HANDS OFF CAIN WILL NOT ADHERE TO DEATH PENALTY ABOLITION DAY

Today has been declared the world day against the death penalty by the French organisation Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort. Hands Off Cain has decided not to adhere to the world day because of the Ensemble’s anti-American polices and its stand against a worldwide moratorium, preferring instead a totally abolitionist position. HOC feels that the intransigence of this stand risks protracting the battle to stop states from killing their citizens indefinitely, costing more people their lives. HOC has for the past ten years been promoting a campaign for an international moratorium on executions through a United Nations resolution We feel that this is a solution that allows abolitionist and retentionist countries to meet each other half-way towards the establishment of a new human right: not to be killed following a judicial decision. Ensemble considers a moratorium an ’inconclusive measure’ that ’will not stop the capital punishment machine’ which they feel can be done only through ’total and definitive abolition’. Experience however has shown that states that established a legal or de facto moratorium on executions, such as various Eastern European states, South Africa and most recently Turkey, then went on to abolish capital punishment.HOC campaigns for a worldwide moratorium on executions, including those countries little is known about the application of capital punishment or where it is considered a state secret. Ensemble’s campaigns focus mainly on capital punishment in America"For Ensemble there are evidently first class and second class death row convicts: those that are condemned in democratic countries are worthy of campaigns to save them , those in totalitarian, authoritarian and illiberal regimes, that make up 98% of all those put to death each year, are not even worthy of note," HOC General Secretary Sergio D’Elia said."These are the nameless, faceless and hopeless people on death rows in China, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Palestinian Territories, Cuba and Afghanistan for whom we have never seen Ensemble demonstrating or collecting signatures."It’s as if being a democratic country that applies the death penalty is an aggravating circumstance, whereas illiberal regimes must be tolerated."HOC does not want a protracted battle for the total abolition of the death penalty whereas more people are put to death every day. We are aiming for a worldwide moratorium though a UN resolution in the 2003 General Assembly. On that stage we shall see whether the fundamentalist but inconclusive Europe for total abolition or the politically pragmatic Europe that favours a compromise leading to abolition will prevail. Europe took the pragmatic approach with Eastern European countries that wanted to join its institutions - asking them first for a moratorium, with a view to abolition. It should not now demand immediate total abolition of the rest of the world.