Kofi Anan Back Move to Halt Death Penalty Around the World
February 4, 2001 
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ANNAN BACKS MOVE TO HALT DEATH PENALTY AROUND WORLD
Associated Press
United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan lent his support to a
worldwide moratorium on the death penalty Monday after receiving a
petition signed by 3.2 million people seeking an end to
state-sponsored executions.
Activist Sister Helen Prejean, representatives of Amnesty
International and a Rome-based interfaith group, the Sant’ Egidio
Community, delivered the petition as demonstrators outside UN
headquarters rallied to end capital punishment.
“We are right now at a new moment in terms of the American
people’s recognition that the death penalty does not serve us as a
country,” said Prejean, whose work as a spiritual adviser to a Death
Row inmate was depicted in the 1995 film “Dead Man Walking.”
“A moral threshold has been crossed,” she said.
Prejean said the petition is aimed at pressing the UN General Assembly
to pass a resolution halting executions and eventually banning them.
Amnesty International Chairman Paul Hoffman pointed out that while
fewer than 30 countries had abolished the death penalty in 1970, more
than 110 have such bans today.
At Monday’s ceremony, Annan backed the campaign, questioning how the
taking of one life can justify taking another.
“Can the state, which represents the whole of society and has the duty
of protecting society, fulfill that duty by lowering itself to the
level of the murderer and treating him as he treated others?” Annan
said.
Annan praised the countries that have signed a protocol aiming to
abolish the death penalty worldwide.
“If I may be permitted to express a personal view, I believe that
those states are right,” he said. “The forfeiture of life is too
absolute, too irreversible, for one human being to inflict it on
another, even when backed by legal process. And I believe that future
generations, throughout the world, will come to agree.”
As governor of Texas, President-elect George W. Bush presided over
nearly 150 executions.
In 2000, 40 people were put to death in Texas, the most of any state
in U.S. history.
Prejean acknowledged that changing public perception of capital
punishment in the United States is one of the biggest challenges
facing the anti-death penalty movement.
Prejean argued against the position that capital punishment serves as
a deterrent to crime, and that executions provide justice for the
families of murder victims.
http://chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/article/0,2669,SAV-0012190257,FF.html
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