(The United States is one of very few countries that still use the death penalty. Check the company we keep...they are all known for an abysmal lack of human rights, poverity, and underdevelopment. What company we keep!)
UN Assembly calls for moratorium on death penalty 18 Dec 2007 19:39:13 GMT
Source: Reuters
By Daniel Bases
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 18 (Reuters) - The U.N. General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution on Tuesday calling for a moratorium on the death penalty, overcoming protests from a bloc of states that said it undermined their sovereignty.
The resolution, which calls for "a moratorium on executions with a view to abolishing the death penalty," was passed by a 104 to 54 vote, with 29 abstentions.
"The resolution is not an interference, but we call on each member state of the United Nations to implement the resolution and also to open a debate on the death penalty," Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said after the vote.
"The moratorium is an important opportunity for international debate," he told reporters. Italy, speaking on behalf of the EU, was a strong proponent of the resolution.
Two similar moves in the 1990s failed in the assembly. The resolution's text stops short of an outright demand for immediate abolition; it carries no legal force but backers say it has powerful moral authority.
Among nations who voted against were Egypt, Iran, Singapore, the United States and a bloc of Caribbean states.
Eighty-seven countries -- including the 27 European Union states, more than a dozen Latin American countries and eight African states -- jointly introduced the resolution, though opponents singled out the EU as the driving force.
The resolution picked up several extra votes in the General Assembly since it was passed by a U.N. human rights committee last month by a vote of 99-52 with 33 abstentions.
Barbados, one of the most vocal opponents of the measure, said sponsors were trying to impose their will on other countries and that it had been threatened with the withdrawal of aid over the issue.
"Capital punishment remains legal under international law and Barbados wishes to exercise its sovereign right to use it as a deterrent to the most serious crimes," Mohammed Degia, first secretary for Barbados, said just prior to the vote.
"Beyond all of this is the simple fact that the question of the death penalty is basically one of criminal justice as enforced and upheld within national legal systems," he said, noting that Barbados had not carried out an execution in decades but still retained the right to do so.
The United States voted against but kept a low profile throughout the resolution's progress to a vote.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokeswoman Michele Montas said Ban welcomed the vote.
"Today's vote represents a bold step by the international community," Montas quoted Ban as saying in a statement. "This is further evidence of a trend towards ultimately abolishing the death penalty."
According to rights group Amnesty International, 133 countries have abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Opponents of the moratorium, however, said more than 100 countries retained capital punishment on their statutes, even if they did not all use it.
China, Iran, Iraq, the United States, Pakistan and Sudan account for about 90 percent of all executions worldwide, according to Amnesty.
The UN has no moral authority in anything! Would the UN call for a moritorium on abortion ? Hardly as thy are a big promoters of abortion and population control with a hidden agenda to promote forced abortion ! They are also pro war with thier million man chinese army in the waiting room! Get out of the UN and get the UN out of America!
l was talking to a co-worker. His wife just had a baby. Seeing he was tense and grabbing all the extra over time he could get, l asked if they were going to have any more? He said yes, 3 more. l said,"the world is becoming the way it is and you want more?" He said, " We have to." " We have to keep up with the Chinese." ........Some people actually believe this. Water and food shortages and they don't care until it directly affects them. l have to pay$625.00 for school taxes! And l don't have kids. l decided on that early. l see people having children so they get more money on welfare here in B.C. l feel people should have to get a permit to have children. The permit comes after educational course. Also, you shouldn't be allowed to have children unless you have an education and able to afford to support them. If you can't afford your child and social services does, you should pay child support to the government so someone like me has to pay for it. If you can't feed it-don't breed it! ..................Most American prisons are over populated. Life sentencers should be executed and the food used to feed him given to the starving.....Oh yes. l rescued a 8 year old boy starving on the roadside here in British Columbia. So, What do you think? Sincerely, P......P.S.
" Most American prisons are over populated. Life sentencers should be executed and the food used to feed him given to the starving."
I was trying to think of a place where you should be sent, so that you can not give vent to your homicidal tendencies, but no place on earth is far enough from humanity for you to be safely sent. Do try and find that inner core of love that must still be inside of you, before you succumb to your own toxicity!
I am against the death penalty.Too often the underclass is executed wrongfully.There is a historic case that occured in Barbados around 1964, where a white Canadian Anglican Priest murdered his wife one christmas morning.He then went to church and preached. The gardener, a black Vincentian was executed by hanging, despite the fact that the dead woman's small child said that daddy did it. Years later the criminal struck again, there was no black scapegoat this time. He had left Barbados I do not recall where he was living at the time. He was convicted of murder,and at the same time admitted that he had killed his first wife in Barbados! The state of Texas with a stunning degree of regularity, has to release black men off death row, because of DNA evidence!! This institutional murder must stop! How many black men were murdered by that state and indeed others? As soon as I saw the post about a man who was on death row although the court had admitted he killed none, before researching his bio, I said that he had to be a black man, because lynching has taken on a semblance of legitamacy,in Texas.
At the same time I think that the issue of appropiate punishment must be addressed. It is time that goverments in the Caribbean come to a clear decision to abandon the death penalty and put measures in place so that society's need for justice can be satisfied. What happens at present in Barbados,is that as long as a person is sentenced to death they go through several appeals and the sentence is commuted to a few years in prison,and I stress A FEW, which leaves a lot of anger in the society. Caribbean governments could impose longer periods of incarceration for those who are barbaric murderers.
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UN Calls for a Moritorium on the Death Penalty... 
