Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Beyond Expression: Amnesty International's Decision to Oppose Capital Punishment, 1973

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 7; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14754830802476852

1475-4843

Andrew S. Thompson,

Torture, Ethics, and Law

Abstract Amnesty International's (AI) decision in 1973 to adopt unconditional opposition to capital punishment into its mandate marked a watershed moment for both the international abolitionist movement generally, and Amnesty International specifically. But it was not an easy decision for the organization to take. Internally, there were some within the organization who opposed broadening the mandate beyond its existing work on Prisoners of Conscience, fearing that such a move would commit AI to the defense of violent individuals, which, in turn, would be detrimental to the organization's reputation. While the organization eventually chose to make campaigning against the use of the death penalty a core aspect of its work, it did so with great reluctance. And in doing so, AI filled a void within the abolitionist movement and lent new legitimacy and momentum to efforts to bring about an end to capital punishment worldwide. But more importantly, it signaled a principled shift in thinking for the organization that not only challenged the state's authority to take an individual's life but advocated a more inclusive vision in which the rights of individuals could not legitimately be forfeited for either their words or deeds. Andrew S. Thompson is the Program Officer, Global Governance Programs, at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, and a Senior Fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), both of which are located in Waterloo, Canada. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Waterloo, and his areas of specialization include human rights and international governance. He is co-editor of Critical Mass: The Emergence of Global Civil Society (2008) and Haiti: Hope for a Fragile State (2006). In March/April 2004, he was a member of an Amnesty International human rights fact finding and lobbying mission to Haiti. The author would like to express his special thanks to Sir Nigel Rodley, Rick Halperin, Gina Hill, Stephanie Bangarth, Whitney Lackenbauer, as well as the two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier draft of this article. Notes 1. The definition of a POC was later expanded to include being “imprisoned, detained or restricted for their political, religious or other conscientiously held beliefs, their ethnic origin, sex, color or language who have not used or advocated violence.” 2. Hammarberg eventually became the Secretary General for Amnesty International, a post he held from 1980 to 1986. After leaving AI, he became general secretary for Swedish Save the Children from 1986 to 1992, and vice chairman of the U.N. Committee on Children's Rights from 1991 to 1997. From 1996 to 2000 he was the special envoy for the U.N. General Secretary for Human Rights in Cambodia. He now serves as the General Secretary for the Olof Palme International Center, which is located in Stockholm, Sweden. He is currently the Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights. 3. Rodley would later go on to become the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, a position he held from 1993 to 2001. Since then, he has sat as a member of the U.N. Human Rights Committee. 4. The most often cited case is that of anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela, leader of the African National Congress. Having been imprisoned on charges of organizing a workers' strike, AI adopted Mandela as a POC in 1962. In 1964, he was “convicted on a sabotage charge and sentenced to life imprisonment. Because he had resorted to violence, he no longer qualified as a POC, but instead was designated by the organization as a political prisoner” (Power 2001 Power, Jonathan. 2001. Like Water on Stone: The Story of Amnesty International, Boston: Northeastern University Press. [Google Scholar]: 125; Clark 2001 Clark, Ann Marie. 2001. Diplomacy of Conscience: Amnesty International and Changing Human Rights Norms, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]: 14). 5. Some of the civil society organizations that were calling for abolition of the death penalty prior to the early 1970s included, in Canada, the Presbyterian Church of Canada; in the United States, the Quakers, the Methodist Church, The United States Episcopal Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Unitarians and the Universalists, the American Northern Baptist Church, the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, the National Council of Churches of Christ, the National Catholic Conference for Interracial Justice, the National Coalition of American Nuns, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Legal Defense Fund, and the American League to Abolish Capital Punishment; in the United Kingdom, the British Council of Churches, the National Council for the Abolition of Capital Punishment, and the Howard League for Penal Reform; and in Northern Ireland, the Association for the Reform of the Law on Capital Punishment (United Nations 1962 United Nations. 1962. Capital Punishment, New York: Department of Economic and Social Affairs. [Google Scholar]: 64–66; Megivern 2004 Megivern, James J. 2004. “Religion and the death penalty in the United States: past and present”. In Capital Punishment: Strategies for Abolition, Edited by: Hodgkinson, Peter and Schabas, William A. 116–42. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Google Scholar]: 120–22). 6. According to Article 2, “1. No reservation is admissible to the present Protocol, except for a reservation made at the time of ratification or accession that provides for the application of the death penalty in time of war pursuant to a conviction for a most serious crime of a military nature committed during wartime. 2. The State Party making such a reservation shall at the time of ratification or accession communicate to the Secretary-General of the United Nations the relevant provisions of its national legislation applicable during wartime. 3. The State Party having made such a reservation shall notify the Secretary-General of the United Nations of any beginning or ending of a state of war applicable to its territory.” Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights Aiming at the Abolition of the Death Penalty, GA Res. 44/128, open for signature 15 December 1989. 7. Of these 23 nations, 13 had become abolitionist for all crimes, 4 for non-military crimes, and another 6 had become de facto abolitionists, meaning they had not carried out an execution in more than ten years (Rodley 1990 Rodley, Nigel. 1990. World-wide moves towards abolition of the death penalty: A seminar held by Amnesty International on the occasion of the Eighth United Nations Congress on the Prevention of Crime and the Treatment of Offenders, (speech), Havana, Cuba, 3 September [Google Scholar]: 17). 8. According to Article 77: Applicable penalties of the Rome Statute, the penalties for conviction include: 1. Subject to article 110, the Court may impose one of the following penalties on a person convicted of a crime referred to in article 5 of this Statute: (a) Imprisonment for a specified number of years, which may not exceed a maximum of 30 years; or (b) A term of life imprisonment when justified by the extreme gravity of the crime and the individual circumstances of the convicted person. 2. In addition to imprisonment, the Court may order: (a) A fine under the criteria provided for in the Rules of Procedure and Evidence; (b) A forfeiture of proceeds, property and assets derived directly or indirectly from that crime, without prejudice to the rights of bona fide third parties. Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, U.N. Doc. A/CONF.183/9, 17 July 1998. 9. Of course, there remain several holdouts. At the time of writing, 62 states still practice capital punishment, the worst offenders being China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan, and the United States. But their ranks are dwindling. 135 countries—over two-thirds of the world's states—are abolitionist in “law or practice” (91 are abolitionist for all crimes, 11 for ordinary crimes, and 33 are de facto abolitionist countries), the most recent being Uzbekistan, which officially removed capital punishment from its criminal code on January 1, 2008. (DPIC 2008 Death Penalty Information Centre. 2008. Abolitionist and Retentionist Countries Available: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?scid=30&did=140 accessed 18 February [Google Scholar]; Amnesty International 2008 Amnesty International. 2008. Uzbekistan Abolished the Death Penalty Available http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/good-news/uzbekistan-abolishes-death-penalty-20080111 accessed 18 February [Google Scholar]). 10. Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”; Article 7 of the ICCPR states: “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. In particular, no one shall be subjected without his free consent to medical or scientific experimentation.” Schabas (1996 Schabas, William A. 1996. The Death Penalty as Cruel Treatment and Torture: Capital Punishment Challenged in the World's Courts, Boston: Northeastern University Press. [Google Scholar]: 11) has argued that the customary norm equating capital punishment with cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment, and torture really did not emerge until the 1980s, and was used by those favoring abolition as a strategy for “chipping away at the death penalty instead of confronting it.” 11. There was a caveat to the decision. Seeking assurances against the death penalty was a constitutional requirement, except in “exceptional cases,” although what exactly this meant was neither explained nor defined by the Court. (Burns)