UN DEATH PENALTY VOTE CAN HELP STOP CYCLE OF REVENGE

By Desmond Tutu Reprint | | Print |

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CAPE TOWN, Sep 24 2007 (IPS) - Such is the world sentiment against the death penalty – with notable exceptions like the USA, China, and Singapore – that a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and the abolition of capital punishment is to go before the UN General Assembly in October, writes Desmond Tutu, archbishop of Cape Town, Nobel Prize for Peace 1984. In this analysis, Tutu writes that the time has come to abolish the death penalty worldwide. The case for abolition becomes more compelling with each passing year. Everywhere experience shows us that executions brutalise both those directly involved in the process and the society that carries them out. Nowhere has it been shown that the death penalty reduces crime or political violence. In country after country, it is used disproportionately against the poor or against racial or ethnic minorities. It is often used as a tool of political repression. It is imposed and inflicted arbitrarily. It is irrevocable and results inevitably in the execution of people innocent of any crime. It is a violation of fundamental human rights.

I am delighted that the death penalty is being eliminated from the globe. As a Christian whose belief system is rooted in forgiveness, the death penalty is unacceptable.

One hundred and thirty countries from every region of the world have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Since 1990, 50 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes. In 2006, only 25 countries carried out executions, six of them in Africa.

Such is the world sentiment against the death penalty – with some notable exceptions, like the USA, China, and Singapore – that a resolution calling for a moratorium on executions and the abolition of capital punishment is to go before the United Nations General Assembly in October. The world community will decide what its position is on the morality of capital punishment.

As an opponent of the death penalty, I have experienced the horror of being close to executions, not just in the Apartheid era of South Africa, which had one of the highest execution rates in the world, but in other countries as well.

I have witnessed the victims of the death penalty that the authorities never speak of: the families of the person put to death. I remember the parents of Napoleon Beazley, a young African American man executed in Texas after a trial tainted by racism. Their pain was evident as the killing of their son by the state to which they paid taxes approached. I can only imagine the unbearable emotional pain they went through as they said their final goodbye to him on the day of his execution.

Advocates of the death often ask, ”What if your child was murdered?” and it is a natural question. Rage is a natural reaction to the homicide of a loved one, and the desire for revenge is understandable. But what if the person condemned to death were your son? No one raises his or her child to be a murderer, yet many parents suffer the grief of knowing their child is to be killed. In 1988, the parents of those on death row in South Africa wrote to the President, “To be a mother or father and watch your child going through this living hell is a torment more painful than anyone can imagine”. We must not put the sons and daughters, the mothers and fathers of our neighbours to death. It is to inflict horrific and unacceptable suffering upon them.

Retribution, resentment, and revenge have left us with a world drenched in blood. The death penalty is part of that process. It says it is acceptable to kill in certain circumstances and encourages the practice of revenge. If we are to break these cycles, we must eliminate government-sanctioned violence.

The time has come to abolish the death penalty worldwide. The case for abolition becomes more compelling with each passing year. Everywhere experience shows us that executions brutalise both those directly involved in the process and the society that carries them out. Nowhere has it been shown that the death penalty reduces crime or political violence. In country after country, it is used disproportionately against the poor or against racial or ethnic minorities. It is often used as a tool of political repression. It is imposed and inflicted arbitrarily. It is irrevocable and results inevitably in the execution of people innocent of any crime. It is a violation of fundamental human rights. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)