Europe Celebrates Day Against the Death Penalty
The Council of
Below are extracts from an article published by Mario de Queiroz for Inter Press Service (IPS):
An initiative by the presidency of the European Union, which is currently held by
But the Council of Europe, which was founded in 1949 to promote democracy, human rights and the rule of law on the continent, does not need a unanimous vote to reach a decision involving its 47 member states, which are home to a total of 800 million people.
At an international conference, "Europe Against the Death Penalty", held Tuesday [09 October 2007] in
The death penalty is not a deterrent, and merely perpetuates the cycle of violence, he said.
Portuguese Prime Minister José Sócrates said that putting an end to capital punishment is an achievement of civilisation that began with Portugal, "the first country in the world to abolish the death penalty," in 1867.
However,
"Crime cannot be prevented or stopped with death, or with state vengeance, but with justice," said Sócrates.
He stressed that to abolish the death penalty worldwide, political will is needed, as well as a multilateral diplomatic offensive to convince governments that continue to defend capital punishment that it is not effective in fighting crime and that countries where it is still applied are not safer than other nations.
In fact, the statistics show just the opposite, said the Portuguese leader, who noted that innocent people are executed, and that any mistake made in a capital punishment case is definitive. José Manuel Durão Barroso, the president of the European Commission -- the EU executive arm -- said he hoped that soon all of the members of the bloc will have signed the protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights on abolishing the death penalty during wartime, which has not yet been signed by
The message is simple, he said: the death penalty should be removed from the books in the countries where it is still applied, and its application should be immediately suspended.
Europeans do not accept that capital punishment can be decreed by the state as a form of atonement of guilt or public vengeance, he said, adding that "The death penalty does not reduce crime, does not appease victims and does not serve as an example for future behaviour."
Terry Davis, secretary general of the Council of Europe, said "The year 2007 marks a decade without the death penalty in the member states of the Council of Europe."
Noting that
However,
Optimism, because 130 countries in the world have already abolished the death penalty, but realism as well because worldwide abolition cannot be considered guaranteed, since a United Nations resolution on a universal moratorium does not yet have the necessary majority of votes, he pointed out.
The European Commission will continue supporting civil society, non-governmental organisations and the Council of Europe to disseminate the message: killing human beings can never be an act of justice, said Frattini.
The initial plan for Tuesday’s [09 October 2007] conference entailed the signing of a joint EU declaration making Oct. 10 the European Day Against the Death Penalty, but in the end it was only declared by the Council of Europe.
Despite the indignation of the other 26 EU members over
But Frattini said it was an error to "isolate and criticise"
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