DUSHANBE, October 11, 2011, Asia-Plus — The European and World Day against the Death Penalty was marked on October 10, 2011.
The United Nations (UN) Human Rights Council (HRC) has recommended Tajikistan to resolve the death penalty abolition issue until March 2012.
According to Sergey Romanov, an expert with the project on promoting anti-death penalty legislation in Tajikistan, this recommendation was voiced at 12th session of the HRC’s Working Group on the Universal Periodic Review (UPR) that took place in Geneva on October 3. “Tajikistan is undergoing examination under the UPR mechanism at that meeting and the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Hungary, Belgium and France recommended Tajikistan to abolish the death penalty in the near future and sign the Second Optional Protocol, Romanov said.
We will recall Tajikistan introduced a moratorium on executions and the handing down of death sentences on July 15, 2004. The country’s legislation reduced the scope of its death penalty by limiting the number of crimes punishable by death from 15 to five and revoking its use against women and minors.
The Tajik delegation stated the clear political will to fully abolish capital punishment in the future at the annual OSCE Human Dimension Implementation Meeting in Warsaw on September 30, 2009. This commitment was reinforced again in April 2010, when President Emomali Rahmon established a working group with the aim of analyzing the social and legal aspects of abolishing the death penalty in Tajikistan. Several NGOs have supported the government’s intentions in this area through the development of projects aimed at raising awareness of the issue and engaging in a dialogue on abolishing the death penalty and the general question of the right to life.
In the meantime, the European Union and the Council of Europe reaffirm their united opposition to the death penalty, and their commitment to its worldwide abolition in a joint statement released on October 2.
“We consider capital punishment to be inhumane, and a violation of human dignity. Experience in Europe has taught us that the death penalty does not prevent an increase in violent crime, and nor does it bring justice to the victims of such crimes. Any capital punishment resulting from a miscarriage of justice, from which no legal system can be immune, represents irreversible loss of human life.
Since 1997 no execution has taken place on the territory of our Member States.
“…We welcome the UN’s recent resolutions on the global moratorium on the use of the death penalty, with a view to its complete abolition, supported by a wide coalition of States from all regions of the world. The growing support granted to UN resolutions on this matter in 2007, 2008 and 2010 confirms an increasing international trend against the death penalty. At the same time, in acknowledging the growing number of countries which have done away with the death penalty (the figure grew from 55 to 97, between 1993 and 2009), we cannot ignore the fact that 58 countries in the world still retain the death penalty.”
