The Papua New Guinea government should halt its moves...

The Papua New Guinea government should halt its moves towards executions and work with international donors to establish a more effective system of fighting violent crime, Amnesty International said.
The group released a report examining developments in the application of the death penalty in PNG in the context of some other South Pacific states.
Entitled Papua New Guinea: The State as Killer, the report called on the government to declare a moratorium on all executions as a first step towards abolishing the death penalty. The death penalty was reintroduced in PNG in 1991 but the country had yet to execute anyone, despite a number of inmates being on death row.
Amnesty International's Pacific researcher Dr Heinz Schurmann-Zeggel said that in preparing procedures for executions, PNG was running counter to regional trends to abolish the death penalty.
"Papua New Guinea stands alone in the Pacific in planning to enforce the death penalty," Dr Schurmann-Zeggel said.
"All other states of the Pacific Islands Forum either no longer have laws providing for the death penalty or have stopped enforcing them."
Dr Schurmann-Zeggel said PNG's moves to prepare execution procedures were a reaction to public anger about violent crime.
"Papua New Guinea should focus instead on working with international donors towards a more effective system of fighting crime," he said.