01/12/2004

Christians around the world protest against death penalty

Christians joined in protests against the death penalty yesterday as monuments in more than 300 cities around the world were illuminated.

Stefania Tallei, head of the Sant Egidio Community's Anti Death Penalty Campaign told Fides news service the project began in Rome in 2002.

She said: "We lit up the Colosseum to increase awareness on the problem of the death penalty all over the world. Since then every year on November 30 monuments in many parts of the world, are illuminated to encourage as many people as possible to join our campaign.

In Rome the day was marked by a meeting at the Palazzo Leopardi in Trastevere, followed by a march through the streets to the Colosseum.

November 30 is the historic date on which the Grand Duchy of Tuscany abolished the death penalty in 1786. On that date ahead of his times, Grand Duke Leopoldo passed a law to abolish torture and the death penalty.

The death penalty in the USA is currently in the spotlight with dozens of mistakenly convicted death row prisoners being freed in recent years. Two years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court banned executions of the mentally disabled. In Illinois, the outgoing governor in January 2003 cleared the nation's eighth biggest death row. In June, New York's highest court threw out the state's death penalty law.

An unevenness around the country in applying the death penalty has also been revealed. At the extremes are California, where the pace of death-sentence appeals and executions is extremely slow, and Texas, which has put more than three times as many inmates to death as the next closest state since the Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976.

The 36 other states that sanction executions fall between.

Public approval of capital punishment in the USA has slid from 80% in 1994 to 66% a decade later, according to Gallup polls.

Cities all over the world which took part in the demonstrations yesterday included: Milan, Florence, Naples, Genoa, Palermo, Turin, Venice, Madrid, Barcelona, Vienna, Brussels, Geneva, Berlin, Paris, Dublin, Copenhagen and Stockholm, Tirana and Kosovo. For the first time; Mexico City and the Mexican President, Fox, Buenos Aires, San Salvador, Bogota and Medellin (Colombia); Canberra and Wellington; Atlanta, Porto Alegre (Brazil) and Montreal.