RIGHTS: Amnesty International Reports Gains and Losses In Anti- Death Penalty Fight

By Marwaan Macan-Markar Reprint | | Print |

Marwaan Macan-Markar

MEXICO CITY, Apr 18 2000 (IPS) - More than 1,813 people were executed in 31 countries last year, with close to 85 percent of the executions occurring in just five countriesChina, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, a leading human rights organisation says.

The London-based Amnesty International (AI), says that in addition, over 3,857 people were sentenced to death in 63 countries during the same period.

Although the figure for 1999 marked a decrease in the number of executions when compared with that of 1998 — 2,258 executions– such a pattern was not the case in three countries singled out by AI.

In Saudi Arabia, for instance, 103 people were “officially” reported to have been executed in 1999, as against the “official” number of executions for 1998 — 29 people.

In the United States, on the other hand, the number of executed prisoners rose to 98 last year, 30 more than were executed in 1998. While in the case of Iran, 165 executions were carried out in 1999, as against the 66 recorded in 1998.

According to AI, however, the executions in China continued to be the highest in the world. “In 1999, limited records available at the end of the year indicated that the authorities carried out at least 1,077 executions – although the true figures are believed to be far higher.”

Furthermore, remarks AI, many prisoners in that Asian nation were sentenced to death after trials that were “often grossly unfair.”

AI’s release Tuesday of the statistics on worldwide executions for 1999 is its latest effort to secure a global moratorium on the death penalty. The rights organisation will use the figures, in fact, to bolster its argument during an appeal before the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR), which is currently conducting its annual session in Geneva.

AI hopes that the UNCHR will “soon pass another strong resolution reiterating its call for an immediate worldwide moratorium on executions,” since the organisation feels that the United Nations should take a lead in pursuing “firm and positive measures to protect those facing the death penalty.”

AI’s push to stem the practise of judicial executions can be understood in light of other revelations made by the organisation in its release, with two areas, in particular, receiving mention – countries expanding the scope of the death penalty and countries reversing their de facto moratoria on executions.

Cuba, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, for instance, expanded the scope of the death penalty in 1999 to include such non-lethal crimes as drug trafficking, armed robbery and the import of banned materials.

Trinidad and Tobago and Uganda, on the other hand, reversed the position they had previously taken – not to implement the death penalty. “Nine men were hanged in Trinidad and Tobago in June, five years after the last executions had taken place, and in Uganda, 28 people were executed on Apr. 28, the first executions to occur in the country since 1996.”

Tuesday’s release also highlighted the progress that has been achieved towards abolishing the death penalty. Last year, countries such as East Timor, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and the British dependent territory of Bermuda did away with judicial executions for all crimes, while Lativia abolished it for “peacetime offences.”

Meanwhile, President Boris Yeltsin of the Russian Federation commuted more than 700 death sentences in June 1999.

For AI, such developments contributed to the gains that had been made by the end of the last century when set against the reality at the beginning of the 1900s. “At the turn of the last century only three countries in the world had permanently abolished the death penalty. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, 108 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or practise, reflecting the worldwide trend towards abolition.”

Since 1948, following the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations, the international community has regularly debated the question of judicial killings.

What occurred in the UN General Assembly late last year serves as one example. An initiative by the European Union (EU), calling for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment and its eventual abolition, had to be abandoned, following a clamour by 83 countries for changes in the wording of the resolution.

The draft resolution, co-sponsored by 74 countries from Europe and Latin America, was challenged by countries from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean. The United States also aligned itself with the Third World voices.

In withdrawing the draft, an EU delegate remarked that the amendments proposed by the pro-death penalty lobby would have “wrecked the main resolution,” which was an effort to enhance human dignity and promote the progressive development of human rights.

According to an East Asian representative, however, capital punishment was needed to fight crime, since the death penalty, in his view, has to be preserved as a criminal justice issue.

“We all cherish the right to life. But to abolish capital punishment without abolishing murders clearly indicates that the right of killers is defended more than the right to life of innocent victims,” he observed.

However, research on the issue of capital punishment as a deterrent to crime concludes otherwise. One report presented before the UNCHR last year revealed that scientific studies had consistently failed to establish convincing evidence that the death penalty stopped crime more effectively than any other punishment.

AI is among those organisations that maintains such a view, too. And for this rights organisation, not only is the death penalty the “ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment,” but it is a violation of the right to life, thus going against commitments made by governments that protecting the right to life is “an international responsibility.”