[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----worldwide

[Rick Halperin]

April 8


BRAZIL:

Survey: Brazilians' support for death penalty at 14-year high


Support for the death penalty has reached its highest rate in 14 years
after waves of violence and brutal crimes across Latin America's largest
nation, according to a survey released Sunday.

55 % of Brazilians support instituting the death penalty, which does not
exist in Brazil, according to the Datafolha survey published in the Folha
de S. Paulo newspaper, Brazil's largest.

That matches the rate reached in 1993, Datafolha said. The lowest rate was
48 % in 2000. The polling institute's first survey on the issue was in
1991.

Datafolha said it interviewed 5,700 people across Brazil on March 19-20,
and the survey had a margin of error of 2 % points.

During the last survey in August 2006, 51 % of Brazilians favored the
death penalty.

In December, a wave of violence in Rio de Janeiro left 19 people dead,
including 8 who were burned alive aboard a city bus.

One killing in particular has prompted widespread outrage: In February, 5
men and teenagers stole a car in Rio and dragged to death a 6-year-old boy
who got stuck in his seat belt while trying to escape.

That same month 3 French citizens who worked at a nonprofit group in Rio
de Janeiro were stabbed to death.

In Brazil's biggest city of Sao Paulo, more than 200 people were killed in
May when a prison-based gang unleashed a wave of attacks against police
and other symbols of government authority.

Other recent surveys have shown Brazilians' biggest concerns have switched
from jobless rates to security.

Killings by police and vigilante-style groups called militias also may be
heightening attention to security.

In Rio, the militias have been expelling heavily armed drug gangs who
control many slums, eliminating the drug business but charging residents
for protection.

(source: Associated Press)






ITALY:

Death penalty protesters parade through Rome


An unusual Easter Parade made its way through the streets of Rome and into
St. Peter's Square today.

Some of the participants wore noose-shaped ropes around their necks. One
21-year-old, Daniele de Luca, carried pieces of a make-it-yourself
gallows.

To protest the death penalty specifically and war generally, they chose
Easter, the day Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. After all,
they said, Jesus was the perfect pacifist who fell victim to a
regime-sanctioned execution.

And they had something of an ally on St. Peter's throne.

Pope Benedict XVI led a regal Easter Mass and then bemoaned the state of a
war-torn world -- singling out Iraq for special lamentation. Although the
Vatican is on record opposing the war in Iraq, Benedict's comments were
notably bleak.

"Nothing positive comes from Iraq," the pope said, "torn apart by
continual slaughter as the civil population flees."

He also condemned "growing unrest and instability" in Afghanistan and a
litany of horrors, destruction and bloodshed throughout Africa and Asia.
"How many wounds, how much suffering there is in the world!" he said.

The pope's comments came during his traditional Urbi et Orbi message
delivered at Easter and Christmas.

"I am thinking of the scourge of hunger, of incurable diseases, of
terrorism and kidnapping of people," the pope continued, "of the thousand
faces of violence which some people attempt to justify in the name of
religion, of contempt for life, of the violation of human rights and the
exploitation of persons."

Benedict wore shimmering golden vestments and presided over a ceremony
awash in yellow flowers that filled St. Peter's Square with an enormous
showing of pilgrims.

The death-penalty demonstrators joined the St. Peter's crowd after
marching from Rome's City Hall. Some said they were disappointed that the
pope did not explicitly condemn the practice, the central issue they hoped
to dramatize, but took heart in his pointed advocacy of nonviolence and
human rights.

"This is such a day of God, of rebirth, and we are talking about love and
life," said Ilaria Stivali, 32, who was in a group wearing mock nooses and
T-shirts saying "I am against."

"This is our way to say we want peace, the only way we have to say
something to our government," she added. "The death penalty is not human,
and I can't stand it anymore."

The Roman Catholic Church has long opposed capital punishment, which has
been abolished by Italy and most of Europe. The goal now among activists
is to pressure the government to promote a worldwide moratorium through
the United Nations.

