ABSTRACT: Please sign the postcard enclosed with this newspaper on which you will find the text of an appeal to the United Nations, which upholds the right of every human being not to be put to death following any legal sentence or measure, and asks for a general moratorium on all executions and restrictions on the application of the death penalty.

The postcard should be sent to the Rome Headquarters of the Radical Party. The signatures we collect will be presented to the Secretary General of the UN in June, on occasion of the "International Conference on Human Rights" to be held in Vienna.

The mid-term objectives of the "World Parliamentary Campaign for the Abolition of the Death Penalty by the Year 2000", promoted by the Radical Party and by the "International League", are as follows: a Europe without the death penalty, and an action to be undertaken with the "Organization for Peace between European and Mediterranean Peoples" for the abolition of capital punishment in all Mediterranean countries.

(THE NEW PARTY, MARCH 1993)

HANDS OFF CAIN!

A world parliamentary campaign for the abolition of the death penalty by the year 2000.

The majority of the ruling classes, jurists and scientists throughout the world enthusiastically express their excellent reasons for being "against the death penalty", a choice based on principles which are either philosphical or religious, legal or social. So they all have clean consciences, obtained at a very cheap price, when it comes to the thousands of prisoners waiting to be executed on Death Row! When it comes to the death penalty which is still in force in most of the countries who have been admitted to the UN! With many of them inflicting capital punishment without any form of legal guarantees, any possibility of an appeal or any right to defence!

We don't want to simply launch a campaign "against the death penalty".

The very name: "World Parliamentary Campaign for the Abolition of the Death Penalty by the Year 2000" makes it evident that this is a different type of campaign, which has an organizational statute, a political mandate and political aims, and employs different processes. What we intend to promote at all levels, to see upheld in the world and included in the fundamental documents and in the laws of the international community and of all countries, is a civil right, a new individual right: the right not to be put to death following a sentence or judicial measure, even if these are pronounced in accordance with the law.

For this project to remain credible it must be realized by the year 2000; precise dates must be set for our mid-term and final aims, and we must report on any action we take, step by step. You can be "against the death penalty" for ever. Particularly as it is not something left over from our past but will become a growing reality of the future, created by states of emergency and fundamentalism, by necessity and prohibitionism. If we really want to abolish the death penalty, we have to have a precise goal, set a deadline for reaching it, and be determined to do just that.