Human Rights Watch, a leading international advocacy group based in the United States...

Human Rights Watch, a leading international advocacy group based in the United States, has denounced the Conservative government's new policy to stop seeking clemency for Canadians on death row in the U.S.
The New York-based rights watchdog released a statement Wednesday urging Canada to return to resisting "an inherently cruel and unusual form of punishment and a violation of fundamental human rights."
David Fathi, director of the U.S. branch of Human Rights Watch, said: "The Canadian government shouldn't abandon its longtime policy aimed at preventing the execution of its citizens in the United States."
CanWest News Service revealed last week the Canadian government had ended a decades-old policy of seeking clemency for any Canadian facing execution outside of the country.
The new policy - that Canada won't seek clemency for Canadians on death row in "democratic countries, like the United States, where there has been a fair trial" - was prompted by a CanWest News Service story about Ronald Smith, a 50-year-old Alberta native at Montana State Prison who is facing death by lethal injection for the murders of 2 Native American men in 1982.
Last week, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said: "The reality of this particular case is that were we to intervene it would very quickly become a question of whether we are prepared to repatriate a double-murderer to Canada. In light of this government's strong initiatives on tackling violent crime I think that would send the wrong signal to the Canadian population."
The denouncing of Canada's new policy by Human Rights Watch also comes a day after Amnesty International Canada published an open letter to Harper, expressing its "deep concern" about the abrupt reversal of Canada's foreign policy. The letter also hammered the Conservative government for Canada's decision - for the first time in a decade - to not co-sponsor an upcoming resolution at the UN General Assembly urging a global moratorium on capital punishment.