Legal killing?

Torture is an act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person to act as a form of punishment, or to gain information or confession. Like torture, the death penalty carries both physical and mental pain, it is a long road of suffering from the moment a prisoner is sentenced to the moment of unconsciousness and death.

It is a form of torture where unsustainable pain is afflicted onto the human body and this eventually leads to death. Torture has long been condemned whereas the death penalty is still retained for ordinary crimes in 78 states around the world.

Fortunately, Malta does not form part of this list. Some of us, however, may still believe that the death penalty can be justified to help reduce potential crimes. If we had to accept this argument, then we have to assume that people who commit crimes can rationally calculate the consequences before actually doing it, an erroneous conclusion especially when one takes into consideration the fact that crimes are also committed by people who are either mentally ill or highly unstable.

Being condemned to death can unfortunately also be a question of social class as money undoubtedly helps procur better legal counsel. Furthermore, history shows us that certain criminals run a greater risk of being condemned to death if their victims come from higher social classes.

In some states, the death penalty has also been used as a tool of repression. Thousands have been put to death under one government only to be recognised as innocent victims when a new government comes to power. It may be an easy way for a corrupt government to eliminate inconvenient people.

The right to life is applicable to everybody and no-one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. This is what was written in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

However, it was not enough to prevent states from exercising the death penalty. Since then four international treaties have been adopted to provide for the abolition of the death penalty and be bound by international law upon ratification.

The Council of Europe adopted two treaties for European states, namely Protocols 6 and 13 to the European Convention on Human Rights. Protocol 13, adopted in 2002, provides for the abolition of the death penalty not only in peacetime, as in Protocol 6, but also in time of war or of imminent threat of war.

In Europe and Central Asia, Belarus and Uzbekistan are the only two countries that still retain the death penalty. In both states, the inhumanity of the death penalty is compounded by the injustice of unfair trials and confessions obtained under torture.

When Amnesty International (AI) convened an international conference on the death penalty in Stockholm in 1977, just 16 countries had abolished capital punishment for all crimes. Today the figure stands at 80. Turkey is the most recent to join the ranks of abolitionists.

The merit cannot be attributed solely to AI efforts, although it was surely one of the forefront organizations in this battle.

AI is currently undergoing a campaign to make Europe and Central Asia a death penalty-free zone. You can raise your voice by signing a petition on http://web.amnesty.org/pages/deathpenalty-041004-petition-eng to be presented to these two states' authorities and other governments in Europe and Central Asia.

Over the past five years, an average of around 1,800 executions per year have been known to be carried out. Four of these executions usually involve prisoners who were under 18 at the time of crime.

In the meantime, there are many more thousands on death row. If we want this to stop, we must act now. You too can make a difference.

For more information, contact AI (Malta Group) at info@aimalta.org or P.O. Box 12, Valletta.

Mr Bugeja is a member of Amnesty International (Malta Group)