History of the Jews in Myanmar History of the Jews in Myanmar The history of Jews in Burma begins primarily in the mid-19th century, when hundreds of Jews immigrated from Iraq during the British colonial period. Cochin Jews came from India and both groups were part of the development of the British Empire, becoming allied with the British in Burma (now Myanmar). At its height in 1940 the community of Jews in the country stood at 2,500 members. During and after the Second World War many Jews left the country, first under pressure from the Japanese occupation, and later because of repression under the newly independent
Capital punishment in the Soviet Union Capital punishment in the Soviet Union Capital punishment was a legal penalty in the Soviet Union for most of the country's existence. The legal justification of capital punishment was found in Article 22 of the Fundamental Principles of Criminal Legislation, which stated that the death penalty was permitted "as an exceptional measure of punishment, until its complete abolition". According to Western estimates, in the early 1980s Soviet courts passed around 2,000 death sentences every year, of which two-thirds were commuted to prison terms. The death penalty was not applied to minors or pregnant women. The first person to be sentenced