RIGHTS: Annan Pledges Support for Ban on Death Penalty

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, Dec 19 2000 (IPS) - UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Monday gave his blessings to one of the politically divisive issues at the United Nations: a moratorium on the death penalty.

On behalf of the United Nations, Annan accepted a petition for a “universal moratorium on executions”, signed by over 3 million people in more than 130 countries around the world.

“I congratulate all those who have worked so hard to collect so many signatures,” he said, “I wish it were in my power to grant their wish, and by so doing to save the lives of thousands of men and women.”

The signatures were collected by ‘Moratorium 2000’, a coalition of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), which has launched a global campaign for a ban on the death penalty.

The campaign is led by Sister Helen Prejean, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee and author of ‘Dead Man Walking’, a novel and later a Hollywood movie which made a strong case against capital punishment.

The signatories include Amnesty International, Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty, Human Rights Council of Australia, World Methodist Council, the American Bar Association, the Anglican Church, the Dalai Lama, Indonesian President Abdurahman Wahid, and over 100 persons from the academic community worldwide and more than 200 singers, actors, movie directors and athletes.

Addressing reporters, Sister Helen said that about 110 nations have no death penalty. Although the United States has refused to support a UN resolution calling for a moratorium, “there is no mandate from the American people to support the death penalty”, she said.

The symbolic presentation of the petition Monday was designed to put pressure on the US delegation to the United Nations, which has been “the biggest obstacle to a UN declaration for a worldwide moratorium”.

In the United States, both at the state and federal levels, race, class and geography play a role in who is sentenced to death, according to ‘Moratorium 2000’.

“In addition, the system is riddled with stories of incompetent or severely under-funded defence lawyers and prosecutorial and police misconduct increasing the chances of unfair results in sentencing,” it said.

And perhaps most compelling, said Sister Helen, is that since the reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976, about 89 innocent people have been unjustly jailed and subsequently freed from Death Row awaiting execution. “When you have no adequate defence in the US, you have no justice,” she said.

Appearing before reporters was Willian Nieves, a 35-year-old Hispanic American, who spent eight years in prison, six of which was on Death Row, for a crime he did not commit. After a re-trial, he was acquitted of all charges. Since his release last year, Nieves said, he has dedicated himself to speaking out about the conditions and the politics of capital punishment in the United States.

Also present at the press conference were two Hollywood movie stars, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, both of whom have publicly expressed their opposition to capital punishment.

Robbins pointed out that, wittingly or unwittingly, most Hollywood movies seem to justify the death penalty, particularly when the hero, in the final frame, shoots the bad guy to death.

A more unconventional finale would be for the good guy to spare the life of the villain, with the observation: “I am not going to take your life.”

Paul Hoffman of Amnesty International said his organisation opposes the death penalty in all cases without exception as the ultimate denial of human rights. “It is the premeditated and cold-blooded killing of a human being by the State in the name of justice and violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,” he added.

According to Amnesty, several countries, including Bulgaria, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines, have establish official moratoria on executions during recent years. Later, Bulgaria and Turkmenistan went on to abolish the death penalty completely.

Meanwhile the campaign in the United States also faces a new obstacle: President-elect George W. Bush who was the Governor of Texas – a state which strongly upholds the death penalty.

At the United Nations last year, the 15-member European Union (EU), in the face of strong opposition from most Third World nations, temporarily abandoned a proposal calling for a worldwide moratorium on capital punishment leading to its eventual abolition.

The opposition came mostly from countries who are either tough on crime or who favour the death penalty for capital crimes.

The resolution, initiated by the EU and co-sponsored by some 74 mostly European and Latin American countries, was formally withdrawn primarily because of 13 substantive amendments brought by anti-abolitionists.

The amendments, which had the support of some 83 countries, were co-sponsored mostly by African, Asian, Caribbean and Middle Eastern nations, including Singapore, Egypt, China, India, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Japan, Pakistan, Jamaica, Bahamas, Barbados, Niger, Cameroon and Sierra Leone – all of which are opposed to the death penalty.

If adopted, they would have completely diluted the thrust of the original resolution which sought the “complete” abolition of the death penalty.

The United States found itself on the side of Third World nations opposing the EU proposal.

Annan admitted that the issue of the death penalty is one on which UN member states are “deeply divided”.

There is, however, an Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, which was adopted and proclaimed by the General Assembly 11 years ago. Forty- three states are already parties to it, and seven more have signed it, he said.

“If I may be permitted to express a personal view, I believe those States are right,” Annan asserted.