Recently I bemoaned our reprehensible vote against LGBT Rights at the United Nations (UN). On December 20, 2016, we voted with a handful of homophobic countries against the UN appointing a Special Envoy to promote Human Rights for LGBT. On that day, the UN also voted to continue a moratorium on the death penalty. Guyana voted against the moratorium. Guyana is gaining an anti-Human Rights reputation at the UN. The APNU/AFC administration and its Foreign Affairs Minister can be counted on to vote against progressive Human Rights provisions. These anti-Human Rights votes at the UN coincide with an increasingly ominous derailment of human rights in Guyana.
For the sixth time since 2007, the UN voted overwhelmingly for a moratorium on the death penalty on December 20, 2016. The UN had first voted to implement a total moratorium in November 2007, on a motion moved by Italy and co-sponsored by other European countries. When the vote was taken for the sixth time in December 2016, 117 countries voted in support of a moratorium. Guyana was among 40 countries that voted against, begging the question if Guyana is about to abandon the death penalty moratorium in place for more than 20 years.
At a time when the progressive position is to abolish the death penalty, Guyana’s vote put us in a regressive category with countries such as Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Russia, China and the USA. These countries are acting in contradiction to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which has urged nations to abolish the death penalty. Our vote contradicts Guyana’s active moratorium for the last 20 years and our commitment to the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) to abolish the death penalty. In the 10th Parliament, a Special Select Committee was established to address repealing the death penalty. The 11th Parliament has totally ignored this commitment.
We have not only ignored an international commitment to abolish the death penalty from our laws, we actually extended the death penalty to new offences in the Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Amendment Act (2015). These laws are incongruent with the Constitution and with our international obligations. APNU/AFC argued falsely that they included these new death penalty provisions to satisfy the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) requirements. FATF does not have any such requirements.
The UNCHR has declared that the death penalty breaches two essential human rights: the right to life and the right to live free from torture. Besides the UDHR, the death penalty also breaches the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Protocol Six to the European Convention on Human Rights and the Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights to Abolish the Death Penalty. The UNCHR has mandated that every country must forthwith amend their constitutions and laws to reflect the international laws on human rights.
As of May 2016, 102 countries have abolished the death penalty all together, including Suriname, which abolished the death penalty in 2015 and Haiti which abolished it in 1987. Six other countries have abolished it, but retained the death penalty for exceptional or special circumstances, such as wartime crimes. In America, Hillary Clinton had proposed that America abolished the death penalty, but retain it for acts of terrorism, such as the shooting of church members in South Carolina, the killings in Orlando and San Bernardino. Some of us have proposed that Guyana abolish the death penalty, but keep it for terror acts, such as the Lusignan and Bartica massacres.
Just five Western countries: the US, Japan, Singapore, St Kitts and Nevis, and Taiwan, actively utilise the death penalty. South Korea, which retained the law, declared a moratorium on death sentences. Most executions today take place in Asia. China is the most active country in carrying out the death penalty. North Korea is also active in carrying out the death sentence. Iran and Saudi Arabia are the most active of the Islamic countries in carrying out death sentences.
In 2015, 25 countries executed people. There were more than 1,634 persons who were executed under death penalty laws, the most since 1989. The exact number is unknown because China and North Korea have not released numbers. Since Belarus, the only European country with the death penalty, did not execute anyone in 2015, Europe was completely free of executions.
Albert Camus, the French Philosopher and Author once wrote that the “death penalty is the most premeditated of murders”. Guyana needs to adopt a progressive Human Rights agenda which must include abolishing the death penalty, repealing the laws that criminalise LGBT and suicide, and abolish corporal punishment of children in schools. Our record on these matters at the UN and at home is full of stench. (Send comments to [email protected])
