19/12/2000

Global petition puts pressure on US to abolish death penalty

Opponents of the death penalty opened a political front against the next US president, George W Bush, yesterday by presenting the United Nations with a petition of 3.2m signatures from 146 countries.

A coalition of intellectuals, entertainers and religious and human rights groups said the petition marked a stepping-up in the campaign for moratoriums on capital punishment.

The petition was handed to the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, in New York, but its focus was on Mr Bush, who has approved more executions than any other US governor in modern times during his tenure in Texas. The objective is to exploit America's growing fear that innocent people are ending up on death row.

The Rome-based Community of Sant'Egidio, an independent Roman Catholic group which promotes peace in Africa and the Balkans, organised the petition. It said the death penalty dehumanised the world by putting vengeance first.

The signatories include the Dalai Lama; the Indonesian president, Abdurrahman Wahid; the Archbishop of Canterbury, George Carey; the writer Umberto Eco; the film director Roberto Benigni; and the World Methodist Council president, Frances Alguire.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of the book Dead Man Walking, told Mr Annan that the petition was aimed at the estimated 90 countries where capital punishment remains legal.

Executions are common in China, Iraq, India, Iran, Pakistan, the Palestinian Authority territories, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria. More than 660 people have been executed in the US since the death penalty was reintroduced in 1976. It is supported by two out of three Americans.

As Texas governor, Mr Bush backed a law to shorten delays between convictions and executions, blocked a bill to ban the execution of people with learning disabilities, and presided over the first execu tion of a woman since the civil war. Overseeing more than 150 deaths did his popularity no harm.

Sant'Egidio senses that this campaign against the death penalty may succeed where others failed because of revelations about incompetent defence lawyers and dishonest prosecutors and police officers, and the fact that a disproportionate number of black and Hispanic convicts have been condemned.

In January the Illinois governor, George Ryan, imposed a moratorium after 13 death-row inmates were shown to have been wrongly convicted. Such scandals have rattled confidence in the system.

The Pope is expected to use his new year message to the world to once again condemn capital punishment.

Italy's opposition was highlighted this year when the Colosseum in Rome was bathed in light for 48 hours every time a death penalty was suspended or commuted or a country abolished capital punishment. The ceremony ends this month.

Rory Carroll