THE REPUBLIC OF MOLDAVIA ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY.

STATEMENT OF OLIVIER DUPUIS, SECRETARY OF THE TRANSNATIONAL AND TRANSDIVISIONAL RADICAL PARTY.

Strasbourg, 12 December 1995. Unanimously, the Parliament of Moldavia, on the 8th of December, has voted to abolish the death penalty from its ordinance. The news, like all the really important news of juridical nature, has not had an international resonance. In a world where death by war, by terrorism, by violence of every sort ends up in the TV news or on the front pages of newspapers, the abolishment of the death penalty is tragically considered a non-news.

Moldavia's decision, besides representing a concrete step towards its integration within the European institutions, will bring, we are positive, an important contribution to the international front of the abolitionist countries.

It is therefore, with great joy that we send a warm thank you to President Snegur and to the Moldavian Deputies for not having given up in this struggle in which had an important role also Andrea Tamburi, coordinator of the Radical Party's activities in the Community of the Independent States, murdered in Moscow on February 1993. Andrea Tamburi had dedicated much of his energies to the abolitionist battle in Moldavia, beginning, among other things, a debate in the public opinion on the case of Ilie Ilascu, sentenced to death for political motives in the region of Transnistria.

On behalf of the Radical Party, but also of the "Hands Off Cain" Association, League of the Parliamentarians and Citizens for the Abolishment of the Death Penalty by the Year 2000, which will hold its Congress in Rome from the 15 to the 17 of December, I cannot but hope that this Moldavian example and that of Ukraina a few weeks ago, may be followed in all the Republics of the CSI, but also, on the other side of the ocean, reach the United Nations for an immediate international launch of the battle for the institution of a universal moratorium on capital executions.

Radical Party