DEATH PENALTY. ZAMPARUTTI- PROTOCOL NO 13 RATIFICATION GOOD, BUT COMMITMENT REQUIRED TO STRENGTHEN UN RESOLUTION

Elisabetta Zamparutti

26 September 2008 :

regarding the Chamber of Deputies' ratification of Protocol No 13 of the European Convention for the protection of human rights and fundamental liberties, Democratic Party Radical Parliamentarian Elisabetta Zamparutti said: "The vote today is the final point in a long evolution of European culture. The ratification of Protocol No 13 was perfectly consistent with the Italian judicial rule to remove the death penalty for military crimes.
After the success that followed the December 18th approval of the Resolution for the universal moratorium on capital punishment by the UN General Assembly, our country now has the moral and political responsibility of the commitment to strengthen and realise the contents of the resolution. Considering what the resolution expressly foresees, and the point is already in the orders of the day of the General Assembly that just opened in New York, we (the Radicals) wanted to ask during the parliamentary debate for a commitment by the current government on two points.
The first is a point of substance, with which the new resolution can be truly strengthened politically: the abolition of state secrecy on the death penalty. Many countries, mostly autocratic ones, provide no information on the application of the death penalty, and the lack of information on this matter available to the public is also a direct cause of most executions.
The second point is that the new resolution foresees the creation of a Special Envoy of the Secretary General. The envoy would have the task of not only monitoring the situation, but also promoting and accelerating the internal processes in diverse countries to satisfy the United Nations request for a moratorium on executions, besides the greater transparency in the death penalty system."
 

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