Subject: from TRANSNATIONAL - Satyagraha - No 10
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Newsletter of the Radical Party
MARCH OF PALM SUNDAY, ROME, APRIL 9
We are calling for the suspension of capital punishment and the institution
of an international penal tribunal.
Suspending executions remains the intermediate goal of our abolitionist
strategy which faces two great challenges in 1995: the UN. General Assembly
session (September-December) which can decide on a universal moratorium;
and the Security Council of the UN. which could decide in a stay of
executions in case of coup d'etat, civil war or analogous cases.
If remaining obstacles at the diplomatic and governmental level are
overcome, the 50th General Assembly could decide to convene a conference to
institute the International Penal Tribunal, which will be able to identify
and punish genocide, acts of aggression and crimes against humanity,
without issuing death sentences. The Catholic Church has always performed a
role in the world, going beyond national boundaries, and during his whole
period John Paul II has often issued messages going beyond the boundaries
of the Catholic religion itself. And while the Catholic Church is
preparing to celebrate its great Jubilee for the year 2000 A.D., that is
exactly the deadline we have imposed on ourselves to abolish death penalty
all over the world.-- we are waiting and hoping that the Catholic Church
will act in a way that the world will be able to see the beginning of
super-national jurisdiction for crimes against humanity, and so that the
right that humans have claimed to kill another human being remain a memory
of a millennium drawing towards its end.
These are the objectives of the Palm March, which we are organizing once
again in Rome on Palm Sunday. Mayors, members of Parliament and
abolitionists from all over the world will march from the Capitol to Saint
Peter Square, and will hope to gather in the Pope's word a sign showing a
direct commitment on the part of the Church to support our abolitionist and
internationalist causes.
Below you will find the letter/appeal we have sent the Pope. Sign it,
circulate it, gather signatures and send them to our office in Rome.
Holy Father,
we lawmakers, mayors, people involved in culture and art, both secular and
religious, wherever we are, to whatever faith, culture or organization we
belong, have united to ask the constituted powers to give itself new rules,
as soon as possible, a new legal system to overcome that separation between
knowledge and conscience which leads to catastrophes. We choose once again
to address your Holiness as we are convinced that your word and your action
can waken politicians from indifference, resignation and inertia.
The need for a new rule of law both for individuals and the peoples of the
world is reflected in two of our initiatives: the demand for the abolition
of capital punishment by the year 2000 and the creation of a permanent
Tribunal for crimes against humanity.
To prepare for our goal of the abolition of capital punishment by the year
2000 we are also working in the UN. for it to approve a universal stay of
execution. We consider it an achievement that the proposal did not pass by
only 8 votes after being heard and discussed for the first time.
Once again it was the claims of national sovereignty that triumphed over
universal law. We are now engaging our forces in a new attempt. Its success
could be tied to you, Holy Father, and to your intervention, affirming that
the life of an individual, even the guiltiest one, is an inviolable good,
and is not to be subjected to the will of the State.
This is our humble but strong prayer which we address to you, with the full
knowledge that your voice can agree to confirm a new law, from the ancient
imperative in the Book "Hands Off Cain" and can orient the interpretation
of the new catechism in that single direction. The Church has sets itself
this new catechism which does not exclude in principle the use of capital
punishment.
The world -- and mainly those huge minorities to which we feel we belong
--- has been waiting for a long time the completion of that process of
creating an International jurisdiction which began with Nations joining a
single Community. Important actions were taken. In 1993 a special
International Tribunal for crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia was
instituted and in 1994 an ad hoc tribunal was set for crimes committed
during the war in Rwanda. Both tribunals, exclude inflicting the death
penalty.
The year 1995 could be the year in which the General Assembly of the United
Nations decide in favor of setting a Permanent Tribunal to give judgment on
genocide, acts of aggression and crimes against humanity.
In these years, your transnational message has substituted for the
absence, the inadequacy, the powerlessness of the United Nations itself. It
often happened against the warlords in Yugoslavia. But on capital
punishment, your message has never been heard. Your silence and actually
the text of the New Catechism dealing with the issue, have allowed some,
even in the Catholic world, to restore or to maintain the capital
punishment.
Holy Father, we hope diplomats and governments could listen to Your high
voice; we hope this will be another chapter of the great work of your
pontificate. Those who believe and those who do not believe, all of us will
listen to your words in the occasion of the catholic Easter. In the precise
day when the liturgy sends out its highest message for peace and life, we
will be so many - from dozens of different countries - to wait for a sign
of hope, a sign which could help us to conceive on life, freedom, and
security the possibility that today, right here, there will be a new chance
for life, justice and resurrection.
