About the campaign
10 July 2007, 06:07PM
Activists taking action against
the death penalty.
© Ryan Moorfield.
Every day, all over the world, prisoners – men, women and even children – face execution. The death penalty is cruel, inhuman and degrading. We are opposed to its use, everywhere in the world, for whatever reason – it is never acceptable, ever.
Whatever form it takes – electrocution, hanging, beheading, stoning or lethal injection – the death penalty is a violent punishment that has no place in today’s criminal justice system.
Yet it persists.
Though there has been progress. More countries than ever have abolished the death penalty and the United Nations General Assembly has voted for a global moratorium.
Executions don’t deter criminals
Scientific studies consistently show that that the death penalty does not deter crime more effectively than other punishments.
Research on the relationship between the death penalty and homicide rates, conducted for the United Nations in 1988 and updated in 2002, found: "...it is not prudent to accept the hypothesis that capital punishment deters murder to a marginally greater extent than does the threat and application of the supposedly lesser punishment of life imprisonment".
Recent crime figures from abolitionist countries fail to show abolition has been followed by increased crime rates. In fact, in Canada the homicide rate has fallen by 40 per cent since 1975, the year before the death penalty for murder was abolished.
Use of the death penalty diverts attention away from real solutions for the survivors of violent crime and their families.
Powerless and poor
Research shows it’s used against people who have been tortured into confessing, it’s part of corrupt criminal justice systems and it is used after unfair or politically motivated trials.
It’s often used disproportionately against the poor, powerless and marginalised. Repressive governments use it against people they want to eliminate and to silence dissent.
Asia a leader executioner
Despite the worldwide trend towards abolition, each year in Asia an alarming number of people are executed for a wide range of crimes, often following torture or unfair trials. In recent years, record numbers of people have been sentenced to death for drug-related offences.
China executes more people than any other country, and yet there are serious flaws at every level of its justice system. Singapore executes more people per head of population than any other country. And Indonesia has resumed executions, even though it can't guarantee fair trials.
However, across Asia, in countries such as Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, there is growing debate and pressure to abolish the death penalty – there has even been unheard of discussion in Singapore and China.
Abolition from Asia to Africa
Support for global abolition is building. In late 2007, the UN adopted a resolution calling for a global moratorium on executions, and since 1990 more than 40 countries have done away with the death penalty for all crimes.
That includes countries in Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Africa and the Americas – places such as the Philippines, Bhutan, Samoa, Albania, Serbia, Turkey, Liberia, Rwanda, Canada, Paraguay and Mexico.
Once a country has abolished the death penalty it’s hardly ever reintroduced.
Since 1985 only four abolitionist countries have brought back capital punishment. Two of them, Nepal and Philippines, have since re-abolished the death penalty and the other two, Gambia and Papua New Guinea, haven’t carried out any executions.
Children facing death penalty
International human rights treaties prohibit courts sentencing to death or executing anyone who was under 18 at the time the crime was committed. But a small number of countries continue to execute child offenders.
More than 100 countries those laws still allow for use of the death penalty have laws prohibiting the execution of child offenders, or else they are party to international treaties covering the issue.
We know of nine countries that, since 1990, have executed prisoners who were under 18 at the time the crime was committed – they are China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, US and Yemen.
The US and Iran have each executed more child offenders than the other seven countries combined.
Innocent awaiting execution
The death penalty is irrevocable, and because all legal systems make mistakes as long as it exists innocent people will be executed.
In the US, 124 death row prisoners have been released since 1973 after evidence of their innocence emerged. Some of them had spent many years on death row and had come close to actually being executed.
Other prisoners in the US have been executed despite serious doubts over their guilt.
The problem is not confined to the US, death row prisoners were acquitted and released in Tanzania and Jamaica in 2006.
"The death penalty is too simplistic a way to settle crimes. As far as I am concerned, [the] execution did nothing to put my mind at ease. On the contrary, I felt that it deprived me of my chance to get back on my feet again."
Masaharu Harada whose brother’s killer was executed in Japan in 2001, two decades after the murder.
Make an impact
Yong Vui Kong has received a second stay of execution by the Court of Appeal in Singapore. Help keep the international pressure up to stop his execution.
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