LONDON. PETER GABRIEL JOINS HOC APPEAL TO UK GOVERNMENT TO ADOPT UN MORATORIUM CAMPAIGN

Hands Off Cain launched its campaign for a worldwide moratorium on executions through a UN resolution in London. Former Genesis star Peter Gabriel joined HOC in appealing to the UK government and public to adopt this campaign and present a resolution to the UN General Assembly to stop executions as EU term president in 2005.
Capital punishment - arguably the most controversial issue of contemporary society and morality - was brought home to Londoners as one of the world’s most controversial photographers, Oliviero Toscani, opened his groundbreaking portrayal of inmates on death row in the US – a photographic exhibition entitled We, On Death Row - at the Boiler House in Brick Lane.
During the press conference to launch the opening of the exhibition and HOC’s campaign, Toscani, Gabriel, HOC secretary general Sergio D’Elia and Elisabetta Zamparutti, senior editor of HOC’s annual report The death penalty worldwide,
– asked the British public and government to take over the campaign, which Italy failed to bring to fulfillment to the UN General Assembly as EU term president in 2003.
The UK will hold the rotating EU term-presidency in the second half of 2005, when the GA session opens in New York.
"The United Kingdom could ensure a historic achievement in the fight for human rights, stopping states form killing their citizens," D’Elia told reporters.
"I have always been appalled by the idea of state-sponsored killing,” Gabriel said. “It seems that a lot of politicians feel it necessary to appear very hard on crime in order to win votes. This is an issue which requires a lot of support to get the ideas through".
"We need big business to join our anti-death penalty campaign,’ Toscani said. “As Peter
Gabriel taught me, you can make an incredible song based on human civil rights, and sell a lot of records, and you can write an incredible book on human civil rights, and with the success of the book you can make people understand the voices of production and consumption to which we all fall victim. However, we’ve never talked about human civil rights with this body of work, I intended to change this".
The opening of Toscani’exhibition also provided an occasion to launch the London edition of Stop The Death Penalty Through Internet - an online campaign organised by the web company NEXTA Media, to gather signatures for the appeal to the UN to stop executions.