At the launch of HOC's campaign in Madrid, popstars,...

At the launch of HOC's campaign in Madrid, popstars, artists, writers and a former death row inmate signed the appeal to the Secretary General of the United Nations for a resolution by the UN General Assembly in favour of a moratorium on executions.
The celebrities present also asked the Spanish government, currently the term president of the European Union, to reinforce the support for this same resolution at the UN Human Rights Commission, which is due to kick off its annual session on March 18.
Writer Fernando Savater, who chaired the launch of HOC's online campaign at Madrid's BBIGG Internet cafe, said the death penalty is a prehistoric means of confronting criminality.
Savater said abolishing capital punishment is a goal that can be reached in small steps, and HOC's moratorium campaign is a fundamental stepping-stone.
Juan Manuel Cabrera, the director of the Spanish Foreign Ministry's Human Rights Office, said in a statement read by Savater, that Spain is fully committed to increasing the number of sponsor countries for the moratorium resolution at the UNCHR.
MEP Emma Bonino outlined the progress of HOC's moratorium campaign since its launch in Italy in 1993, its approval by the UNCHR in 1997, and the setback it suffered at the General Assembly in 1999, when the resolution was tabled, then withdrawn by the EU.
Bonino said it is essential that EU countries are both united and determined in their fight to establish a worldwide moratorium on executions for the resolution to reach the UN's General Assembly again.
The former EU commissioner pointed out the contradictory stance of countries like the US and China that approved the exclusion of capital punishment from the statutes of international bodies set up to try grave crimes like genocide but maintain it in their penal codes for infinitely less serious crimes.