"There are still important countries, like the United States and China,
that are a problem," said Massimo Masotti, 33, a financial broker and
member of Radicali Roma, a pro-left political association.

"For Christians, this is a good day" to demonstrate, he said. "We don't
agree with all things in the Catholic Church, like the role of women, but
on this we are close, this important human rights battle."

Politicians and government ministers, most from the left and some who
rarely see eye-to-eye with the pope, led today's demonstration. Rome Mayor
Walter Veltroni said he was there because "I cannot accept that a state
take revenge with the lives of its citizens."

The more politically conservative former president of Italy, Francesco
Cossiga, 78 and wheelchair-bound, said he was there precisely because of
his Catholic faith: "I believe in God, and no one can interfere with human
life."

(source: Los Angeles Times)

************

Some 3,000 Italians march for death penalty ban


Some 3,000 people staged a march in Rome on Sunday to press the Italian
government to step up efforts for a UN resolution calling for a world
moratorium on the death penalty.

The marchers, who ended their procession at St Peters Square as Pope
Benedict XVI was delivering his traditional Easter address, carried white
balloons and held placards saying 'We want a UN moratorium soon.'

The march was organised by Marco Panella and Emma Bonino, who lead the
small libertarian Radical party, as well as the Roman Catholic Sant'Egidio
Community.

'Everybody agrees (that the death penalty should be abolished) but nobody
does anything,' Panella said.

Bonino, a former EU commissioner who doubles as the external trade
minister, added: 'We are here to back the government initiative to get the
UN General Assembly to adopt a resolution on the moratorium.'

According to Amnesty International, 128 countries have abolished the death
penalty in law or practice, while 69 countries and territories retain and
use capital punishment, although the number of countries which actually
execute prisoners in any one year is much smaller.

The Italian government said in January, when it became a member of the UN
Security Council, that it would use its tenure to get such a resolution
passed but has yet to forward any such proposal.

Former Italian president Francesco Cossiga and Rome Mayor Walter Veltroni
took part in Sunday's march, which had the backing of current President
Giorgio Napolitano, Prime Minister Romano Prodi, about 15 ministers and
several left-wing parties as well as some figures from the right and many
associations.

The protesters hoped that the pope would mention their cause, but it was
absent from his 'Urbi et Orbi' (to the city and the world) Easter message.

(source: Agence France Presse:






SOUTH AFRICA:

Human Response to Inhuman Acts


ON THE Wednesday before the first court appearance of Andrew Jordaan,
alleged murderer of seven-year-old Sheldean Human, I receive a forwarded
SMS from a number in Tshwane: "Please wear pink and blue on Friday in a
show of solidarity with the family..." On the Friday evening, the
Afrikaans news leads with the story of the court appearance. Cameras zoom
in on an angry mob assembled in front of the Pretoria Magistrate's Court,
waving posters demanding: Hang hom! (Hang him!).

It is evident that much time went into preparations for the protest. A
mannequin with a noose around its neck forms the centrepiece in the
enraged display. A petition to reintroduce the death penalty does the
rounds. Celebrities interviewed say they are gatvol. A little girl is
carrying a poster with a question messily painted in bright red letters:
"Am I next, Pres Mbeki?"

A woman from Sheldean's community says in an Afrikaans accent: "Don't hang
him. Give him to us..." This sentiment is later echoed in Mitchells Plain
at the arrest of Richard Engelbrecht, the man allegedly responsible for
the death of 11-year-old Annestacia Wiese.

What is happening to SA? It appears the public has become so consumed with
moral rage against violent crime that it is no longer to be reasoned with.
Will it soon start taking matters into its own hands? Is the pressure of
the prevalence of violent crime ultimately stifling all moral and ethical
aspirations beyond economies of violence? Why did we again abolish the
death penalty despite strong public opinion to the contrary and despite
the increasing rate of violent crime in SA? Do the reasons the
Constitutional Court gave in coming to its decision remain cogent more
than 10 years later?

