Stories written by Piers Bannister
Piers Bannister is a researcher on the death penalty at Amnesty International Secretariat.

DEATH PENALTY: A FAILURE OF JUSTICE

By Piers Bannister and - -
A man is in court on trial for murder. He does not understand the language in which he is being tried. He has no defence lawyer. Because he does not know what is being said, he is unaware that he has been sentenced to death, writes Piers Bannister, a researcher on the death penalty at Amnesty International Secretariat. Some time goes by in prison. He speaks to his brother by phone and tells him that everything is all right and he is doing fine. A few hours later, he is led from his cell, taken to a public square and beheaded. This is not a fictional story, it happened to a Somalian man in Saudi Arabia in 2005. It is yet another example of the unacceptable use of the death penalty. In the few countries that continue to execute people, the death penalty is arbitrary; used disproportionately against ethnic minorities or other disadvantaged sections of society. It is administered after unfair trials, inflicted upon the innocent, the mentally ill and child-offenders. In short, the manner in which the death penalty is deployed is a failure of justice.

BRAZIL: ONE FOOT IN UTOPIA, ONE IN MATHEMATICS

By Piers Bannister and - -
In Brazil, 115 years after the proclamation of the republic, it is as if the monarchy still existed, writes Cristovam Buarque, minister of education for Brazil, ex-rector of the University of Brasilia, and ex-governor of the Federal District. Brazil has still completed neither its republic nor the abolition of slavery. To this day, members of parliament consider themselves nobles, unemployment has replaced forced labour, slaves have been transformed into the poor, and education is for the few. The election of Lula as president completes the republic and the abolition of slavery, Buarque writes in this article for IPS. What is necessary to the completion of abolition is intense, total, and radical land reform. It is also necessary to create jobs to end slavery and the secular Brazilian tragedy of transforming fed and chained slaves into hungry and unemployed free men. To complete the republic, equal access to education must be guaranteed, which is only possible through a free, quality public school system for everyone.
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