Subject: DEATH PENALTY-"HANDS OFF CAIN".
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X-Comment: The Transnational Radical Party List
The Congress to found the "Hands Off Cain" Campaign of citizens and
parlamentarians to abolish the death penalty by 2000, has been held in
Brussels on 9 and 10 December 1993.
The speech made by Adelide Aglietta ( President of the Green Group and
rapporteur on the death penalty at the European Parliament) has opened the
Congress. Following reports have provided the assembly with a detailed
picture of the difficulties and various strategies adopted on the
abolitionist front.
In order that the Congress to found the International League might benefit
from thoughts and contributions, and also to arrive at the appropriate
political solutions to abolish the death penalty worldwide by 2000, we
asked participants to discuss about the follwing points:
1) The death penalty and democracy
The death penalty is provided for and carried out in totalitarian,
militarist and unitarian regimes. In China, dozens of condemned prisoners
are executed at once in the stadiums. On the other hand, capital punishment
has been abolished in almost all democracies: in a number of these it is
merely provided for "on paper", whereas it is still applied in 35 American
States.
2) A right to life or a new individual right?
Resolutions passed by the U.N., and also campaigns against the death
penalty, put forward a generic "right to life" argument to oppose the
capital punishment.
On the contrary, resolutions approved by the European Parliament indicate a
State's being unable to dispose of the life of a citizen as the basis for a
new civil and penal law: the right not to be killed following a legal
sentence or a judicial measure.
A right which has been recognized for the first time in the Statute of the
International Court to prosecute war crimes in the Former Yugoslavia, which
categorically excludes the application of the death penalty.
3) Hands Off Cain (a campaign to save the most guilty offenders)
Campaigns against the death penalty usually try to "save" an "innocent"
person from being executed or else they focus on cases which arouse
widespread feelings of compassion, like those featuring minors, social
outcasts or mentally-handicapped people.
The US Supreme Court, on the other hand, has affirmed that the risk of an
innocent person being sentenced to death during a legal trial must be
accepted.
4) A deterrent or an effective policy against crime?
People who are against the death penalty try to win over its supporters by
arguing that capital punishment does not act as a deterrent.
Unfortunately, opinion polls show that fewer and fewer people care if the
death penalty is a deterrent or not, while people in countries with an
extremely high crime rate, where 80% of all crimes go unpunished,
increasingly demand a very basic form of justice: he who kills must be
killed. While the American Constitution permits all citizens to own a
firearm, and there is a growing conviction amongst the people that the
State doesn't function and the laws don't protect them...
5) Prohibition or progressive laws?
"Prohibiting" the death penalty, as well as being a foolish and useless
aim, would divide the world into the "civilized" and the "uncivilized",
because not only in the Islamic world, but also others, there are
thousand-year-old traditions, living cultures and deeply-rooted religious
beliefs that legitimize capital punishment in the laws of the State and in
the eyes of the community, not as a means punishment but as a form of
liberation.
Whereas a strategy providing for strict and progressive laws could propose
a moratorium on executions; guarantee a fair trial, a right to legal
defence and greater justice; reduce the number of crimes punishable by
death, until the death penalty is finally abolished...
6) At the same time on the same day... by the year 2000.
An abolitionist campaign with a deadline, whose strength lies in the fact
that it is being conducted in different parliaments, where identical
abolitionist laws, which have been jointly agreed upon, will be presented.
A Campaign which will progressively develop over the next seven years, and
which will establish midterm political and juridical objectives to abolish
the death penalty from the penal codes and from the constitutions of every
country in the world.
