Yearbook 2006
Bahamas. In March, the country's highest court, the
British Privy Council, abolished the country's mandatory
death penalty for murder. The court ruled that it was
contrary to the Constitution to automatically punish all
murderers with death. The issue of the death penalty is
sensitive in the Bahamas; the murder rate is high and there
is popular support for the death penalty. The last one was
executed was 2000.
When the Bahamas Film Control Board in the spring banned
the Oscar-winning American movie Brokeback Mountain,
protests erupted. The rationale for the ban was that the
film, which is about two men's lifelong love for each other
in a conservative part of the United States, contained
scenes of "extreme homosexuality, nudity and ridicule", and
that "it had no value to the Bahamas audience".
According to
CountryAAH, Hotel Compleat Angler on the island of Bimini - known as
a haven for American writer Ernest Hemingway - burned to the
ground in January. In the fire, valuable items, books and
photographs that were collected in the hotel's Hemingway
Museum disappeared. The hotel was a popular tourist
destination.
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