1. UNIVERSAL ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY

In accordance with its nonviolent methods, the Transnational Radical Party has among its priorities the universal abolition of the death penalty.

In 1987, the Transnational Radical Party publicly denounced the emblematic case of sixteen year old American Paula COOPER. In 1989, with the confirmation of her death sentence, an international mobilization was organized by the TRP and other associations, and a stay of execution was obtained. COOPER's sentence was eventually changed to a sixty year prison term. In 1990, the TRP obtained, through demonstrations, fasting, and the support of Vaclav HAVEL, the abolition of the death penalty from the penal code of the new democratic regime of Czechoslovakia. The Transnational Radical Party gave life, with a series of manifestations, conventions, and marches by mayors and citizens, as well as with parliamentary and institutional initiatives, to a world-wide abolitionist campaign that has been conducted by "HANDS OFF CAIN," an association that works for the abolition of capital punishment by the year 2000 and which was founded in 1993 by members of the TRP, to which it is now federated.

The campaign achieved a series of concrete results: various resolutions of an abolitionist nature were adopted by the European Parliament and the European Council; the tribunals for the crimes in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda excluded recourse to the death penalty (thanks to a petition signed by 75,000 citizens of the world, among them hundreds of Parliamentarians and intellectuals); numerous initiatives sustained by public opinion culminated in December, 1994 with the presentation of a resolution "for the suspension of capital punishment" to the General Assembly of the United Nations, that was not adopted, however, by a margin of only eight votes because it was interpreted as interfering with the sovereign rights of the state. The debate marked a moment of high confrontation. Not only did the vote demonstrate that a large group of nations is prepared to adopt the moratorium, the vote also led to the public revelation of which nations openly defended, along with the principles of the United Nations, the e

ffective creation of cogent international law, and which states were opposed.

Strengthened by the experience, the TRP and "Hands Off Cain" intend to re-submit the proposal of the moratorium to the United Nations, along with the support of a group of nations that are motivated to support the project.

The campaign that "Hands Off Cain" has launched with the slogan "10 Nations, 100 Cities, 100,000 signatures for the abolition of the Death Penalty by the United Nations" has seen the multiplication of government contacts in many nations, and should lead to the re-proposal of the moratorium to the United Nations in 1997.