By Piers Bannister and - -
LONDON, Oct 1 2006 (IPS)

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.

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. 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. However, some countries may prove hard to persuade that executions serve no useful purpose and actually damage any society that commits them. The governments of Singapore, China, the United States, Iran and many others are convinced that the death penalty controls crime. Amnesty International vehemently denies this is true. Proof shows that the death penalty has no unique deterrent effect. Even if executions do prevent crime, even the most ardent supporter of the death penalty should be unhappy with the manner in which it is administered, assuming they are a supporter of fair trials, equality before the legal system and due process of law. Every study of the systems that impose capital punishment in todays world shows an appalling failure of justice and an unacceptable assault upon the legal rights of the individuals involved. The use of the death penalty is a political tool for politicians to appear to be addressing high crime rates or to instil fear in the populations they control. As a high ranking politician in the U.S. once asked, “What will we use to control our populations if we dont have the death penalty to scare them?” After 16 years of working against the death penalty, I cannot name a single country where the standards of justice that impose capital punishment come close to meeting agreed up United Nations safeguards essential to the administration of justice. The 23 countries that actively carried out executions in 2005 (it appears that the figure for 2006 will be very similar) did so in a manner contemptuous of justice. In the U. S., the evidence of the racial bias use of the death penalty is overwhelming, particularly when the race of the alleged victim is taken into account. African Americans and whites are the victim of homicide in almost equal numbers, yet since 1976, 80% of those executed were convicted of the murder of a white person and only 14% of an African American. Moreover, the number of wrongful convictions which are regularly overturned by U.S. courts proves that the justice system there is seriously flawed. Since 1973, 123 death row inmates have been exonerated before their sentences were carried out. A more frightening statistic, however, comes from the Northwestern School of Law, which has documented that 38 innocent people have been executed in the U.S. since 1973. In China, many are executed after confessing to crime while being subjected to torture. Teng Xingshan was executed after confessing to be the murder of his wife, a statement he later retracted claiming he had been beaten by police officers. Nevertheless the authorities continued with his execution and he was put to death in 1987. Sixteen years later she reappeared alive and well. Iran is one of only two countries which execute those under the age of 18 at the time of the crime. This is in violation of international law. In 2004, for instance, a 16-year-old girl, Atefeh Rajabi, believed to be mentally ill, was publicly hanged in the northern Iranian province of Neka for “acts incompatible with chastity.” Her co-defendant, an unnamed man, was reportedly sentenced to 100 lashes. He was released after this sentence was carried out. Indeed, because of these potential mistakes and abuses, the majority of governments have chosen to abandon the old eye-for-an-eye form of justice and embrace more progressive penal policies. Worldwide, the use of the death penalty is becoming increasingly rare; 129 countries no longer use capital punishment in law or practice and in 2005, a mere 23 countries carried out executions. The movement towards a world without capital punishment is relentless. It is an indefensible act to take a defenceless prisoner and in the most cold-blooded manner possible kill him. The individual is no longer a threat to society because he is incarcerated yet the authorities decide the time, place and method by which he is to die. The world is learning that the death penalty is a barbaric act that debases any society that uses it. As a crime control measure it is ineffective. Indeed, many of the countries that use capital punishment suffer higher rates of violence than many other non-executing nations. Many politicians have provided human rights leadership by abolishing capital punishment. Sadly, many more lack this courage and the phrase we are not ready to abandon the death penalty is too often heard. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Piers Bannister and - -
BRASILIA, Jul 1 2003 (IPS)

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.

In Brazil, 115 years after the proclamation of the republic, members of parliament still call each other ”noble colleagues”. It is as if the monarchy still existed beneath the name republic. It is not a question of parliamentary culture, nor is it even exclusive to parliament. It is that in 21st century Brazil, the elite feel as distant from the people as they did in the 19th century.

The Brazilian elite are not really citizens. The inequality between the rich and the poor, whether in income or in education, living conditions, mode of transportation, entertainment, food, and customs, is extreme. They never sit at the same table, discuss the same subjects, or even think of themselves as belonging to the same people.

Brazilian citizens don’t refer to each other as citizen deputy or citizen senator because Brazil has still completed neither its republic nor the abolition of slavery. After proclaiming its independence in 1822, the country remained a monarchy and allowed slavery to continue for 70 years. Although in a mere 18 months it proclaimed the creation of a republic and formally abolished slavery, in practice very little changed. 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 regime adopted a republican form, but Brazil continues to be divided between a rich elite and a plebian mass. Little by little the republic abolished slavery, extended the right to vote, allowed freedom of expression and the organisation of political parties, but at the same time it concentrated land and education in the hands of a few.

The election of Lula as president completes the republic and the abolition of slavery.

These two dates must be remembered: 1888, the year of abolition, and 1889, the year the republic was proclaimed. We cannot put off that which everyone wants: a complete republic, without exclusion, in which all citizens are equal. We were not elected merely to govern well but, by governing well, to realise the republican revolution that Brazil has been waiting for for more than a century.

The revolution was not completed because the republicans detached themselves from the people. As a new nobility, they lost the capacity for indignation in the face of the poverty that surrounded them, they savoured the privileges of aristocrats, and grew accustomed to the voices of power and the requirements of bureaucracy. These are the distortions that we in the Lula government are not going to succumb to. We are not going to grow accustomed to an incomplete republic, and we will not forget that our mission is to complete it.

The principal way to avoid accomodationism is to address the difficulties of the present without forgetting the legacy that our government must leave for future generations. To work to resolve these problems without losing the commitment to the dreams of the future. To keep one foot in utopia and the other in mathematics.

Lula was not elected to change the basic structure of the economy or to bring about the equality of income or consumption, but to insure that all citizens are equal, completing abolition and the republic. What is necessary to the completion of abolition is the intense, total, and radical land reform that the country is waiting for, together with the technological techniques of the 21st century, and without disruption of production. 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. At present Brazilian society invests 80 times more in private education for children of the middle class than in public education for the children of the poor. The former spend 347 dollars per month and receive up to twenty years of schooling; the latter receive 277 dollars per year and stay in school an average of four years. In no way can this be called a republic.

To complete the republic and abolition, Lula will insure that the measures are taken to change this reality in his four years in office, until the country is truly a republic, until its people are literate and children attend improving schools, so that by Brazil’s 200th birthday in 2022 all Brazilians will have an education equivalent to completing secondary school.

All of this is possible and has already been accomplished by countries that are poorer and have greater difficulties than Brazil. It is possible if it has the support of the society and the commitment of the government, particularly the members of parliament as they discuss the next federal budget.

This is the major obstacle: convincing the nobles left over from 1889 that the time has come to invest a substantial amount of the nation’s resources to bring to fruition the republican revolution that only free, quality, public education can create. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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