Amnesty: significant decrease in death penalty sentences in Sub-Saharan African nations

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Amnesty: significant decrease in death penalty sentences in Sub-Saharan African nations

April 12, 2018 03:35:19 pm

Amnesty International (AI) released its 2017 global review of death penalty [PDF] on Thursday noting a significant decrease in the imposition of death penalty sentences in Sub-Saharan African nations.

AI noted key developments such as Guinea becoming the 20th state in sub-Saharan Africa to abolish the death penalty for all crimes, Kenya abolishing the mandatory death penalty for murder, Burkina Faso and Chad taking steps to repeal this punishment with new or proposed laws.

Acknowledging that Botswana and Sudan resumed executions in 2018, AI noted that the number of countries imposing death sentences across sub-Saharan Africa dropped from five in 2016 to two in 2017. As such, AI stated that the development in Botswana and Sudan should not “overshadow the positive steps being taken by other countries across the region.”

AI Secretary General Salil Shetty added [press release]:

The progress in sub-Saharan Africa reinforced its position as a beacon of hope for abolition. The leadership of countries in this region gives fresh hope that the abolition of the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is within reach … With governments in the region continuing to take steps to reduce and repeal the death penalty well into 2018, the isolation of the world’s remaining executing countries could not be starker. … Now that 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, it is high time that the rest of the world follows their lead and consigns this abhorrent punishment to the history books.

AI also noted that Gambia, a country outside of the Sub-Saharan region of Africa, has “signed an international treaty committing the country not to carry out executions and moving to abolish the death penalty.” The president of Gambia established an official moratorium on executions in February.

The findings on Sub-Saharan Africa were published as part of larger annual global review that AI undertakes. Among other things, the overall findings also noted a four percent decline in worldwide executions since 2017 and a 40 percent decline since 2015, although the overall number of executing countries remained the same from 2017 with four countries accounting for 84% of all recorded executions.

Nations noted for “distressing trends” in execution rates around the world included, among others, Saudi Arabia, China, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The latter three nations were noted for their capital punishment process and system being “shrouded in secrecy” with China classifying capital punishment statistics as “state secrets.” The types of executions ranged from hanging to beheadings.

AI also noted in its review that the Middle East and North Africa recorded the highest total number of drug-related executions in 2017 while most of the countries carrying out drug-offense-related executions were from the Asia Pacific region. Shetty stated of these trends: “The draconian anti-drug measures widely used in the Middle East and Asia-Pacific have totally failed to address the issue. … there are still a few leaders who would resort to the death penalty as a ‘quick-fix’ rather than tackling problems at their roots with humane, effective and evidence-based policies. Strong leaders execute justice, not people.”

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.