Opponents of the death penalty sent a petition to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan Thursday calling for a global moratorium on executions.

The petitition, organised by the the non-governmental organisation ‘Hands Off Cain’, contained the names of more 100,000 persons – including such prominent figures as Nobel Peace Prize winners Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Delai Lama, Oscar Arias and Rigoberta Menchu.

They called on the United Nations to negotiate a universal halt to executions in 1999.

“We, the undersigned, ask the United Nations General Assembly to lead the international community away from this intolerable anachronism, by establishing a universal moratorium on executions with a view to total abolition,” the petition declared.

Sergio D’Elia, Hands Off Cain’s secretary, said that while the petition already has more than 100,000 signatures, the organisation will present the entire list of signatures before the U.N. General Assembly begins its 1999 session next September.

The petition’s supporters doubted that the call for a moratorium by itself would prevent executions from being held in a string of countries stretching from China to the United States. But they believed that the moratorium campaign – which already has led the United Nations to declare a universal halt to executions for the past two years – was shifting the tide of world opinion against capital punishment.

“The time has come in the world, and there is mounting consciousness about it, that the death penalty has seen its day,” argued Sister Helen Prejean, a U.S. nun whose book ‘Dead Man Walking’ made a case against capital punishment. “A majority of countries are lining up to abolish the death penalty.”

What the petition can do, Prejean contended, is place moral pressure on countries which retain the death penalty to join the growing community of nations that rejected capital punishment.

“The real value of the (moratorium) resolution is that it can now be a weapons in the hands of abolitionists in the United States” and other countries which continue to execute criminals, agreed William Schabas, law professor at the University of Montreal.

Just five years ago, noted Schabas, a majority of countries still included the death penalty in the justice systems. Now, however, the majority has swung the other way after 102 countries abolished executions, he said.

This was not the only sign of a growing momentum in the abolitionist drive, he argued. In July, delegates at Rome voted overwhelmingly for the creation of an International Criminal Court which would be empowered to try suspects for genocide and crimes against humanity – but would impose a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Similarly, Jean-Paul Akayesu, a former mayor of the Rwandan town of Taba who was convicted by a U.N. tribunal on war crimes of genocide in the country’s 1994 massacres, received a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, which he is currently appealing. Neither the U.N. tribunals for Rwanda nor for the former Yugoslavia allow capital punishment.

Nevertheless, capital punishment remained politically popular in dozens of countries, including China – where more than 3,000 people were executed last year – the United States and much of the Muslim world.

Since 1990, more than 350 people have been executed in the United States, including 74 last year, and another 3,300 languished on death row. Recent polls in the United States suggested that three-quarters of the public supported the death penalty.

Such a mood had forced politicians, who otherwise would support abolition, to maintain the death penalty, argued the actor Tim Robbins – who directed the film version of Prejean’s book and who has lobbied for ending capital punishment in the United States. Many politicians had told him they did not want to support the death penalty, but the popularity of the measure had forced their hand, he said.

Prejean contended that the polls may have overstated the popularity of the death penalty as a punishment for heinous crimes. When people are offered the idea of life imprisonment without parole and restitution for victims as alternative penalties, two-thirds of respondents prefer those punishments to the death penalty, she said.

“Our people are not wedded to a whole public policy of legalised vengeance,” Prejean said.

D’Elia said that, following the presentation of the petition to Annan, Hands Off Cain was planning a series of events to support the moratorium effort. Among them would be a march in Rome against capital punishment during Christmas and an appeal to Pope John Paul II to join the moratorium drive.