The sunset in Oslo was
brighter than the future of abolition
The 6th
Congress against the Death Penalty organised by Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort took place in Oslo on the 21st to
the 23rd of June 2016. This congress was organized in the continuity
of the 5 first. An additional congress, the regional congress against death
penalty was previously held in June 2015 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, becoming
the first congress to be held in Asia.
The observation is
simple : Today 4/5 of the United Nations member states have either abolished or
no longer use the death penalty. The abolition seems within reach. Nevertheless
we also observe that 2015 has known the largest number of executions since 25
years. 1634 persons in 25 different countries have been killed at least. This
number is terrifying and requires our full dedication to this fight for human
rights.
In order to spread
the abolitionist values to the retentionist countries the Congress explored some aspects of
the death penalty focusing on retentionist countries or regions of the
world.
A closer look at
countries such as Belarus, China, USA has been taken as well as particular
regions such as Asia or regions under Sharia law.
Important themes
were also discussed including the revival of death penalty to sanction
terrorist acts, the difficult task to deal with medias while confronted to a
death penalty case, the vulnerability of migrants and minorities facing the
death penalty sentence… A good overview of the worldwide situation has been
given.
Many actors involved at every
scale of the combat for abolition were present: from officials to lawyers and
from NGOS to victims. If everybody at the congress seemed to agree that
abolition is an urgent necessity, little commitment has been made. We heard
some promises from the Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic or
from Lebanon which are abolitionist countries de facto but we were waiting from
real engagements from retentionist countries such as Malaysia which
unfortunately haven’t been taken. We believe that the weight of words changes
things but speeches won’t save those sentenced to death and real decisions need
to be taken from these countries.
The first step for
these countries is the establishment of a moratorium or at least the reduction
of the death penalty use to premeditated murders. Interestingly these crimes
represent only a small proportion of the people condemned to the death
sentence. Nevertheless this reduction isn’t in any way the final objective of
this combat. The death penalty shall be abolished for all crimes without
conditions, universally and forever.
Lucie Michel
No comments:
Post a Comment