In Geneva, 24-26 February

Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Money will help people off the hook in capital punishment cases, according to a round table discussion at the fourth World Congress against the Death Penalty, held in Geneva 24-26 February. That, and the victim being a foreigner makes it unlikely that he or she will be put to death. Panelists from Bahrein, Pakistan and the United States argued that “money can buy you immunity” from prosecution. “Torture and the death penalty are for the poor,” says Kamran Arif, a lawyer from Pakistan, which hands down one-third of the world’s death sentences.

The Gulf states’ high proportion of foreign workers, especially from Africa and Asia, are behind half of the executions in Saudi Arabia being carried out on immigrants. They make up 30 percent of the country’s population, according to Nabeel Rajab, a human rights campaigner from Bahrein.

And in the USA a person’s chances of ending up on death row increase 50 percent if the victim is white. “It’s the race of the victim that counts”, says Michael Radelet, of the University of Colorado.

Five countries together execute about 6,000 people every year. The true figure is not really known because some countries, notably China and Saudi Arabia, make it difficult to track numbers. In China, a human rights campaigner estimates that the death penalty is consciously employed by the government as a means of social control. Many US states claim that the death penalty is a deterrent to crime.

But the number of officially abolitionist states is now 138, up from only 17 over 30 years ago. Many states have the death penalty on their books but have not actually sentenced anyone to die. The president of Mongolia recently asked his country’s parliament to consider rescinding the law that allows the death penalty.

The Geneva meeting gathers together more than 1,000 abolitionists from all over the world for three days of education, campaigning and networking to abolish the death penalty.

Background: “Mongolia’s presidentcalls for end to death penalty“, 14 January 2010, GenevaLunch

Links to other sites: Google News, Le Temps, World Organization against Torture, and following video from French abolitionist organization:

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