These questions force one back to the earliest hours of our democracy.

In 1995, our newly founded Constitutional Court abolished the death
penalty. The court carefully distinguished between the question of whether
the public believes that the death penalty should be a proper punishment
for murder and whether the constitution allows it. In elaborating on this
difference, the court said there would be no need for constitutional
adjudication if public opinion were to be decisive.

The protection of rights would then be left to Parliament, which is
answerable to the public and that, according to the court, would be a
retreat from the new legal order: a return to parliamentary sovereignty.

The court also held that capital punishment was not the only way in which
a society could express moral outrage against murder.

In answering the question whether the death penalty is nevertheless a
justifiable limitation on the above rights, the court dealt with the
argument that the death penalty serves as a strong deterrent to violent
crime in SA. The court refuted this argument, pointing out there was no
evidence that the death penalty was a greater deterrent than, for
instance, life imprisonment.

The court also showed that violent crimes in SA increased at a time when
the death penalty was still on the statute books. There was thus not
sufficient evidence that the imposition of the death penalty serves as a
greater deterrent to violent crime than other forms of punishment.

The then president of the court, Arthur Chaskalson, said: "The greatest
deterrent to crime is the likelihood that offenders will be apprehended,
convicted and punished. It is that which is presently lacking in our
criminal justice system; and it is at this level and through addressing
the causes of crime that the state must seek to combat lawlessness."

Finally, the court held that SA had committed itself to the recognition of
human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence. At the heart of this
commitment lies the affirmation of the rights to life and dignity.

Having committed ourselves "to a society founded on the recognition of
human rights", the court held that we are required to value the rights to
life and dignity above all others. "And this must be demonstrated by the
state in everything that it does, including the way it punishes
criminals."

Aspirational words, you might say. And while it will always remain
impossible to fully mourn the tragic deaths of victims of violent crime,
it is the aspirational character of these words that should remain to
guard the possibility of a future in which these heinous acts no longer
occur.

If we would like to believe we have morally, ethically and politically
become more sophisticated in the 21st century, then these words have to
hold true (even if primarily on an aspirational and inspirational level)
even more than 10 years later.

If we are simply to respond to the cruelty of the murderer with a
matching, deliberate cruelty, which would basically repeat the crime, if
the death penalty becomes that which we fight for (aspire to) as an
ethical response to heinous crime, then we will lose the very aspiration
for a nonviolent, transformed society founded on the rule of law.

Behind the abolition of the death penalty lies the unconditional
affirmation of the right to life. And is this not precisely what the
religions of SA advocate? How does one reconcile the religious demand to
"forgive the unforgivable" with hungry calls for vengeance in front of
court buildings?

While these aspects might be irreconcilable, the injunction to forgive the
unforgivable is an almost unbearable, unrealistic, impossible moral
demand, which, nevertheless, must remain with us as we attempt to
formulate new, more human responses to the inhuman acts that so vividly
permeated our experience as a nation over the past few months.

That the state has an urgent and inexcusable duty to facilitate the proper
functioning of such responses through intensified programmes of law
enforcement and crime prevention is self-evident and it should go without
saying that this injunction forms part and parcel of the aspirational
nature of the court's judgment.

While it is true no politics or law can be founded on the notion of
forgiveness, the state is not forgiving the criminal when it abolishes the
death penalty. It is still imposing a punishment -- often a life sentence,
which can easily become a death sentence.

But by refusing to impose the death penalty, the state reaffirms that the
economy exacted by the death penalty cannot and will not contribute to
ethical living and a constitutional culture of rights.

If this reaffirmation is not taken seriously by the state and its
citizens, we shall soon be immersed yet again in the dark days of moral
decay from which we have emerged.

(source: Opinion, Business Day--Dr Jaco Barnard is from the department of
private law at the University of Cape Town)