel who administer the medicine that causes death and in the case of assisted suicide it is the patient who self-administers the medicine that another person has provided,” it explained.
Despite its decriminalization of euthanasia, a doctor still risked jail time of 12 to 36 months for assisting a person end their own life.
Thursday’s court ruling said assisted suicide would be allowed only for people dealing with “intense physical or mental suffering arising from bodily injury or serious and incurable illness.”
A doctor acting outside of this framework could still go to jail for up to nine years.
According to the World Federation of Right to Die Societies, “aid in dying” is allowed in some form or another in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Switzerland, Spain, Germany, Austria, some states in Australia and some in the United States.
Elsewhere in Latin America, Chile’s lower house of Parliament approved a bill last year that would allow euthanasia for adults. It still requires approval by the Senate.
And a court in Peru last April ordered the government to respect the wishes of a polio-stricken woman to be allowed to die, a rare allowance for euthanasia in that country.
International
Argentina: candidates prepare for internal political party elections
May 29 |
On June 4, the internal elections of the political parties in Argentina will be held, which will define the formulas that will compete in the August primaries and in the general elections in October to elect the new president.
In the midst of a serious economic crisis and a social unrest that could lead the government to suffer a heavy defeat, according to opinion polls, the candidates are toughening their speeches and intensifying their campaigns.
The liberals, for the first time in history, capture the young vote and the so-called ‘angry vote’ of the society, they lead the polls, with their referent the economist Javier Milei, with an incendiary message.
“We are going to bet on a system that is going to take the machine away from the criminals of the politicians,” said Milei. “The main beneficiaries of the little machine that generates inflation are the crooks of the political caste, because it is the one that has financed the political caste and during the first two years of President Alberto Fernández they have looted (stolen) 11 points of the GDP from us.”
Kirchnerism has already differentiated itself from the current government and is presenting a pro-government candidate, the current Minister of the Interior, Wado de Pedro, who is seeking to gain followers for the Frente de Todos party.
“As Cristina Fernández de Kirchner rightly said, it is necessary to take the marshal’s baton, because there is a generation that is good for Argentina to refresh its leadership. New generations appear in businessmen, in the media, in the trade unions”, argues the candidate.
From the opposition, there is a possibility of recovering governorships, mayorships, legislative seats and even the presidency, with a tough message.
The former Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, from the right-wing Republican Proposal (Pro), says that “to adjust means to shrink a State that grew 100% in the last 20 years, and that took away the wealth of all Argentines, to create a bureaucracy, bigger and bigger, that went from 23% of the GDP to 42% and that left you absolutely nothing”.
“It did not give you better health, better housing, better education… so, I do not enter into the language of Kirchnerism”, he added.
The current mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, of Juntos por el Cambio, is the most moderate candidate with more experience in administration, and seeks to give guarantees of governability.
“Here the important thing is a development plan. We are going to make Argentina produce again, we are going to open new markets in the world because it needs our food, our oil, gas and we are going to modernize the labor system. Today it is a catastrophe and I am convinced that Argentina will stop suffering”, he recently promised.
The August primary elections will be decisive to measure the political pulse and to see who has real chances of winning.
International
President of Venezuela received with honors at the Planalto Palace, Brazil
May 29 |
The president of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, was received with honors by his Brazilian counterpart, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia.
The Venezuelan president, accompanied by his wife, the first combatant, Cilia Flores, was received by Lula and the first lady of Brazil, Rosângela da Silva, at the entrance of the Executive headquarters.
This is the first activity with which the Venezuelan head of state began his agenda in Brazil, where he arrived on Sunday night to participate in the Summit of South American Presidents, convened by Lula da Silva for Tuesday, May 30.
Venezuela and Brazil resume bilateral relations between the neighboring countries, damaged during four years of presidency of the ultra-right-wing Jair Bolsonaro.
The meeting is divided into two parts, a private meeting for about an hour and an extended meeting later, according to the agenda of the Presidency of Brazil.
International
Ecuadorian lawyer’s murderer convicted of femicide
May 26 |
A court in Ecuador sentenced this Thursday to a prison term of 34 years and eight months to ex-cop Germán Cáceres for the femicide of his wife, lawyer María Belén Bernal, which occurred on September 11, 2022.
The judges of the North Judicial Complex also announced that police lieutenant Alfonso Camacho was found not guilty of the crime of omission.
The lawyer Jesús López, representative of Belén Bernal’s mother, Elizabeth Otavalo, indicated that they could file an appeal against the resolution of Camacho’s innocence, because there are doubts about his participation in the crime.
“We still have resources and we will determine with Mrs. Otavalo if we will ask for an appeal,” the lawyer told the press.
Cáceres confessed, during a hearing to expand his version, that he murdered his wife at the Police School in Quito after an argument, which was recorded by the lawyer.
After abandoning Belén Bernal’s body on a hill, the ex-cop fled. He was arrested in a town in Colombia and expelled to Quito at the beginning of January 2023.
For his part, Camacho was charged with the alleged crime of omission, because he was in the building where the murder occurred in the early morning of September 11, 2022.
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