Appeal for a moratorium
Sign On-Line

NEWS

3rd World Congress Against the Death Penalty

Paris, 1-3 February 2007
Opening Ceremony

Presentation by Mario Marazziti 

Pentothal, curare, potassium. To sedate you, paralyze you, freeze you. You die without pain. Without pain? The guillotine, too, was supposed to �humanize� death. But a �clean� execution does not exist. Justice John Stevens of the United States Supreme Court has said that it is forbidden to kill dogs and cats in this way. In Florida it took 30 minutes for the last inmate executed to die. The state already banned the use of the electric chair because a condemned man was burned. The same thing happened a year ago in California to 76-year-old Clarence Hill. If this is the best the world has been able to invent for a �clean� death, something sick is going on. And it must be stopped now.

It is time for a great global initiative for a universal moratorium. This is what we ask from governments and from everyone involved today.

A universal moratorium on executions should be introduced as soon as possible with the intention of moving toward the total abolition of the death penalty. The Community of Sant�Egidio, along with other groups, for some time has been conducting a campaign to collect signatures on an appeal for a universal moratorium; more than 5 million people already have signed it. It was referred to briefly in the film we just watched. The campaign represents a global moral rallying point that, for the first time, unites secular and religious figures from all the great cultures and world religions � from Abdurrahman Wahid, leader of the world�s largest Islamic organization, to Mikhail Gorbaciov, from the Dalai Lama to bishops, cardinals, chief rabbis and millions of men and women in countries where the death penalty has been abolished and countries where it has not. A universal moratorium is a realistic goal, a first step toward abolition. It has great possibilities because it can be a bridge to the Arab Muslim world and it can be an opportunity for democratic countries that are searching for a way out because of their concerns about the contradictions inherent in a justice system that can never be perfect. Alongside this campaign, the effort in favour of the ratification of Protocol 2 on the part of as many nations as possible could open the way to definitive abolition in other parts of the globe. This is the meaning of the Italian initiative, supported by France and Germany, that we hope will win the convinced support of the other nations of the European Union. The first step is the United Nations General Assembly.

Even if we haven�t realized it yet, 2007 is a historic year. This is the year in which, for the first time, more than half of the world�s population will be living in cities. The global project Cities for Life, Cities Against the Death Penalty taps into this reality. Since 2002, on 30 November each year � the anniversary of the day in 1786 when the Grand Duchy of Tuscany became the first state to abolish the death penalty � participating cities have transformed their �logo� or the principal monument of their town into a living witness against the death penalty. Around these civic symbols in late November, the cities host assemblies, public meetings, shows, concerts and campaigns involving institutions, citizens and those who live in the �grey zone� of uncertainty about what is to be done. In just four years, the number of participating cities has grown from a handful to 600 cities around in the world in 2006. And in 2007 we expect 1,000 cities to mark the occasion. We can use your help to reach this goal because in each city the Community of Sant�Egidio promotes the initiative along with all other groups mobilized against the death penalty.

Cities for Life, Cities Against the Death Penalty has three main aims:

• To support with one large, global initiative all the local efforts against the death penalty, including those conducted by human rights organizations that have no international network.

• To mobilize local institutions and public opinion in a way that attracts media attention.

• To create the cultural, institutional and political openness, including by pointing out contradictions, need to change the current situation, including in countries that maintain capital punishment.

This is the reason that while the first World Day Against the Death Penalty was celebrated 30 November, in 2003 it was decided to move the commemoration to 10 October and devote the November date to another large planetary initiative involving the new protagonists in the life of most of the world�s people: mayors, cities and citizens. Following this calendar of events is a proposal we would like to make to all of you and that can be implemented with your assistance. We have kits available explaining how to launch Cities for Life in other places, which you can request at our stand here at the World Congress.

Cities for Life is not an isolate initiative. It takes place alongside our activities of corresponding with death row inmates and helping with their legal defense; the Community of Sant�Egidio has established relationships with more than 4,000 condemned inmates. It is part of our work for a global moratorium. It goes together with the work we do directly with Amnesty International, with the World Coalition and with others in the prisons and with African and Asian governments. The death penalty is more tired than ever.

The death penalty is a violent shortcut for resolving social questions people haven�t been able to face. It speaks directly to the lowest human instincts. To base its abolition or its continuation on public opinion polls is in line with a history of pogroms and lynchings; it debases the role of parliaments and lowers leadership, humanism and democracies to the level of consensual popularism. Supporters claim to be fighting the taking of human life, but in reality they are giving it legitimacy at the highest level, that of the state. This is the way a �culture of death� grows.

We also cannot accept the fact that human rights depend on geography. They are human rights, not geographic rights. It is not just that someone who is born in Asia is more likely to be executed than someone from another continent. The geographic inequality exists within nations. In the United States, half of all executions take place in Texas and have of those are for crimes committed in Harris County.

There also is the problem of mental torture, which cannot be eliminated because the condemned die ten, a hundred, a thousand times before they are taken to the death house.

Today people recognize that slavery and torture are barbaric. We have a new human right to give to the world in this third millennium: �There is no justice without life.� The death penalty no more.

Europe was the first continent to ban the death penalty. There are those who say this is because it is a secularized, desperate continent that no longer believes in a life after death. But this observation makes no sense, especially if you realize that more than 90 percent of the capital executions in the world take place in China. Europe is a continent that has experienced too much death on its territory -- two world wars, the Shoah � and with great effort it has reconceived itself as a continent that will not rely on offensive wars or on the death penalty. A secular culture and Judeo-Christian roots have met in a synthesis that recognizes the possibility of rehabilitation as a fundamental dimension of justice.

To those who would say, �Yes, but faced with crimes against humanity, the death penalty is necessary,� we respond, �It is precisely in order not to become like them that the death penalty must be abolished.�

To win this battle, a great global front must be established beyond Europe�s borders. In the coming months, the diplomatic and cultural challenge facing our nations, and Italy and France first of all, must be the ability to present a resolution co-sponsored not only by the EU, but also by key countries from the world�s South, including South Africa, Mozambique, Senegal, Liberia, Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Cambodia and the Philippines. Support from Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Taiwan is not impossible since these countries are �de facto� abolitionist. We must reach out to ensure that an anti-European, anti-colonialist sentiment is not used in a cunning and paralyzing way. Or that Europe arrives divided in the name of an understandable maximalism of human rights that can be manipulated by the lazy lovers of the gallows. Let�s work together. We can do it. We are not interested in winning this battle for ourselves, but for the world.

RASSEGNA STAMPA