Society and Politics - "Hands off Cain!": Will we be able to abolish capital punishment in the world by the year 2000?

SUMMARY: The Radical Party initiatives in the U.S. in the context of the campaign to abolish capital punishment by the year 2000. The one page advertisement on the New York Times.

(AMERICA OGGI, December 4, 1994)

Thanks to the contribution of thousands of Italian citizens, the New York Times published in the past few days a paid one page advertisement by the title "Abolish the Death Penalty by the Year 2000". This is the goal of the campaign organized by the Radical Party and the abolitionist association "Hands off Cain!". This week the Committee of the United Nations will vote on a resolution presented by the Italian government asking for a stay in all capital punishment executions all over the world, the introduction of the necessary amendments in the laws of all Nations and States that have capital punishment, as well as the affirmation, starting from the year 200, of a very simple principle: States cannot decree on the life of their citizens" (States do not own the lives of their citizens)

Besides the names of some of the citizens who by their financial support made possible the publication of the ad, the page on the New York Times displays also a picture of Bernardo Bertolucci, who to support the campaign, agreed to have himself photographed sitting on an electric chair.

Together with the name of the great Italian film-director, the ad contains the names of other famous supporters of this legal and democratic initiative. Among these are: His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, President of the Italian Republic, Hungarian President Arpad Goncz and Czech President Vaclav Havel, Nobel Prize winners Maired Corrigan Maguire, Franco Modigliani, Abdus Salam, George Wald and Elie Wiesel, writers Vladmir Bukowsky, David Grossman, Gore Vidal and Yeygeny Yetushenko, philosophers Maurice Duverger, Francois Fejto, Henry Laborit and Edgar Morin, actors William Kunstler, Marcello Mastroianni and Judith Malina, of the Lioving Theater, movie directors Liliana Cavani and Idrissa Ouendraogo, dancer Carla Fracci, photographer Oliviero Toscani and, finally, Elena Bonner Sacharov and Coretta Scott King.

"Many, not only in the U.S., ask to keep or reintroduce capital punishment - the ad says - and sometimes, this response to the lawlessness and impunity striking them, is moved by a profound sense of justice. Many nations execute their own citizens, even those who are mentally ill or minors, categories which are expressely excluded by international conventions. In doing this they often call forth thousand year long traditions and deeply rooted religious beliefs. We are not thinking of dividing the world between civilized and unciviliozed nations. But we must go forward and agree on this irreducible human quality which, as Boutros Boutros Ghali stated - makes all of us a single community. This has already happened with the abolition of slavery. It has already happened with the prohibition of torture. Human rights are not fossils that have been buried by progress and the rubble of history. One must always strive to win ever higher thresholds of the inviolability of human beings. At the dawn of the t

hird millennium, let's also abolish capital punishment!"

The ad also announces a very important event:

the organization, in the United States, in 1995, of a great Conference on the abolition of capital punishment by the year 2000. The invitation to mobilize and to finance this conference (they are projecting a cost of over 300,000 dollars) is addressed to American citizens, to their elected representatives, to the delegateds of member states of the United Nation, to abolitionit activists and human and civil rights organizations.

Readers of "America Oggi" also can, if they wish, contribute to reaching this objective. Just telephone or send a fax to the Office of Radical Party in New York, located at 866 United Nations Plaza, room 4014, New York, New York, 10017 (Telephone number: 212-980-1031; fax: 212-980-1072).