INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DAY

HOC’s online campaign aims to reinforce the principle upheld by the UN Human Rights Commission that the abolition of the death penalty contributes to the elevation of human dignity. HOC underlines the principle that the death penalty issue is a human rights issue and its abolition represents a big step forward in this respect.
The campaign, launched on March in co-operation with the media company Nexta.com and photographer Oliviero Toscani, has already recruited the support of thousands of citizens worldwide and several web-sites.
Supporting HOC’s December 10 initiative are the online versions of the major dailies La Repubblica, La Stampa and L’Unione Sarda, of news agencies ADN-Kronos and Lettera 22, and of radio stations Radio Radicale and Radio Circuito Marconi, besides the online media Il Nuovo, Clorofilla, Amisnet.org, Virus, Romaone and Cirrus-weather news.
The campaign banner is a Toscani creation and features close –ups of the eyes of various American death row inmates photographed by Toscani for the 2000 “We, on death row” campaign.
Our appeal for a moratorium is not only on behalf of these inmates, but for thousands of others all over the world whose cases are more or less well-known.
In Nigeria, death sentences are meted out according to Sharia law in ten of northern states. The case of Safiya Hussaini Tungar Tudu has received international attention. She was condemned to death by stoning on October 9 in Sokoto state for adultery. A Nigerian man, Sani Rodi, condemned on November 15 in Katsina state, will be stabbed to death by the same knife he used to murder a woman and her two sons.
Even now, in the third millennium, crucifixion is still practiced. In Yemen a man sentenced to death for a double murder was shot in public, then hung on a cross in the Taiz town square, in the north of the country. The cross on which the body was tied was placed on the spot where the murders took place.
These are not isolated cases, and the issue is not just with the death penalty. Other cruel and degrading punishments are inflicted daily in many countries: girls who have pre-marital sex are whipped in Nigeria, anyone who drinks alcohol or smokes in public during Ramadan is lashed in Iran, and Saudi Arabia amputates thieves’ hands.
“Two thousand years of history, an era begun for Christians by an execution on the cross, have passed, but in some countries time seems to have stood still, fixed on that crucifixion,” HOC Secretary Sergio D’Elia said.
“We dedicate the International Human Rights Day to the fundamental issue of the separation of secular and religious powers. If this distinction is not observed, religion takes over the state and the Koran becomes penal and civil law. This endangers not only the citizens oppressed by fundamentalist regimes, but the whole international community.”