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marmar

(76,982 posts)
Sun May 6, 2012, 06:51 PM May 2012

Guardian UK: The global fight to end capital punishment


The global fight to end capital punishment
The death penalty is a shameful legacy of colonialism – now British lawyers are fighting to abolish it around the world by representing condemned prisoners in court

Maya Wolfe-Robinson and Owen Bowcott
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 6 May 2012


"If we needed to hang someone tomorrow," Martin Martinez, Trinidad and Tobago's commissioner of prisons, says, grinning wolfishly, "we would grease up the gallows and buy some new rope." Death by hanging is the penalty for anyone convicted of murder in Trinidad and Tobago, although no one has been executed here since 1999.

From his air-conditioned office, minutes from the cemetery in the capital, Port of Spain, Martinez reels off the four witnesses needed: a doctor, a priest, a court official and himself, the prisons commissioner. "It is traumatising to take a man's life," he explains. "It's an emotional issue, as there is such a high murder rate here. The death penalty sends a message, but it may or may not solve the problem."

Prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, backed by former Fifa vice-president Jack Warner, who is now her minister for works and transport, is campaigning for enforcement of the death penalty to fight the "the tsunami of crime" that has hit Trinidad and Tobago. In Jamaica, which has one of the world's highest murder rates, there is also a growing clamour for the rope to be used.

The debate is close to boiling point in the English-speaking Caribbean, partly because it plays on one of the few remaining links to Britain colonialism. The fate of those on death row is currently decided more than 4,000 miles away, in Westminster, at the judicial committee of the privy council (JCPC). "We talk about independence, meaning a flag and an anthem," Martinez says, "but we need to sever the umbilical cord with the mother country." ..................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/may/06/global-fight-end-capital-punishment



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