Fighting Capital Punishment

By Claude Moraes MEP

I was happy to celebrate the 8th World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10th this year.

First launched by the “World Coalition Against the Death Penalty” – an organisation which includes many international NGOs and governments across the world – the day aimed to co-ordinate international lobbying efforts against countries that still execute their prisoners.

In fact, 58 countries in the world still retain capital punishment and the European Union is the only region in the world without the death penalty.

To celebrate the 8th anniversary of this fight, it was only appropriate that MEPs adopted a resolution condemning capital punishment in all cases of judicial punishment. We also called from the European Parliament for an unconditional worldwide moratorium on executions. The European Parliament’s President Jerzy Buzek made the feelings of MEPs very clear in October when he said “Death can never ever be considered an act of justice”.

The issue may seem outdated at home, but worldwide it is still a very real problem.

According to Amnesty International, 714 people were executed in 2009 although of course there are no official figures concerning the probable thousands of executions that have taken place in China. Using methods of execution such as hanging, shooting, beheading, stoning, electrocution and lethal injection, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United States are the most unrepentant in their use of capital punishment.

The fight against death penalty is a matter of the fundamental right to life for every citizen. There are three main arguments against the death penalty.

The first is that death is an irrevocable sentence, and so it is very important to bear in mind how many people convicted of terrible crimes are later exonerated by new evidence or confessions.

Innocent people can be condemned to death even by the most competent judicial system.

Second is that capital punishment does not reflect our values. We cannot expect to promote the European values of human rights and justice if we ignore often brutal death penalties in other nations.

The third argument against taking someone’s life is that there is no evidence that the death penalty acts as a deterrent. If it did, crime itself would have stopped being a problem in those countries where capital punishment is available to judges. Clearly, this is not the case, and offenders will commit crimes regardless of the penalties.

I’m convinced that making practical, ethical and pragmatic arguments against the use of capital punishment in the world not only reflect our Labour values, but will only promote our global interests.

I look forward to supporting the next World Day Against the Death Penalty in 2011, as well as repeating to anyone I can these important arguments against capital punishment.