ABSTRACT: 143 countries out of 187 in the international community still provide for the death penalty (127 of them for common offences, and 16 for extremely serious crimes). Executions are carried out in 106 countries. In 1991, 2,703 death sentences were pronounced in 62 different countries, and 2,086 prisoners were executed in 32 countries.

(THE PARTY new - N. 7 - May 1992)

In the USA, the laws of 36 States provide for the death penalty. 2,547 prisoners are waiting to be executed, including 32 minors.

A particularly inhumane treatment is reserved for prisoners condemned to death, who are segregated in "Death Row" for years before being executed. In some cases, the means of execution results in a long death struggle. Minors, pregnant women and the mentally handicapped are also condemned to death.

Furio Colombo, leader-writer of the Italian newspaper "La Stampa", sent a contribution to the Radical Party Congress, in which he stated: "I cannot but ask myself why the death penalty is accepted, provided for, and applied, in the United States, a country with such exemplary civil and democratic traditions. It has to be a terrifying misconception, both in a moral and cultural sense. Archaic arguments of a religious nature have been transferred to political issues, and imposed, at least temporarily, on the majority of the voting public. I would ask people not to use the death penalty as an excuse to attack America, but to exert unceasing pressure, to create strong and committed movements to win this battle, also collaborating with the US minority in favour of abolishing the death penalty".

Henry Schwarzschild, leader of the ACLU (American Union for Civil Liberty), also spoke at the Congress, declaring that our project had given him hope, especially as regards what could be done at an institutional and parliamentary level.

Europe

As far as the EC is concerned, Greece and Belgium still provide for the death penalty for common crimes, even though they have not applied it for many decades; Italy, Belgium, Greece, Spain and the UK have still not signed, or ratified, the international Agreements mentioned elsewhere.

Regarding countries which are members of the European Council, Cyprus, Malta and Switzerland provide for the death penalty in the case of particularly serious offences, while Turkey and Poland apply it in the case of common crimes as well. As regards European countries which are members of the CSCE, the death penalty is still imposed by Bulgaria, the Republics of the ex-Soviet Union (with the exception of Georgia), Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Albania, Serbia and Montenegro.

208 executions were verified in the countries of the former Soviet Union in 1990 and almost all of them were carried out in Russia or in the Ukraine, where 80 condemned prisoners are waiting to be executed. The decree issued by the Supreme Soviet in July 1991, which reduced the types of crimes for which the death penalty can be applied from 18 to 5, was accepted by just a few of the Republics, after the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Africa

The great majority of African countries applies the death penalty and utilizes torture in the most extensive and systematic way and, notwithstanding some recent tendencies towards abolition and victories won, to date only ll countries have either aboished the death penalty or have not carried out executions for at least ten years.